One February day 31 years ago, I was 35 miles down the road from our offices in Roanoke, Virginia, working on a story for our sister magazine, The Roanoker.
Photo Above: Story Opener, The Roanoker, April ’94.
Photo Courtesy of The Roanoker Magazine.
The subject was a recent alum of tiny, Division III Ferrum College and before that, a graduate of tiny Tazewell High School in the mountains of southwest Virginia.
The polite, modest, quiet young man I spoke to had by this time signed a $500,000 contract with the Houston Astros and had spent one uneventful year pitching in the minors—a season in strong contrast to his three at Ferrum where, among other amazing and unprecedented things, he had averaged 19.11 strikeouts per nine innings pitched one season (the major record for strikeouts in a single game is 20).
On this day, the pitching future for the then-21-year-old was uncertain: Would he be a starter or would the fastballs that flew out of his compact, 5’10” body translate better to closing out games in the ninth inning?
I could pretend I gained an opinion on that question that day, when Billy Wagner agreed to play catch with a guy more than twice his age. I did not, but I did note, even in our relaxed tosses, that the ball came out of his left hand hard, quick and with intent.
The left-hand aspect is another source of the uniqueness of Billy Wagner’s greatness as a pitcher: When he was 5 years old, he broke his right arm while playing football, when an older kid tackled him and put him in a cast for six or eight weeks. The day the cast came off, little Billy was back to football and the same kid, as Wagner recalled back in ‘94, broke his arm again.
So the boy with the twice-broken right arm began to throw the football—and the baseball—with his left hand.
The rest, as they say . . . Billy Wagner’s ensuing years and results—he began his Major League career in 1995—are by now well-documented, singular and, as of January 21, 2025, Hall-of-Fame-worthy. You can look ‘em up if you want to, but indulge me in just two: Among big-league pitchers with at least 900 innings pitched, he ranks first all-time in strikeouts per nine innings (11.92) and lowest opponent batting average (.187).
Several decades back, I got to play catch with a Hall-of-Famer.
The story above first appeared in our March / April 2025 issue.
