DAVID JEROME: In May of 1949, Mickey Mantle was signed by Tom Greenwade, and he was given a $1,500 signing bonus.

Well, Tom Greenwade signed Bill Virdon to his first Yankee contract and gave him an $1,800 signing bonus just four months later.

[music playing] [ticking] [bird cawing] [whirring] [train horn] The Ozarks has become the home to some of the best known and most successful names in Major League Baseball.

Among these is Bill Virdon, a National League Rookie of the Year who played outfield for the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates before later becoming a successful coach and manager.

Among many honors, he was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame and recognized as a Missouri sports legend.

My guest today is author and Bill Virdon biographer David Jerome, who shares Bill Virdon's impressive story.

[music playing] ANNOUNCER: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

Well, thanks for joining me.

This is a very special show for me because I was always a Pittsburgh Pirates fan growing up and Cincinnati Reds fan.

I know they had a big rivalry and all that.

And so I'm pretty excited about learning more about Bill Virdon and his life, and especially the parts in Missouri, because I didn't even know he was associated with West Plains and stuff.

I just saw him as a Major League player.

But before we get started, why don't you talk a little bit about yourself and how you got into this, and your background.

Well, my wife Kathy and I have been-- we're from the Ozarks originally.

And we are celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary this month.

JIM BAKER: Wow.

And so-- here in June.

And so I'm graduating from Ashgrove High School.

We got married right out-- she graduated from Everton, and we got married right out of high school.

I was a career army officer.

And after I retired from the army in 1999, worked for engineering firms, and then I went down and got my PhD at Arkansas, and I taught college for several years throughout Missouri.

And in 19-- excuse me, in 2019, we moved to Ozark, and I was an associate pastor at a church here in Springfield.

And Bill and Shirley Virdon were members of that church.

And I knew that a former Major League Baseball professional and his wife were going to that church.

I just didn't know it was Bill Virdon.

And I knew who Bill Virdon was going back to his stint as the manager of the New York Yankees and the Houston Astros and the Montreal Expos, but I didn't really know him that well.

And so after about two weeks of being in my job as the associate pastor at the church, I finally met Bill and I realized, well, this is Bill Virdon.

So on July 1, if you would have asked me if I was ever going to do a biography on a famous baseball player, I would have said, you've got me confused with somebody else.

Well, four months later, Bill and Shirley Virdon gave me the thumbs up to proceed this-- proceed with this biography project.

JIM BAKER: Was it kind of like-- kind of a joint decision?

You just-- were you having coffee and said, oh, I think I'm going to do a biography of you.

Would you like to have that-- or how-- how formal was it?

Because he seems to me like a very informal, low-key person.

DAVID JEROME: Well, that's kind of an understatement.

JIM BAKER: [laughs] So-- no, in November, I was driving to a meeting up in Columbia, Missouri, through the Lake of the Ozarks region.

And it was on a Friday evening, right around dusk.

And I got to thinking, why hasn't anybody ever done any-- done a project on Bill Virdon?

And so I called the Seniors Director at church.

And I said, Rick-- his name is Rick Westfall.

I said, would you mind-- well, I confirmed that no one had done a biography.

And he says, David, Bill and Shirley never liked the idea of that based on who they-- who had asked them.

And I said, well, why don't you run it by them to see about me possibly doing it?

And so we did.

And the following week, just before Thanksgiving, they said yes.

They would like for me to do the biography on Bill Virdon.

And so-- and that's without me even talking to them about it.

And so after that was confirmed, then we started talking about when we would get together for our discussions.

It'd be after Christmas because of how busy the season was.

And then in early January or mid-January, I looked at Bill-- they had Thursday's luncheon at church.

And Shirley was over there fixing a tray of food for Bill, and Bill was looking at me in the only way Bill Virdon could look at anybody.

He should have patented that look.

And so he-- I walked over to him.

He said, do you think you can get this thing done?

I said, Bill, did you ever go into a game as a player or coach or a manager thinking you were going to lose?

He said, never.

I said, well, that's how I feel about this book project.

So in early-- on January 30th, we had our first sit down in their lovely home on the south side of Springfield.

And then we continued for the next year and a half until the book was done.

So had you written any books before or done anything like this before?

Well, I've never done anything like this, and so I was certainly out of my comfort zone.

There's no question about that.

My doctoral dissertation is an unpublished work.

I edited a textbook called "Examining War and Conflict Around the World" that actually came out-- was published a month after-- in December of 2019, a month after Bill and Shirley agreed to proceed with this project.

In fact, I gave Bill and Shirley a copy of them so they could be sure-- sure that I could put two sentences together.

And so, no, I've never done a biography or anything like this at all.

JIM BAKER: So mentally, what was the framework that you had going in?

Like, when you started thinking about it.

I mean, obviously, you can organize things chronologically and at different phases in his career and life.

And so-- but did you have a concept in mind, or did you just hit the ground running and say, OK, this is what we're going to do?

Well, after they accepted doing the project, I would not have proceeded without their cooperation or agreement to do so.

Some writers do.

I mean, they go ahead and do it with or without permission.

JIM BAKER: Yeah.

The old famous, unauthorized biography.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I wanted his involvement.

I wanted to be able to communicate with my subject intimately and thoroughly throughout the whole project, and it was going to take his agreement to do so.

And so in the process, my wife and I became very good friends with Bill and Shirley and their three daughters and their families.

To go back to your point, when I started doing my research in late November throughout the month of December, throughout January, I will-- my wife will confirm that I think I'm in over my head because I thought I knew Bill Virdon, but I had no idea what he had accomplished as a player, coach, and manager until I started digging into the research.

And so I started in the middle.

It's a chronological story, but I started with the 1960 World Series season because that was Bill's-- That was the most favorite-- DAVID JEROME: --favorite topic.

And so we started in the middle.

And then we went back and we started for a few years when he was with the Cardinals as the National League Rookie of the Year in 1955, and when he got traded to the Pirates in 1956.

And then I finished up his playing career that took him through the end of the season in 1965.

Then I went back and started with Chapter 1, his childhood and how he-- you know, being born in Hazel Park, Michigan, and then moving to West Plains when he was about 12 years old during World War II and what kind of a standout athlete he was.

A remarkable athlete at West Plains High School.

It's just unbelievable what he had accomplished as an athlete.

Yeah.

So we'll go back and kind of do it chronologically, I suppose.

But how did-- what were his parents-- what were they involved in, and how did they end up in West Plains?

Were they from there originally?

Well, they were from South Central Missouri or south of the Poplar Bluff area pretty much.

And they had moved up to Michigan in the Detroit area at some point in the early '20s.

And I think they were married in 1923.

I think they were both born in 1901.

And so he went up there to find work.

And I think Bertha-- his name was Charlie and his wife, whose name was Bertha.

And I believe they went up there to find work.

And they kind of knew each other before they went up there from South Central Missouri.

And then they got married.

And Corinne was Bill's only other sibling, and he was-- she was five years older than Bill.

And she was born in about 1926, and Bill was born in 1931 in Hazel Park.

Corinne, I think, was actually born in Detroit.

Bill was born northwest of Detroit, not too-- in a suburb of Detroit at the time, Hazel Park.

I forgot to ask, but how old was when you guys started this book?

What was his age?

He was close to 90, or how old-- He was 88.

88.

And-- in 19-- in 2020, June 9, he would have been 89.

And he passed away in November of '21 at the age of 90.

Yeah.

Nice, long, fruitful life.

Right.

And Shirley just passed away this last March at the age of 93.

So when they-- they moved back to West Plains.

And then was-- he was, what?

12, 13 years old at that point?

Something like that.

Probably 13.

Yeah.

And then was he-- he was very athletic from the beginning, or was it just-- because-- I guess the reputation that I-- when I watched him play baseball, he was very fast.

DAVID JEROME: Oh, incredibly fast.

Lore has it that he attended his first Detroit Tigers baseball game at the age of one week old.

[laughs] And Charlie and Bertha were big baseball fans.

Hank Greenberg was his idol in Detroit when he became old enough to have an idol.

Bill-- and to go back to answer your previous question, Charlie did a lot of maintenance, did a lot of projects around West Plains.

Worked for the school, worked for a guy by the name of Joe Spears.

He owned some commercial property, and Charlie worked for him.

And Charlie would do about anything for anybody around town.

He was really a very kind and humble individual.

His wife Bertha worked in a bookstore there on the square.

A soda shop, bookstore right there on the square in West Plains.

They actually lived in South Fork, Missouri, about nine miles west of West Plains on 160 Highway.

And actually, Bill as a young boy would walk into West Plains just to play town baseball and that type of stuff.

Unless a farmer came by and gave him a ride in, he would walk the whole way.

But in high school, Bill was indeed a standout athlete, especially beginning his junior year.

He would say, I was a so-so athlete my freshman and sophomore year.

But he was the star starting quarterback for the Zizzers football team.

He was a star basketball player, and he was a star track and field athlete.

They didn't have baseball at West Plains in high school back in that day, so he had to play town ball.

And-- but to give you an idea of what kind of an athlete he was, in the spring of 1949 his senior year, West Plains was in a track and field meet with towns like Cabool, Willow Springs, Houston, Mountain Grove, Mountain View, other towns.

And I think West Plains came in at 96 points.

The second place team came in at 60 points.

Bill Virdon accounted for 36 points by himself in four different events.

So that's the kind of athlete he was.

Yeah, he was mostly was in-- I guess in spring-- he was a relatively small person, right?

I mean, he wasn't really a big, muscular, huge guy.

Well, he sure developed in his junior and senior years.

That's when his growth spurt took place.

That's when his athleticism just skyrocketed.

And those are his words.

Yeah, because-- and then he was actually went to Drury.

Yeah.

He was on a basketball scholarship to go to Drury in the fall of '49.

He graduated in '49 from West Plains.

In the summer of '48, his good friend Gene Richmond, who was a couple years older than Bill, said, Bill, I'm going to go out to Clay Center, Kansas.

This is north of Abilene and Northwest of Manhattan, Kansas.

I'm going to go out there and play summer ball.

And Bill said, well, can I go with you?

And so they hopped in Gene's car and took off for Clay Center, Kansas.

Well, two weeks after they got out there, they sent Gene Richmond back home to West Plains, and they kept Bill.

And he played summer ball that summer between his junior and senior year of high school.

So after he graduated in '49, he went back out to Clay Center.

And that's probably where Tom Greenwade-- when Tom Greenwade would have scouted him for the Yankees.

Because in the August of '49, Tom invited Bill to a Yankee tryout camp down in Branson at Mang Field, along with about 125 other young men.

And they signed eight of them out of 125.

Well, bill was one of the eight.

And his good friend Mel Wright, a pitcher out of Arkansas, was one of the other eight.

I mean, was another one of the eight.

Well, he fulfilled his commitment to play basketball for Drury that fall, knowing full well that he was going to go to play in some minor league affiliate of the New York Yankees in the spring of '50.

So he was just a great all-around-- all-around athlete.

Now, when did-- when did he actually sign his first professional contract, and who was that with?

It would have been-- it would have been in August or maybe early September after the tryout camp in 1949.

JIM BAKER: So it was right before he went-- And the thing about-- yeah, the thing about it is in May of 1949, Mickey Mantle was signed by Tom Greenwade, and he was given a $1,500 signing bonus.

Well, Tom Greenwade signed Bill Virdon to his first Yankee contract and gave him an $1,800 signing bonus just four months later.

[laughs] More than Mickey Mantle.

Yeah.

Kind of like to point that out.

That that'd be a point of pride for-- for Mr. Virdon.

Bill had a lot of respect for Mickey Mantle.

He said he was an athlete beyond imagination.

Yeah, there was so many great players during that period that came into being, and he was certainly one of them, Bill Virdon.

Sure.

So he actually did-- he never-- he played for the Cardinals first, as I recall.

Well, he was in the minor league system-- How'd that all work up?

Yeah.

He was in the minor league system with the Yankees.

And in 1953, he was invited to the big club's spring training down in Florida.

Casey Stengel was managing.

And Bill was out in the-- I'm going to get there as quick as I can.

He was out in the outfield.

They were taking turns.

Hank Bauer was out there.

Mickey Mantle was out there.

Irv Noren was out there.

Bob Cerv was out there.

And-- and a couple of other ballplayers were out there, taking turns fielding fly balls, hitting-- the batting coach was hitting balls out there, and Casey was kind of supervising infield practice at the same time.

Well, Bill Virdon was always all business, no matter what sport it was, and certainly baseball.

But it was his turn to catch the ball.

Well, it fell short and he picked it up and threw it as hard as he could to the cutoff man, not realizing that Casey Stengel got between him and the cutoff man.

And Casey's back was to Bill, and Bill hit him right between the three and the seven and knocked him down.

I'm not going to tell you what Casey said when he got up.

But all the other guys hit the turf and they pointed up at Bill.

He did it.

He did it.

Well, about two weeks later, Bill gets traded to the Cardinals, and he gets in-- he gets sent off to Rochester to the AAA affiliate, the Red Wings, for the St. Louis Cardinals in the International League.

And that was probably his best year for hitting.

I mean, he was the hitting champion for the International League.

Then he went down to Cuba and played winter ball.

That's where he met Kenny Boyer for the first time, and they became good friends.

And then he went to spring training with the Cardinals.

And he never-- in that year in 1955, he became the Rookie of the Year for the Cardinals.

And the very following year-- in fact, they moved Stan Musial out of the outfield and put him on first base just to make room for Bill to be in the outfield in center field.

The very next spring, Frank "Trader" Lane, the General Manager, traded Bill to the Pirates.

Rumor has it that Lane was in with Joe L. Brown, the General Manager with the Pirates, and they were in a baseball game.

And Bobby Del Greco, the center fielder for the pirates, hit two homers in the same game.

Well, that impressed Lane so much that he was willing to trade Bill for Del Greco.

Amazing.

That's pretty amazing.

Bill did really well with the Pirates, but Del Greco didn't do so well with the Cardinals.

Yeah, I would say he had a pretty good career with the Pirates.

DAVID JEROME: Yes, he did.

I remember the first time I saw him-- they were in Pittsburgh.

And we'll talk a little bit about the 1960 season, because that was really pretty fascinating.

I was kind of a Yankees fan too.

I liked all the baseball teams as I was growing up, come to think of it.

Sure.

And because it was-- mostly I liked the individual players.

And so I wasn't so hung up on the team as I was-- I really liked Mickey Mantle.

DAVID JEROME: I can relate to that.

Yeah.

And I remember the first time I saw Bill Virdon, the first thing that really stood out to me was the glasses that he wore.

I mean, you know, the round-- Want me to tell you the story behind the glasses?

Sure, yeah, that'd be great.

In 1953, Bill and Shirley were in Kansas City, playing for the AAA affiliate for the Yankees, the Kansas City Blues.

And Harry Craft was the manager for the-- for the Blues during that season.

Well, Bill didn't have his best year at the plate during that year.

And Harry noticed that when Bill was reading something, a book or anything else, that Bill was squinting.

So he sent Bill to an optometrist there in Kansas City.

And sure enough, Bill needed glasses.

But as far as the season was concerned, it was too late for Bill.

So he moved him on down to Birmingham with the Barons in Birmingham, Alabama.

And that's where Mayo Smith was.

And he first met Mayo Smith in Norfolk, Virginia, when Bill played there in 1951, when he started in the Yankees organization, the second year in the organization.

Well, he did well.

And in 1950-- the rest of that season, 1953.

And then that's when he showed up the next year wearing glasses.

JIM BAKER: Yeah, they were very distinctive because I remember them vividly even as a young guy watching for the first time.

I also really enjoyed watching him play at Forbes Field, because that field was just huge.

And he loved it.

He loved that wide open space because he loved to run.

Yeah.

What was-- what were the dimensions of that-- [inaudible] it was, like, 400.

DAVID JEROME: Well, I've been out to the wall there at Forbes Field because that's really all that remains.

JIM BAKER: That's all that-- yeah, right.

And I'm going to-- I'm going to mess this up.

I think it's 457 to center field, I believe.

He was partnered up with Roberto Clemente.

And-- For 10 seasons.

Yeah.

And people that love great right fielders, I guess that was probably-- if not the best, it was one of the best.

They made a they made a tremendous outfield.

I can't remember who the left fielder was.

I knew you were going to ask me that, and I always forget his name, but it's in the book, and-- No, that's OK.

But I used to watch that, and the gracefulness of Virdon was just so impressive.

I mean, people that are watching this show, if they ever get a chance to go back and watch him play a little bit center field, it was a thing of beauty.

Well, if you watch him-- the recordings of the '60 World Series, in one game-- I think it was in Game 7, I believe it was.

And-- and Bill came in in front of the left-- and I had no idea how he got there so fast.

But Roberto Clemente made a comment regarding your point.

The reason Bill Virdon never got the-- never got noticed is he because he made playing center field look so easy.

JIM BAKER: So smooth.

Smooth is about the best word-- And Dick Groat, the second base-- the shortstop told me basically-- and I talked to him just two weeks before he died last year.

And I talked to him a year before that when I interviewed him for the book, that Bill had great instincts like no other person.

He was a field general.

He was really a manager on the field.

I mean, he kind of did things.

I mean, he was able to-- he just had great instincts.

And that's a good segue into his managing career.

But before we get to that, what was his kind of overall thoughts of the 1960 World Series?

That was-- that was pretty tremendous.

Well, going into 1960, he said the clubhouse-- I mean, it was just a different dynamic altogether from the previous years.

'59 was a pretty good year for him too.

But he said everybody's-- and during spring training and in the clubhouse after the season started, everybody-- you know, this is our year.

I mean, we have a good feeling that this is going to be our year.

And sure enough, it was.

And so it was a good year for Bill.

I mean, he played well.

He was platooned with Giusti during that year.

But Danny Murtaugh made a comment to the New York press before the World Series started.

Said, you're going to see a center fielder like you've never seen before, and I'm not talking about Mickey Mantle.

He was talking about Bill Virdon.

Right.

And so the team had a lot of confidence going into the 1960 season.

I think it manifested itself throughout the season.

JIM BAKER: Yeah, that was-- I remember that series pretty vividly.

And I think I was about 13 years old at the time.

So I've managed to use up a lot of our time asking you a bunch of different things, but let's talk just really quickly about his managing.

And then I'd like to have about the last minute or so just to talk about your personal impressions of Bill Virdon as a person.

OK. Bill managed four Major League teams.

He managed the Pirates, the Yankees, the Astros, and the Expos.

He had been the bench coach under Danny Murtaugh when they won the 1971 World Series against the Baltimore Orioles.

And at the end of the season Bill was named the new manager for the Pirates, and he managed during the '72 season.

The '72 season was arguably a very good season for the Pirates.

Some people will say, well, that's a carryover from Danny Murtaugh.

But Bill was his own man.

And those players that he had actually played with were still on the team.

Mazeroski was there.

Roberto Clemente was there.

Willie Stargell was there, et cetera.

And they all respected Bill very much for being a player and for his leadership and everything else.

So that '72 team was Bill's team.

'73, it didn't go so well.

Roberto Clemente was killed in a tragic plane accident on December 31, 1972.

Steve Blass, for some reason, his pitching ace in the '71 World Series, for some reason couldn't get the ball over the plate, 1973.

And so we have a pitcher that could arguably win over 20 games that they didn't win because of his problems in pitching.

And then we have that remarkable Roberto Clemente not being there.

And so things didn't go well in 1973.

Joe L. Brown fired him.

And he would later regret firing him.

So the Yankees signed him as a manager in early January of 1974.

He was the AL Manager of the Year for the Yankees in 1974.

Then 1975, he gets fired on August 1.

Replaced by Billy Martin.

George Steinbrenner wanted a showman, a flamboyant person.

And Bill was not that.

He was all business.

And then he went and became-- That was not a marriage made in heaven.

No, it was not.

That was good then.

And Bill became the Astros skipper in the fall of '75 and stayed there until late '82.

He was the NL Manager of the Year in 1980.

He took a very poor team-- the only team that had a worse record than the Astros did in the fall of '75 were the Detroit Tigers.

And Bill goes down there with 34 games left in the '75 season and finishes at 517 and 17.

And then he's competing for the NLCS against the Philadelphia Phillies in late '80.

Well, unfortunately, we're running out of time.

But just-- just your final thought.

We've got a less than a minute, but your final thoughts on working with Bill Virdon and just his character.

One of the most humble people I've ever met for what he had achieved in his life.

One of the most caring, thoughtful people that you would ever want to meet.

A person that would ask you how you're doing and really was interested in the answer that you would give him because he cared about people.

He didn't care what you did in your life.

He just wanted you to be well.

He wanted you to do what you did well.

And so he was a very caring people.

And I think a lot of players, especially ones that didn't, you know, do their best when he was a manager or a coach, never really got a chance to see that because they were so focused, I think, on themselves.

And so if they were honest with themselves and they took a look at Bill, they would see this person that really does care about them.

And that's really Bill Virdon.

Well, I really appreciate the chance to go back into a lot of good memories and stuff about-- baseball's a beautiful game to remember and to go back.

And so sorry we're out of time.

We're going to have to do another show, I think, some time to talk a little bit more detail.

But I appreciate your being here.

I enjoyed it very much.

Thank you for having me.

We'll be right back.

ANNOUNCER: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

[music playing] Baseball and our local players remain ever popular and often inspiring.

I want to thank my guest David Jerome for sharing highlights from Bill Virdon's remarkable career.

Join us again next time for "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

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