Billy the Coach
Written by Ahillan Mani, MSA class of 2023 & Photos by Ed Harrison, MSA class of 2024.
I met with Billy Wagner at his natural habitat: the Miller Baseball field. He stood in the coaches box donning MSA Baseball gear from head to toe, proud of the renowned program he is the head coach of at Miller. His eyebrows were furrowed in deep observation as he watched his students and made sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to. I was ushered to come down from the stands - he had remembered our conversation about an interview yesterday. Billy “The Kid” Wagner has enjoyed the pinnacle of MLB stardom over his career that spanned 16 seasons across 5 different teams. I cannot begin to list all of his spectacular accolades in this article, so instead I asked him about some of his most cherished moments during his career. “Well, I think any kid getting to the Big Leagues was a huge step,” he began. Throwing a no hitter and being part of a six men no hitter against the Yankees ranked among his proudest moments. He also spoke of lasting 16 years in the MLB, getting 400 saves, making it to the playoffs and playing for the Mets in New York as well as the Red Sox in Boston. Coach Wagner continued to explain, “There was a lot of highlights along the way, but I was very blessed to play with a lot of great players, and that’s a highlight.”
Coach Wagner explained that he grew up in a highly sports oriented family, whether it was baseball or football. Speaking about his passion for baseball, he said, “It evolved because you want to play, and you enjoy competition. I think it’s fuelled by enjoying and having a passion for it, but also being talented to play it and pushed to play it.” Watching and being immersed in baseball through his family’s enthusiasm already made the sport an integral part of Coach Wagner’s upbringing. “Back then, you didn’t get to watch baseball like you do today on the internet. You watched it on Mondays and Saturdays. You hungered for it,” he reminisced. He talked about watching the Braves on the TBS Television Network, which made him a Braves fan and taught him to love the game from a very young age. It was all about being inspired to play the sport and compete, and he did not feel the pressures that many of today's student-athletes feel until his later years.
He contrasted the level of commitment in students he sees and trains today with that of his cohorts when he was starting out. “Nothing like these guys,” he said, citing the serious tenacity of today's young athletes as far above and beyond what was expected of students of his age in his day.
In truth, Billy Wagner shared this incredible determination from a very young age. He was devoted to the craft even at seven years old, when after breaking his right arm twice playing football, he trained himself to be able to pitch with his left arm. This is symbolic of the sheer grit that Wagner continued to possess throughout his career. It would not be until his time at Ferrum College in Virginia that his future in the sport of baseball would begin to take shape. In fact, his primary sport was actually not even baseball until then.“Well, I went to college to play football, I loved football. Football was my actual passion,” Coach Wagner explained. He was a talented football player at the time, but explains that he received no attention from Division 1 recruiters and even MLB scouts simply due to the fact that he was undersized. A turning point was gradually reached when he realized that he was better equipped for baseball than football. He made the decision to commit to baseball with the help of coaches at Ferrum who encouraged him to make the switch. He had pitched throughout high school, and showed signs of immense talent, but he was a late bloomer. Wagner had to work harder than all of his peers to earn his spot at the top. During his college career, he earned the NCAA III record for strikeouts per nine innings. Billy Wagner let his numbers speak for themself.
He went on to become one of the greatest college baseball pitchers of all time, and eventually cemented his legacy in the MLB with truly mind boggling statistics, such as accumulating 422 Major League career saves. I asked if there was a motto that he stood by while performing on such a grand stage. “True to yourself,” he said. “I couldn’t be somebody I wasn’t. I held myself pretty accountable to not going out and taking the temptation of drugs and steroids and enhancements. I really thought about doing it my way and staying true to myself,” he explained. He enjoyed the smaller class sizes at Ferrum, which can be compared to the environment at Miller, which might be what drew Coach Wagner to MSA. At Miller there is not only elite-level competition, but the necessary elite-level training is made possible with how the curriculum is designed around flexibility and encouragement of students to pursue their greatest potential on and off the field.
Coach Wagner and the baseball team are at practice from 3:45 up to 7:00 pm every day. Their discipline is recognized by everyone on campus. This discipline is something Coach Wagner teaches. He is less focused on pushing athletes to go pro and follow in his footsteps. His focus is more on nurturing the passion for baseball, much like the athletic journey Wagner underwent himself. He sees the MSA kid that is hungry for competition, and he will do everything he can to support the student who shows a desire to be better, a desire to win. He understands that competition grows stronger and opportunities narrow every year. The pressures on both students and parents to make it to D1 are something that Coach Wagner is well equipped in responding to, as a veteran coaching member of the program.
Baseball athletes at Miller all look up to Coach Wagner. It is hard to not be inspired by someone who turned their “blue collar work ethic” into becoming a seven time All-Star. He takes his responsibility very seriously. He tenderly told me of his high school Coach Lucian “Lou” Peery, who passed away three years ago, and was a “best friend” as much as he was a coach to a young Billy Wagner. He explained to me how Coach Peery took him by the hand and guided him through his adolescence, showing Wagner not only how to be a good person and make the right choices, but how to be a good coach himself in his later years. “He was very good at always being there for me and then when I started coaching, he was the same way in being that mentor for me,” he said. “I think it takes a very good mentor to always teach somebody to hone in a craft.” When I asked him about core values that he tries to instill into Miller athletes, “accountability” is what he answered with. He described this to me: “The moments that you are by yourself and the moments that you are with your teammates, you have got to work on your craft. “It shows up (accountability) when things don’t go well, but it also comes back to the guy who understands that Hey I messed up, this is my fault, I’m taking accountability,” explains Wagner. He wants athletes to know that he was doing the same thing and working hard when he was on the mound. He describes his message : “Off season and during the season I had to be true to myself because I knew I couldn’t take days off, so I had to work for it. I wouldn’t say I had great confidence, but it allowed me to go out and produce because I had already been working that until then and just created good habit.” At Miller, baseball is every day, and he hopes that the students will cultivate a strong work ethic to gain an understanding of accountability and practise it each and every day. After we finished up, Coach Wagner was immediately back into practice mode, calling out to one of the kids, “Hey, hey we got a ladder over there!” as they winded down after a tiring practice.