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Daddy Wags

You know how I learned to hit? When I was six or seven years old, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I didn’t have anybody to play with. So I hit rocks outside. I was pitching rocks up in the air, and got so frustrated swinging up trying to hit those rocks. Until I learned to start hitting down on the rocks as they were coming down. Then I started lining ten out of ten. As a six-year-old.

I kept doing that when I was seven or eight, then started hitting a baseball like that, because the baseball comes down from the pitcher’s mound, and I started hitting down, like I hit those rocks.

She just let me be a real boy, like Huckleberry Finn. She told me, “All boys and dogs belong outdoors” … I was the type of kid who really enjoyed his life coming up, and I had a lot of drive because I didn’t think about failing no way, because there was nothing to go home to. My grandma was an older lady and I didn’t want to go back to the projects and work in the factory. There was nothing to go back to. So I had total motivation.

Turning pro

Arriving at The Show

I remember my major league debut, at Connie Mack Stadium. I was nervous (pinch-hitting, in the ninth inning). My legs were shaking. Thirty thousand people in the stands. I’d been playing in front of 8,000 people in Phoenix. I had to hold my legs, you know (laughs)? I stepped in at the plate, thinking, I better get out of here quickly.

Turk Farrell, I think, threw me a fastball about a hundred miles an hour, and I golfed that thing to straightaway center field. I saw Richie Ashburn take off running and running, and I was ‘round second base by the time he hauled that thing in over his shoulder. People just went berserk. And I didn’t care whether he caught the ball. I was just glad to get out of the spotlight and get back to the bench, and give it back to (Willie) Mays (laughs).

Enjoying life

I lived in the Fillmore District with a guy named Teddy, who used to be with the underworld. He had a silk bathrobe and a nice, big home there. Willie Kirkland lived with a woman named Sadie, who was an ex-madam, I guess. A fine, older lady.

We were introduced to these people by Mays, his wife Marghuerite, and later by Sad Sam Jones. They knew these society people who had nice homes. Mays always looked out for us.

Kirkland and I used to go out at night to the Washington Club and other spots. The Fillmore District at the time was jumping, with Jack’s and all those other places. We were dating these little sisters from the Bank of America, in the Fillmore District ...

Willie Kirkland was my closest friend on the team but I was good friends with all of them. (Orlando) Cepeda was playing bongo music all the time, smoking a little weed—it was strong, then. But we never smoked weed during the games. You can’t play drugged up. Every now and then we’d smoke weed after the game, or in the offseason. But you could not play drugged up, with all those people in the stands, playing for money, man. That was out. You couldn’t drink a lot of whiskey, either, and I was never a boozer. But, as I said, it was strong stuff, then—two puffs (laughs).

La-la land

Dean Chance and Bo Belinsky were playboys, but Bo was a bona fide nice guy who just liked to play Hollywood. He really went out there and caught the Hollywood girls. He was like white boy who was a pimp (laughs). From New Jersey.

Yeah, I bought myself a shiny, new Cadillac in L.A., and Bo went out and got himself one in the same color. We were friends, though we never hung out together. He was a hustler. He could bowl and shoot pool like a hustler.

I was about the only black guy on the team. Charlie Dees was there for a little while and we hung together, but there weren’t too many black guys to hang with. So I partied with Jim Fregosi, Bob Rodgers and Lee Thomas. We had a ball together—we were real close.

I had a clothing business on the side in L.A. in those days, when I was playing ball. I had a 14-unit apartment building, a store, and three houses. I was worth $800,000 in 1963. That was like 10 million now.

I was trying to hit home runs, everybody was telling me I should go into this business or that, I had a clothing store here, an apartment building there and there was just a lot of pressure on me, man. I was only in my 20s. We sold Italian-style clothes, socks and silk suits. It was a good line. One of the local disc jockeys, Chuck Mann, managed my store and came up with the line, “Buy Your Rags at Daddy Wags.”

I did try smoking weed, though, one time before playing in Boston. I took two puffs and I hadn’t come down, and I’m out in left field and (Carl) Yastrzemski hits a line drive to left. And I’ve got my hands on my knees and I watch the line drive sail over my head, with my hands still on my knees. I didn’t feel like moving (laughs).

So I just trotted over real easy and retrieved it, and hummed it into second base. And then I went back to my position, hands on knees, and relaxed. (Angels manager Bill) Rigney didn’t say a word to me when I went back to the dugout. He didn’t know.

I was so glad to get that game over. I don’t ever want to play that relaxed. I never did it again. That taught me a lesson. You don’t have your quick reflexes.

There are some guys who can’t run or throw who are pretty good outfielders anyway … and there are some guys who can run and maybe even throw OK, but are just bad outfielders, like Ralph Garr, Bob Nieman, Leon Wagner, Dave Kingman, Lou Brock, and Billy Ashley.

Off to Cleveland

Wagner hit 91 homers in three seasons with the Angels. But he grew downright disenchanted with the distant right-field boundaries at Chavez Ravine and that may have been a factor in his being traded.

Wagner hit only two home runs and drove in 19 runs at Chavez Ravine last year. That means he must have been a terror someplace else, because he finished with 26 and 90.

… Wagner, known as “Leather,” is proudest of his being named the outstanding player in the 1962 second All-Star Game at Chicago, when he hit a home run and made a skidding catch in left field. “I’m a good fielder,” he insists. He often calls his idol, Willie Mays, long distance to tell Willie that Daddy Wags just boomed another one ...

“I’d hit 60 homers if I belonged to Detroit,” the outfielder once predicted. On another occasion Wagner announced he might hit 90 homers if he played all his games in Yankee Stadium. The Wagnerian tenor of these remarks was unmistakable—Daddy Wags, who already had worn the flannels of San Francisco and St. Louis, would be happier in a ballpark tailored for a left-handed pull hitter.

The blues have never been Leon Wagner’s style. “Daddy Wags,” as he likes to call himself, has always jived to the upbeat. Even now, at age 34, with his swinging days perhaps becoming scarcer, there seems to be no melancholy in him. He had reason to feel sad after tailing off last season to a .242 average, 15 homers, and 54 RBIs, but all he said was that he hoped the Indians wouldn’t trade him.

The long road "home"

I lived over there (Honolulu) for a couple of years, selling cars in the offseason. I loved it. That’s where I learned how to sell cars. A Chinese guy taught me. He told me the customer is always right, even if they’re wrong, as long as they’ve got the money. That was the key, and that’s what I taught my salesmen.

I continued selling cars in San Francisco for about eight years. I didn’t really intend to but I got into it because I found out these guys were making five, six and seven thousand dollars a month selling Hondas, man. I did four and five thousand myself.

All my life I had $4,000 or $5,000 a month expenses, a house, two cars, one for the lady, you know. And when you’ve been doing that since you were 23 years old and you’re making $40,000 to $50,000 a year … I just got tired of all that. I just got free for a change the last couple of years …

I’m retired now. I’m living kind of a radical lifestyle, like the hippies in San Francisco in the '60s. I’ve got a Lincoln, and I could get an apartment if I wanted to, with cable and everything, but I just feel free being out—I don’t know whether it’s the Indian in me or what. I check into a fabulous hotel every now and then. But I always felt like I was rich, whether I had only two dollars or whatever. I was raised that way. I can always get some cash. And I ain’t money hungry. I’m blessed. I get paid from baseball—$1,800 a month. Forever ...

I’ll probably stay retired now. I really don’t know what else I would want to get into because, whatever it is, it takes a lot out of you. Billy Dee Williams told me I should make acting a career … yeah, I could get back into that, but I’m just not interested. It takes a lot out of you, man, whatever you do. Selling cars took a lot out of me, just like baseball. Work on Sundays? Me?

… I might now have but 20 bucks, but I only ask for what I need. Gene Autry, Earl Wilson and other ex-ballplayers always ask how I’m doing, and they want to send me money. But I won’t take money from any of them. I was raised that way.

At the end of his life, he had adopted a small electrical shed behind a video store in that area as a makeshift home. Wagner died in that shed of natural causes on January 3, 2004. His official obituary stated, not completely inaccurately, that he died "at home."