Leon Wagner Career Stats:

Baseball Almanac - Daddy Wags

Bitter Ending

Bill Plaschke / The Los Angeles Times / January 2004

'Daddy Wags' never forgave the Angels for trading him and he died alone on the streets.

The obituary said he died at home. His good neighbors of Leimert Park smiled sadly when they read it.

Yes, of course, that electrical shed next to the dumpster behind the video store was Leon Wagner's home.

"The more I thought about it, the more it made sense," said Brian Breye, a local merchant. "Because the 
streets were his home."

Leon Wagner was the first great slugger in Angel history, a 1962 All-Star game MVP, an engaging prince
 to kings Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle.

With his huge smile, loopy swing and funky throwing motion, the man known as "Daddy Wags" once held 
the Southern California baseball world in his giant palms.

Yet on Jan. 3, at age 69, he died with nothing.

He had no address, no car, little money. His final days were spent wandering the Crenshaw corridor streets.

Apparently bitter at baseball, clearly forgotten by nearly everyone in the game, he died after a long, losing 
bout with drug addiction and anger. 

His final home was that closet-sized shed, where he slept on a foam mattress covered in old shirts, 
surrounded by plastic cups and bags of beans and rice. 

"We kept asking this guy to leave, but he kept coming back," a clerk at the video store said. "That was 
Leon Wagner? And he died?"

Daddy Wags was great with teammates, hilarious with reporters, perhaps the first lovable Angel, the 
perfect clubhouse host.

Yet on Thursday, at his memorial service a couple of blocks from that shed, not one person from major 
league baseball came to say goodbye.

Not one.

There were only about 25 mourners, leaving several empty rows in the small chapel.

Attendees were invited to step to the podium to share memories of a man who played a dozen years in 
the major leagues, yet only his son and daughter spoke.

Leon Wagner Jr. and Lei Juana Wagner had tried to help their father, and he wanted no part of it, yet 
they stood by him still.

One of his Cleveland Indian baseball cards, with his eyes bright and smile proud, was enlarged and 
mounted at the front of the room, appropriate for a man who was larger than life.

A giant who disappeared.

"Remember the first time they sent astronauts into space, and they weren't afraid until they landed in 
the ocean?" asked Lou Johnson, a former Angel and Dodger. "That's what happens to some old 
ballplayers, particularly from our era, particularly African American. When we retire, it's like landing in 
the middle of the ocean without a rowboat."

You know the baseball cliche about the great ones being able to fall out of bed and get a hit?

Leon Wagner might have been the only great for whom that statement is not apocryphal, but anecdotal.

While a kid with the San Francisco Giants in the late 1950s, he had fallen asleep at the end of the dugout 
when the Giants mounted a rally against the Dodgers.

With the Giants trailing by two, ninth inning, bases loaded, one out, he was approached by Manager Bill
 Rigney.

"Mr. Wagner!" Rigney said, rousing his outfielder. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you please go 
up to bat and hit? Preferably a home run?"

Wagner rubbed his eyes, trotted to the plate and promptly .... well, what do you think he did?

"I knew I'd catch hell if I hit into a double play, so I hit a home run," Wagner later explained.

It was this sort of unpredictable power that made Wagner so impressive to the Angels, who acquired him 
in the spring of their debut 1961 season in a trade with minor league Toronto for Johnson.

The locals immediately fell in love with the 27-year-old left-handed batter, a cross between Mickey Hatcher 
and Mickey Mantle.

Teammates joked about his unusual batting stance, remarking that he held the bat as if he were holding a 
snake.

Jim Murray poked fun at the way he threw, writing, "He looks more like  man trying to make a spare than 
a putout."

Wagner laughed through it all, leading the Angels with 28 homers in that first season, then hitting 37 
homers with 107 runs batted in in 1962 to rank among the best in baseball.

In the middle of that second season, in the second All-Star game of that summer, he hit the tiebreaking 
homer and made a diving catch to win MVP honors.

"I don't pay any attention to sportswriters and jealous players who criticize me," he said at the time. 
"I know I got it."

He indeed had it, making fans laugh and cheer at the same time.

When asked once why he would not catch fly balls with two hands, he said, "My other hand might get 
in the way."

His fielding struggles became legendary the day he chased down a ball under a bullpen bench ... and 
came up throwing a white paper beer cup.

When it was determined he needed glasses, he put them on, looked in the clubhouse mirror and let out 
a shriek.

"Whadda ya know!" he shouted. "I'm colored!"

That first season with the Angels, Leon Wagner was their only African American player and remained 
their only prominent African American player during his three-year tenure.

During those days, it was more than a statistic, it was an unfair responsibility.

"During that time, for all African Americans in the sport, you had to walk around on needles," said Jim 
"Mudcat" Grant, longtime pitcher and Cleveland teammate of Wagner. "We were still fairly new to the 
sport, so you had to be perceived as a good guy. If you did anything out of whack, there was hell to pay."

Grant, who tried to help Wagner later in life, said his friend played the role.

"You had to have a certain resolve to make it back then," Grant said. "Leon did that as well as anybody."

He established himself in the Crenshaw corridor community. He opened a clothing store with the motto, 
"Get your rags from Daddy Wags."

And then, as quick as a quip, he was gone.

Traded, in the winter of 1963 to the Indians for first baseman Joe Adcock and pitcher Barry Latman.

Traded, even though he had more homers that season (26) than any other three Angels combined.

Traded, perhaps because he struggled at Dodger Stadium, which was the Angels' home. Or perhaps it was 
because he owed the team money when his clothing store failed. Or maybe General Manager Fred Haney 
was weary of his bluntness.

He ripped Haney, calling him "a sort of Khrushchev." He ripped Cleveland, claiming it wasn't even in the
 United States.  "Instead of trading me, he should have doubled my salary," he said of Haney.

Underneath hyperbole, there was a deep sense of betrayal.

Wagner thought he was putting on a good show for the organization, yet the Angels closed the curtain. 
He had finally found a home in south Los Angeles, and now the Angels were shipping him to the more 
intolerant Midwest.

He would talk about this trade for the rest of his life. Even in the end, wandering the streets, he would 
mumble his bitterness  "I don't think he ever got over being traded," Grant said. "That hurt him the most."

Based on the remainders of their careers, it was, indeed, a horrible deal.

Latman won 12 games and lost 24. Adcock hit 32 homers with 95 RBIs.

Wagner hit 98 homers, with 325 RBIs, and was named one of the Indians' top 100 players.

In the end, while walking through alleys of a town he once thought he could own, little could console him.

"He was a good man, but he had a grudge," said Lloyd Linzy, a retired health inspector who spoke with 
Wagner. "He had resentment. He would say the Angels were paragons of racial injustice."

Brian Breye remembers the first time he saw him; a tall, thinning guy walking aimlessly on the streets 
around Breye's Leimert Park Village museum.

"Somebody pointed him out to me," said Breye. "I said, 'That's Leon Wagner?'"

It was about 10 years ago. After three marriages and several failed ventures, this is where Leon Wagner 
ended up.

"I saw him sitting on the curb at 43rd and Leimert," said Ed MacDaniel, a local realtor. "I said, 'What are
you doing there?' He said he had no place to live. He said he owed people."

Wagner had retired in 1969, before free agency and big pensions. He retired without a college degree and 
without ever making more than about $50,000 a year, according to Grant.

Most important, like many African American players of that era, he retired without connections.

"You have to understand, a lot of us didn't know any CEOs or have friends in high places," said Grant, a 
former broadcaster who is now a musician and entrepreneur. "Some of us had to take menial jobs. Guys 
couldn't make any money.  They got depressed. They didn't feel good about themselves."

What Leon Wagner felt he had given the world, the world wasn't giving back. The feeling was as common 
among African American players of his era as aching knees.

"I've got a list as long as your leg of players in similar situations," said Johnson, who is on the board of 
directors of the Baseball Assistance Team, a group that helps former players and baseball employees in 
need. "Lots of us walk away from this and something doesn't click. Life is never the same, and we have 
a hard time with it."

MacDaniel set up Wagner in a couple of apartments, deducting rent from the monthly pension checks.

"But then he started doing drugs, and that was the end of it," MacDaniel said.

Wagner's two children tried to help but he wouldn't allow it. He drifted from apartment to apartment, being 
evicted because MacDaniel said he would blow the rent on drugs.

About eight years ago, Johnson heard that Wagner surfaced and began quietly visiting his old friend and 
arranging for funds from the BAT organization. At one point, he even brought him plane tickets and a 
reservation at a substance abuse center in Florida.

"But he never showed, he was in denial," said Johnson, a former drug and alcohol abuser who has been 
clean for more than 23 years. "Daddy Wags told me, 'I'm not like you.'"

When the Angels found him through a player search last spring, when he was still living in an apartment, 
they invited him to speak at a school, and he did well.

"He looked great," said Matt Bennett, the team's community development manager. "We had no idea of 
his situation."

But then, Daddy Wags was always good at putting on a show.

Few outside Leimert Park knew that, by then, he had moved into an abandoned Lincoln Continental 
donated by Breye.

Everyone knew what he was eating because old pizza boxes were stacked on the seats. Many still 
knew he was a baseball player because, amid all the trash and old L.A. Times sports sections that 
filled the windows, there was a baseball.

"He would take a broomstick and show me how he used to hit," Breye said. "He always kept his 
dignity."

Breye would continue to help him, allowing Wagner to wash in his sink as well as live in his car, but 
he knew things weren't getting better.

"I could see the pain and hurt in his face," he said.

Faadil Asadullah, who owns a Leimert Park Village clothing store, remembers the looks they would 
get when people saw them chatting about baseball.

"We'd be talking and people would come in and I'd say, 'Yeah, this guy was a major league player,' " 
Asadullah recalled. "And they would say, 'Yeah, right.'"

Asadullah said he understood why nobody believed.

"In the beginning, when I met him, he looked like a ballplayer," he said. "But in the end, he looked like 
just another homeless guy trying to survive."

In the end, a life of filled stadiums ended in a half-empty chapel, the laughter silenced, the cheers 
vanished, nobody around to joke about Daddy Wags and the beer cup.

"Baseball forgets about us, the public forgets about us," said Grant, who was in Florida working a 
fantasy camp. "Daddy Wags reminds us, we all have short arms today. We all need to reach down 
more than we are reaching."

The game may have forgotten Leon Wagner, but he never forgot the game. Discovered in the grime 
of his shed was one shiny white shoe, ready for a quick foot on a warm night, missing the lace, but 
filled with possibility. A baseball cleat.

 

 

Wagner's legacy can be traced to a smile       
Passing of former Indians slugger harks to a simpler time
By Terry Pluto / The Akron Beacon Journal – January 2004

I remember how he always caught fly balls with one hand and a huge smile.

 

How he wiggled his hips on every pitch and swung hard enough to knock off his batting helmet.

 

How he was a powerful left-handed batter who never saw a pitch he didn't think he could pull down

the right-field line.

 

When I heard that Leon Wagner died last week, I lost a little of my youth.

 

Wagner was 69.

 

I ask myself, ``How could Leon Wagner be 69?''

 

Then again, I'm 48.

 

Wagner was about as bald when he played for the Indians in the middle 1960s as I am today.

Not that I cared. He was ``Daddy Wags,'' because of that hip-wiggle swing and his last name

being Wagner.

 

As veteran Cleveland sports writer Hal Lebovitz said, ``Leon Wagner was everybody's buddy.''

 

A friend told me about waiting for autographs at the old Cleveland Stadium, right near the

clubhouse door. When Wagner came out, he picked my friend up, held him a mile in the air and

said, ``You want an autograph, sonny?'' and laughed. He returned my friend to earth, then signed

his scorecard.

 

My friend remembers feeling like he was walking on clouds -- for weeks after.

 

Like me, my friend is 48.

 

Back then, he was about 10, and for a moment, that memory makes him feel that way.

 

 

Going back in time

 

For those of us of a certain age who relish a certain time of Tribe baseball, Leon Wagner is right

next to Rocky Colavito in the minds of many of us.

 

As reader Jim Blackstock said in an e-mail: ``Leon Wagner was the one source of hope and

excitement, a hero to many of us. Whether it was a home run, a collision with Larry Brown or a

glimpse of Daddy Wags at the old Ascot race track (in Akron), he was fun.''

 

I read that and smiled.

 

I always smile when I think of Daddy Wags.

 

Granted, this is a Cleveland Indians thing, a middle-aged thing, a thing that won't make much

sense to many people.

 

It's why I find it so easy to remember the Tribe of the mid-1960s -- but not so fun from the next few

decades until the terrific teams of the 1990s.

 

It's why I can close my eyes and still see Rocky Colavito stretch at home plate by putting the bat

behind his shoulders, then pointing the barrel right at the pitcher -- much as Jim Thome does today.

 

It's why I still see little Vic Davalillo holding a bat longer than he was, stepping away from the

pitcher -- in the bucket, as my dad said -- as he swung.

 

I see Max Alvis crouched at third base for a ground ball.

 

I see Fred ``Wingy'' Whitfield at first, where his arm was so bad, every throw to second base needed

a good wind behind it to arrive on the fly.

 

I see them all: Joe Azcue, Duke Sims, Pedro Gonzalez, Larry Brown, Sam McDowell, Jack Kralick,

Chico Salmon, Sonny Siebert, Al Luplow and Jose Vidal. These were my boys of summer, and they

were lucky to play .500 ball.

 

 

Special childhood time

 

I really didn't care back then, because they were something for my dad and me to share at that

ballpark which is now as long gone and faded in memory as are those who once played there.

 

Wagner wasn't here for long.

 

He arrived in 1964, and promptly hit 31 homers with 100 RBI. That was the start of the era of the

pitcher, when 30 HR and 100 RBI really meant something. It was before small parks and big

muscles pumped up on steroids. It was a time of the high mound and a higher strike zone.

 

In 1964, the average player batted .247, the typical pitcher's earned-run average was 3.63 and

only Harmon Killebrew hit more than 40 homers in the American League.

 

Back then, hitting 25 homers meant something.

 

 

Sentimental feelings

 

As I write this, I realize I'm rambling.

 

But memories are like that.

 

I think of Leon Wagner and I think of my dad. The West 3rd Street Bridge. The Chief Wahoo sign

rotating on top of the stadium. The ballpark grass green and pure, and $2.50 box seats.

 

I think of lots of empty seats, Stadium Mustard, not always so-hot hot dogs and toilets that

overflowed.

 

I think of white home vest-type uniforms with red sleeves, red socks and a blue cap with a big red

C. And I think of a golf cart bringing in a reliever from the bullpen, behind the outfield fence.

 

I think of 1965, when Colavito came back to the Tribe. When Boston's Tony Conigliaro led the AL

with 32 homers, Daddy Wags fourth with 28, and Fred Whitfield and Colavito close by with 26.

That was as close to a Murderer's Row for any Tribe team of my youth.

 

Colavito led the league with 108 RBI, 93 walks and played all 162 games in right field without

committing an error.

 

Wagner was in left with style and flair, if not always laser-like attention. His one-handed catches

drew notice because it was so rare, a flashy, hot-dog play.

 

``Rocky has all the Italian and Polish fans sitting with him in right field,'' Wagner once said. ``I

have all the blacks and liberals with me in left.''

 

That sounded perfect for Daddy Wags, who once hit 56 homers in 1956 for the Danville Leafs of

the Class B Carolina League.

 

 

Fading away

 

Wagner played for Giants and Angels before coming to the Tribe in 1964, as he turned 30. Like

Colavito and most players of that era, he aged quickly. By the time he turned 34, his swing was

slow, his days with the Tribe numbered.

 

When many fans think of Leon Wagner, they think of how he put Larry Brown in the hospital.

That was May 4, 1966. The Indians were in Yankee Stadium. Roger Maris (a former Indian, which

figured) lifted a fly ball to short left field.

 

Brown was at shortstop. He recalled thinking that Wagner would never reach it.

 

``Wags may have called for it, but I doubt it because he never called for many balls,'' Brown told me

when I was writing The Curse of Rocky Colavito.

 

Brown didn't call for the ball, either.

 

Neither player saw the other coming.

 

``There was a sickening crack of heads all over the park,'' Bob Sudyk wrote in the old Cleveland

Press. ``They bounced 10 yards apart and lay motionless on the ground. A doctor jumped out of

the stands to aid Brown, who was in convulsions and bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth.''

 

Brown said he swallowed his tongue and that trainer Wally Bock, ``saved my life.''

 

He suffered a fractured nose, cheek and skull. He was in the hospital for 18 days, and really never

was the same player after that. Wagner was shaken up, but not injured.

 

That 1966 season was Wagner's last decent one with the Tribe, hitting .279 with 23 HR, 66 RBI.

He was out of baseball after the 1969 season.

 

Wagner lived in Los Angeles, and for a while owned a clothing store that advertised: Buy your rags

from Daddy Wags.

 

He tried acting, appearing in the movies Bingo Long and His Traveling All-Stars and Woman Under

the Influence, along with some bit parts in TV shows.

 

He then dropped out of the public eye, and the Indians were not able to contact him when he was

named one of their 100 greatest players a few years ago.

 

Now, he's dead.

 

But I'll always remember him and smile.