Leon Wagner Stats & Facts
Leon Wagner
Position: Leftfielder
Bats: Left • Throws: Right
6-1, 195lb (185cm, 88kg)
Born: May 13, 1934 in Chattanooga, TN
Died: January 3, 2004 in Los Angeles, CA
Buried: Cremated
School: Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL)
Debut: June 22, 1958 (11,553rd in major league history)
vs. PHI 1 AB, 0 H, 0 HR, 0 RBI, 0 SB
Last Game: October 2, 1969
vs. SDP 1 AB, 0 H, 0 HR, 0 RBI, 0 SB
Full Name: Leon Lamar Wagner
Nicknames: Daddy Wags
Played For
San Francisco Giants (1958-1959)
St. Louis Cardinals (1960)
Los Angeles Angels (1961-1963)
Cleveland Indians (1964-1968)
Chicago White Sox (1968)
San Francisco Giants (1969)
Awards and Honors
1962 ML AS MVP
Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1958
Vada Pinson
Ron Fairly
Tony Taylor
Orlando Cepeda
Norm Cash
Felipe Alou
Mudcat Grant
Frank Howard
Jerry Adair
All-Time Teammate Team
Coming Soon
Notable Events and Chronology
Biography
This colorful outfielder hit .317 with 13 home runs in 74 games as a Giants rookie to earn a spot on the TSN 1958 Rookie All-Star team. A powerful, lefthanded pull hitter, he finished third in the 1962 AL home run race when he hit 37 for the Angels. That summer he played in both All-Star games ; in the second contest he went 3-for-4, including a two-run HR off Art Mahaffey in the AL’s 9-4 win. As Cleveland’s left fielder from 1964 through 1967, he hit 97 HR. A respected pinch hitter, he led the AL with 46 appearances off the bench in 1968, splitting the season between the Indians and White Sox.
Wagner was a professional actor for several years and had a role in Bingo Long’s Traveling All Stars, a movie about a black barnstorming team. Always well-dressed, he owned a clothing store whose slogan was “Buy Your Rags at Daddy Wags.” @ET-DC@eyJkeW5hbWljIjp0cnVlLCJjb250ZW50IjoicG9zdF90YWdzIiwic2V0dGluZ3MiOnsiYmVmb3JlIjoiTGVhcm4gTW9yZSBhYm91dCB0aGUgdGVhbXMsIHBsYXllcnMsIGJhbGwgcGFya3MgYW5kIGV2ZW50cyB0aGF0IGhhcHBlbmVkIG9uIHRoaXMgZGF0ZSBpbiBoaXN0b3J5IC0gLSAtIC0gLSAtIC0gIiwiYWZ0ZXIiOiIiLCJsaW5rX3RvX3Rlcm1fcGFnZSI6Im9uIiwic2VwYXJhdG9yIjoiIHwgIiwiY2F0ZWdvcnlfdHlwZSI6InBvc3RfdGFnIn19@
Factoids, Quotes, Milestones and Odd Facts
Leon Wagner: Daddy Wags from – Can of Corn By Russell Wolinsky
Leon Lamar Wagner died on January 3 2004, at age 69 in Los Angeles. He died homeless, alone, and drug-addicted. Wagner died, admittedly, a bitter man; resentful of the way he had been treated by baseball, particularly after his playing days were over.
That being said, a celebration of the playing career of the man who called himself “Daddy Wags” is nevertheless in order. As the first black hero of the embryonic Los Angeles Angels, and later a star with the Cleveland Indians, few American League sluggers were feared more than Wagner during the 1960s. In a major league career that spanned 12 seasons, Leon clubbed 211 home runs. He also exuded an infectious happy-go-lucky attitude and sense of humor that led him to be dubbed, “The Good Humor Man.” This is the legacy of Wagner that should be celebrated and remembered.
Leon could always hit a baseball, and hit it hard. Despite an odd batting grip, hands about six inches apart on the bat, and an even odder stance, hunched over and almost on top of the plate, he was a natural power hitter. As far back as his high school days, in the Detroit suburb of Inkster, Wagner’s batting prowess raised eyebrows and attracted big-league scouts in droves. He was scouted by several clubs, eventually signing with the Giants (“I think you might have a better chance, being a colored boy, with the…Giants,” Wagner claims he was told by a Phillies scout). “He just walks up and whales the ball, it doesn’t matter much whose pitching,” enthused Giants promotion man, Gary Schumacher. For two consecutive seasons, 1955 and 1956, Daddy Wags led his minor league in both home runs and runs batted in. In ’56, he narrowly missed winning a Carolina League triple crown, being edged out by .010 in the batting average race to Curt Flood.
Called up to San Francisco in 1958, Wagner spent limited time in the Giants outfield during the next two seasons. Unable to crack a lineup that featured future Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Orlando Cepeda, as well as the three Alou brothers, he still managed a few thrills in the City by the Bay. Batting a cumulative .283 for the Giants, Daddy Wags enjoyed what was possibly his shining moment there when, on May 26 1959, he was called on by manager Bill Rigney to pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth inning of a game the arch-rival Dodgers led, 4-2. Allegedly being awoken from a nap in the dugout, Leon belted Art Fowler’s second pitch for a grand slam, game-winning home run.
With San Francisco, Wagner also gained another nickname. Noting the outfielder’s facial bone structure, particularly his high check bones (his maternal grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee), Giants trainer Frank Bowman began calling the handsome Wagner, “Cheeky.” It was a nickname that stuck throughout his career.
After a brief, unhappy stint with St.Louis in 1960, where Wagner thought he’d be replacing the immortal Stan Musial (who continued to play another four seasons) as the Redbirds’ left fielder, he re-emerged with the newly-minted Los Angeles Angels the following season. With the expansion Halos, Daddy Wags would finally play regularly and show what he could do if given a full season in the big leagues.
In 1961, Wagner’s star finally began to shine. His former manager at San Francisco, Bill Rigney, was now in charge of the expansion Los Angeles club. Remembering the slugging feats of the left-handed free swinger with the Giants, Rigney felt he had nothing to lose by signing Wagner and inserting him into the lineup. It was simply a case of Rig having nobody else better. “What a con man,” Wagner would later reminisce about the skipper, “I’ve never seen a man get so much out of a bunch of guys without much talent.”
Leon took full advantage of the opportunity, banging a team-leading 28 home runs to go along with 79 RBI and a .280 batting average. He also took advantage of the cozy dimensions of the team’s home park, Wrigley Field (345 feet to either power alley), slugging 19 of his dingers in this west coast version of the “friendly confines.” On September 28, against the fellow expansion Washington Senators, Leon hit a grand-slam homer, a pair of doubles, and a sacrifice fly, driving in eight runs that night. It’s a team record Daddy Wags still shares.
Despite the Angels’ move to the more spacious Dodger Stadium in 1962, Wagner nevertheless enjoyed his finest campaign with 37 homers and 107 RBI as the Halos shocked the baseball world and finished a strong third, winning 86 games. Wagner was a big reason for that success. He placed fourth in the league’s Most Valuable Player voting, and tied for third in home runs, although he led the Junior Circuit in that department for much of the summer. Wagner was named MVP of that year’s second All Star Game where he excelled both at bat (with three hits, including a home run) and in the field.
But irregardless of that shoestring catch off the bat of George Altman (who he played ball against during his time in the Army) in that ’62 game, Wagner was always considered a liability in the field, his glove work earning him yet another nickname, “Butcher,” and described by the media alternately as “erratic” (by gentler sportswriters) and “bizarre.” “He was an alien in the outfield. It was as if he were following fly balls with a broken compass,” wrote legendary columnist Jimmy Cannon. In the field, Wagner took the term “glove work” literally. Defying over one hundred years of baseball tradition, Leon insisted on catching everything hit his way one-handed, explaining, “I found out if you use two hands, the other hand just gets in the way.” Sometimes he changed his story. “I make one-handed catches in order to ease the fans’ minds while they are waiting for a fly ball to come down out of the sky.” Defensive about his defense, Cheeky always maintained, “I can develop to be just as good a fielder as Willie Mays, babe. I got all the tools.”
Still, left field was an adventure when Daddy Wags patrolled there. In the minors he once lost a ball under the bullpen bench and threw a paper cup into the infield instead (actually, his throwing was more of a sidearm fling). Leon was involved in two collisions with infielders on pop flies, both at Yankee Stadium, a ballpark that the left-handed pull hitter Wagner once claimed, “I might hit 90 [home runs] in if I played here.” One, in 1962, involved friend and Georgian Billy Moran (“Hey Billy, imagine me thinking I could knock down a [white] man from Georgia and get away with it,” Leon joked as they both got up, no worse for the wear). The second, and more serious, mishap occurred on May 4 1966. Wagner and Indians shortstop Larry Brown “hit head-on, banging skulls,” as Brown later recalled. “I swallowed my tongue…and was in intensive care and unconscious for three days.” Wagner got the “better” of the deal, suffering only a broken nose and slight concussion.
Leon also dabbled in both business and acting while in LA. His clothing store, on Crenshaw Boulevard in the Leimert Park section of town (where he would die), was more noted for its come-on phrase than for its merchandise. “Get your rags from Daddy Wags,” the endlessly self-promoting Wagner would plead to anyone within earshot. But he always complained about business. “I got lots of friends in LA, but they’re all nudists,” he moaned. Yet when “Lethal Leon” was traded to Cleveland, he managed to sell six ties to unwitting Tribe president Gabe Paul, who merely entered the shop to get Wagner’s signature on a 1964 Indians contract. Daddy Wags also had part interest in a record shop as well as several apartment complexes.
His acting career began with a small role in the pilot episode of the television series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. “I’m a good guy and carry a gun,” was the way Daddy Wags described his part in the popular 1960s spy series. He later appeared on the big screen as Billy Tidrow in the John Casavetes-directed film, A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and as Fat Sam Popper in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976), casting directors being drawn to Wagner’s “crazy-handsome face.”
1963 was his final season with the Angels. The off-season trade that sent Wagner to Cleveland hurt him badly, but the handwriting was on the wall. Los Angeles fell off their lofty ’62 pace, winning only 70 games and finishing in ninth place. Wagner hated hitting at cavernous Dodger Stadium, once commenting, “this place is so big, Autry ought to use it for a ranch.” During the ’63 campaign, he batted .50 points higher on the road than he did at home. He tried wearing eyeglasses, but that didn’t help (although it resulted in a great line. Daddy Wags, viewing himself in the mirror with spectacles, cried, “My God! I’m colored.”)
Angels brass were also wary of his seeming inability to hit either in the clutch or during the second half of the season. At the All-Star break in ’63, Daddy Wags was third in AL batting, at .330, with 20 home runs. In that season’s second half, he slugged only .332 (while batting .248) with a mere six home runs. A change of scenery just might work wonders for Wagner, both clubs thought, particularly to Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium, one of his favorite parks to hit in.
Wagner spent nearly five seasons with the Tribe, teaming up with slugger Rocky Colavito to form a power-packed lineup. “He’s [Colavito] got the Italians cheering in right field, and I’ve got the blacks and liberals in left,” he cracked. Daddy Wags remained a popular teammate with a gift for hyperbole. As first baseman Bob Chance explained, after listening to another of Leon’s ruminations on life to reporters, “It’s not that Daddy Wags doesn’t tell the truth. It’s just he embroiders it.”
But criticism of Wagner’s fielding and his inability to hit in the clutch were cited as major reasons for the Indians being unable to bring a pennant to the City of Lights. Wagner moved on to the White Sox, then briefly returned to the Giants (after teaming up with fellow good-hit-no-field legend Dick Stewart at AAA Phoenix) before ending his professional career as a player-coach with Hawaii in 1971.
When Leon Wagner first arrived with San Francisco in ’58, Major League Baseball had been integrated for eleven years. Yet there were still few black players in the majors. Daddy Wags’ self-effacing good nature eased what could have been a potentially difficult situation for him. He often became friendly with white, southern teammates like Billy Moran and Bob Chance but Wagner remained conscience, and proud of his race. Though he often joked, “pitchers are white supremacists, even the black ones,” he was serious about who he was. “I’m proud to be a Negro. I want them to know I’m proud,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1963. It’s a shame that this baseball pioneer’s last years had to be the way they were.
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