2026 Buck O’Neil Award Winner Bill White
As a player, broadcaster and executive, Bill White blazed trails throughout baseball.
And at each stop, White was an all-star performer.
White is the recipient of the John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award.
White, who as the National League’s president from 1989-94 was one of the highest ranking Black executives in all of sport, was born Jan. 28, 1934, in Lakewood, Fla., and raised in Warren, Ohio. White was signed by the New York Giants prior to the 1953 season off the campus of Hiram College. He planned on using the $2,500 from his Giants signing bonus to continue his pre-med studies at Hiram but quickly found success on the baseball diamond. In the minors, he helped desegregate several leagues, including the Carolina League in 1953 – where he became the league’s second Black player.
White made it to the big leagues with the Giants in 1956, served in the Army for most of the next two years and then was traded to the Cardinals before the 1959 season. In St. Louis that year, White was selected to the first of six consecutive All-Star teams. In 1960, he won the first of seven straight Gold Glove Awards at first base. And in 1964, White finished third in the National League MVP voting while leading the Cardinals to a World Series title.
He was traded to the Phillies following the 1965 season, then returned to the Cardinals in 1969 before retiring with a .286 career batting average, 202 home runs, four 100-RBI seasons and a total of eight All-Star Game selections.
In 1971, White joined the New York Yankees broadcasting team and called games with Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto for most of the next 18 seasons. White’s call of Bucky Dent’s home run in the 1978 one-game American League playoff remains one of the game’s most famous, and White also worked postseason games for ABC Sports during this time.
But in the spring of 1989, White was offered the job as the president of the National League – a job that was being vacated by Bart Giamatti, who would soon be named the commissioner of baseball.
But White later reconsidered.
“Bill had no choice but to accept that job,” said Hall of Famer and former teammate Bob Gibson. “Not for himself, but for other people.”
White presided over NL expansion – the Marlins and Rockies joined the league in 1993 – and the movement to unite the two leagues under one administrative umbrella. But by early 1994, White was ready to move on.
“I’ve been around (baseball) for a long time,” White said. “It’s given me a nice living, a nice home, five kids, four that finished college. It’s all through baseball. That’s why you want to protect it.”
