Tazewell’s Billy Wagner

Commonwealth A… Mon, 02/05/2024 - 9:14am

Tazewell’s Billy Wagner remembers the people who helped him get to the big leagues

Perhaps Billy Wagner should have carried a map of Virginia with him in the Major Leagues.

Whenever one of baseball’s all-time great relief pitchers opened his mouth in the cosmopolitan world of the modern professional game, and that Southwest Virginia twang came out, Wagner knew what the follow-up question would be.

“Where are you from?” the reporters would ask, often with a hint of astonishment.

Tazewell County was an easy one to explain, Wagner said. It’s in the mountains they pull all that coal out of.

Read the full story from the Cardinal News HERE.