Kid Heat. Billy The Kid. Wags. The press and the players hunted for a nickname for the canned heat that was Billy Wagner. He threw a precision fastball that approached 100 MPH. His deceptive slider looked an awful lot like a fastball, until it broke in front of the plate. Hitters looked out at the slender man glaring at them from the mound and, before he threw a pitch, they felt fear. With the exception of an injury-riddled 2000 season, he owned the ninth inning, and batters knew it.
Wagner's brand of dominance meant striking men out. As a sophomore in college he set an NCAA record with 19.1 strikeouts per nine innings and set the same record as a major-leaguer with a ratio of 14.4 in 1999. That season he set the Astros' high-water mark for saves in a season (39), while posting a miniscule 1.57 ERA.
But throwing with his kind of velocity took its toll. Warming up for a divisional playoff game in 1999, Wagner felt a twinge in his elbow. He rested the arm the following winter, but pitched ineffectively in 2000, missing the second half of the season as what had been diagnosed as tendinitis turned into a full-blown ligament tear. He watched helplessly as his Astros came apart that year (72-90), but Wagner returned to the pen in 2001 and rediscovered his twentieth-century form as the Astros rebounded to the top ranks of the National League.
Wagner is no stranger to physical pain. He found refuge from a difficult childhood in sports, and broke his right arm twice playing football, shattering it the second time. With his right arm in a cast, he began to throw left-handed. Today he still eats and writes with his right hand, but throws his bullets as a southpaw.
(EPW)
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FROM THE BASEBALL CHRONOLOGY
»August 28, 1993:
The Mets sign P Kirk Presley, their top pick in this year's amateur draft, for $960,000. The pitcher is a distant cousin of Elvis Presley. In 1999, Gerry Hunsicker will recall his decision to draft Presley: "I didn't make one of the brightest decisions of my career when I passed on a young pitcher out of Ferrum College [Billy Wagner] and chose another who never got out of A ball."
»February 3, 1999: The Astros avoided arbitration with P Billy Wagner by signing him to a 3–year contract worth $10.5 million. Wagner set a major league record with 14.55 SO/9 innings pitched in 1998 (minimum: 50 IP. Meanwhile, Kerry Wood set the major league record with 12.58 SO/9 IP for pitchers who qualified for the ERA title.).
»June 27, 2000:
Heavy medical news. Houston reliever Billy Wagner undergoes surgery to repair a partially torn flexor tendon and is out for the year. Pitchers Anaheim's Jason Dickson and Tampa Bay's Juan Guzman, undergoes arthroscopic surgery on their right shoulders and will miss the remainder of the season.
»July 22, 2001:
Shane Reynolds, Octavio Dotel, and Billy Wagner become the first Astros pitchers to throw a shutout at Enron Field as they combined to blank the Cubs, 3-0. It took 132 games before the home team calcimined an opponent at Enron, which opened on April 7, 2000. That shutout drought at a new facility tops the old record of 103 games set by the Colorado Rockies after moving into Coors Field in 1995. Last season, Astros hurlers threw only two shutouts, both on the road.
»July 28, 2001: In a day-night DH, Vinny Castilla of the Houston Astros became the 13th player this season to hit three home runs in a game when he does it against the Pittsburgh, but the Pirates still edge the Astros, 9–8, with an amazing comeback. Pittsburgh becomes only the 2nd team in NL history to win a game by scoring seven runs with two outs and nobody on base in the 9th inning. Brian Giles caps the scoring with a walk-off grand slam off Astros ace Billy Wagner to win it. The Cubs did it, against the Reds, in the first game of a doubleheader on June 29, 1952.
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