Billy Gardner, our first local baseball legend, lives on as one of ‘us’
He made it to the bigs, Billy Gardner did, maybe the first of his kind from our corner of the world. A big leaguer. Our guy. And yet this local guy makes good story began and ended with the concept of “local guy.”
Billy Gardner was one of us. Forever and ever, amen.
“Even the day the Twins let him go,” Gardner's son, Billy Jr. was saying earlier this week from his home in Westlake, Ohio, “my dad said, ‘it's their decision. Now I get to go home. What could be better than going home?'”
Billy Gardner, a major leaguer with six different teams and manager of the Twins and Royals, died earlier this month. The man affectionately known as “Slick” was 96. Nobody else ever brought more acclaim to our little hamlets.
“My dad loved southeastern Connecticut and its people,” Gardner Jr. said. “He loved local gin mills, playing cards, solving the world's problems, a shot and a beer.”
Gardner, born in New London and raised in Waterford, made his big league debut with the New York Giants in 1954, the year the Giants won the World Series. He later played for the Orioles, Washington Senators, Twins, Yankees and Red Sox until he retired in 1963. Gardner finished 12th in the MVP voting in 1957 with the Orioles.
Gardner managed the Twins from 1981-85, nurturing the careers of Kent Hrbek, Kirby Puckett and Frank Viola, the backbones of two World Series champions. He later managed the Royals in 1987.
“A caring, great dad,” Gardner Jr. said. “Comfortable in his own skin. Never really let anything phase him. I remember when he was managing, he was able to lead the guys and play cards with them, too. He could talk to anybody.”
Gardner Jr., now a 20-year minor league manager (currently with Miami's Class A affiliate in Beloit, Ill.) grew up playing American Legion baseball for Jim O'Neill and the New
London teams that won by habit. His forays with dad mostly came when the Twins came to Fenway or Yankee Stadium.
“That's when we would catch up,” Gardner Jr. said. “It's an incredible childhood getting to walk out of the third base dugout and see Fenway, play catch with your dad on the field.”
And yet the real Billy Gardner was about when the games ended. In those days, major league players and managers weren't paid the gross national product of a small country.