Six-time MLB All Star and former National League President Bill White was selected this week as the 2026 recipient of the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award.
The award, presented every three years, honors extraordinary efforts to enhance baseball’s positive impact on society.
As a player for 13 seasons, first coming up with the New York Giants in 1956, White was selected to six consecutive All-Star games, won seven straight Rawlings Gold Gloves as a first baseman, and in 1964 shared in a World Series championship with his St. Louis Cardinals teammates.
After his playing days, White ventured into broadcasting. For 18 seasons, from 1971–1988, he was an integral member of the New York Yankees TV and radio announcing roster. But it was in 1989 that White made MLB history when he was elected as the National League president.
In the spring of 1989, National League President Bart Giamatti left that office to become the game’s commissioner, and White was tapped as his replacement, becoming MLB’s highest-ranking black executive. He held that post through 1994, notably overseeing the National League’s 1993 expansion by two clubs: the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies.
Speaking with The Epoch Times on Tuesday by phone, White, 92, expressed his appreciation to the Baseball Hall of Fame board of directors for recognizing his years of service.
“It’s exciting. It’s wonderful that they remembered me. As a kid, I read about [O’Neil]. I followed Buck and the Negro Leagues, and when I met him, it was a great thrill for me.”
As the seventh recipient of the O’Neil award since its inception in 2008, White joins an exclusive class. Along with O’Neil as the first recipient, Roland Hemond, Joe Garagiola, Rachel Robinson, David Montgomery, and Carl Erskine have their names etched on the plaque next to the life-size bronze statue of O’Neil that rests on the baseball museum’s first floor, near the entrance.
Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Kaat (Class of 2022) called the honor well-deserved.
“I consider Bill my broadcast mentor,” Kaat said to The Epoch Times on Tuesday. “I got the Yankees job in 1986, and I worked with Bill and Scooter Rizzuto. He really gave me my foundation for my broadcast career. Bill’s a great friend and I’m so happy that he’s getting this recognition.”
George Grande, another Yankees broadcast alumnus and who co-hosted the first broadcast of SportsCenter on ESPN in 1979, also lauded White.
“He’s a special guy. Bill is someone who blessed the game of baseball for being part of it,” Grande told The Epoch Times on Tuesday when reached by phone at his Connecticut home.
Mirroring O’Neil’s integrity and dignity throughout his MLB career raised White to the NL presidency. Kaat said he felt White should have gone on to become baseball’s commissioner, but that the former first baseman nonetheless has the career credentials that should lead to election into the Hall of Fame as an executive.
“Bill should have been the commissioner because he had the playing ability, experience, he was a broadcast personality, and he was an executive. With his widespread knowledge, Bill would have made an effective commissioner,” Kaat said.
Prior to signing with the Giants in 1953, White was a pre-med student at Hiram College in Ohio. White planned to put the $2,500 signing bonus toward his education to become a doctor. But once he made his MLB debut in 1956, White’s full-time job on the diamond dashed any further thoughts of medical school.
Born in Lakewood, Florida, and raised in Warren, Ohio, White anticipates attending this summer’s Hall of Fame Weekend from July 24-27 with his family. The O’Neil award is presented in Cooperstown at the Alice Busch Opera Theater on July 25.