Athletes We Love to Hate: Billy Wagner

In the disastrous days following the Jose Mesa era, Billy Wagner came to Philadelphia touted as the savior of our much beleaguered bullpen. The Hardest Throwing Man in Baseball regularly topped 100mph on the radar gun, eliciting cheers from the crowd and making the 9th inning electric at the inaugural season of Citizens Bank Park. Wagner is the reason why the Phillies occupy the bottom of the bi-level bullpen in right field. The original design had the Phils on the upper level to be closer to the fans, but Wagner said that if a bench-clearing brawl ever broke out, he wanted to be the first on the field. Let’s not mince words here, we LOVED this guy. How could we not?

So what went wrong?

It started during the 2005 season when the Phillies were in a tight race for a Wild Card playoff berth. In July of that year, Wagner ripped his teammates, saying that they give up on the game if they’re down on the scoreboard. As a cherry on top, he said the Phillies, “ain’t got a chance” of making the playoffs. Incidentally, they finished one game behind Wagner’s old team, the Houston Astros for that playoff spot. Whether he had a point or not is moot; that’s the kind of stuff that shouldn’t leave a locker room. And it would have been forgivable if not for the fact that Wagner was pretty much just a jerk. The public outing of his teammates' apparent apathy was just a symptom of the overall riff between Wagner and the other 24 guys in the clubhouse. Pat Burrell had even called Wagner a “rat” during a team meeting. The chemistry of a team is a huge contributor to its success, and Wagner was undermining that. What’s more, he thought he was entitled to it because of his talent. He even conveniently forgot that not one of his teammates called HIM out after he blew a late-season save against the Astros that may have been the difference between October baseball or going home.

Long story short, Wagner left as a free agent… to the hated New York Mets.

The next season (2006) Wagner threw very well, garnering 40 saves with a 2.24 ERA. The Phillies replaced Wagner with Tom Gordon who ended up having an OK year in ’06 with 34 saves and a 3.34 ERA. Still, Flash didn’t bring the excitement or competitiveness of Wagner. The Phillies missed the playoffs again in 2006 while the Mets took the NL East.

This story does have a happy ending, though. Wagner’s penchant for blowing late-season games returned in 2007 when on August 30, he blew a save against the Phillies that completed a four-game series sweep and cost the Mets their own playoff berth as they finished one game behind Wagner’s old team. Sound familiar?

The chorus that once filled Citizens Bank Park when Billy Wagner threw a 100mph fastball now pales in comparison to the roar that’s heard any time he allows a hit off a Phillie’s bat. And it will just continue to get louder, because we just love to hate Billy Wagner.

Image Credit: Flickr user procsilas