By Mike Morsch

Executive Editor

The cover of Bill White’s new book. He will speak about it and do a book signing at the Days Inn in Horsham on Saturday, Jan. 14.

It may seem unusual to some that a former Major League baseball player and five-time all-star — who retired to a successful second career as a broadcaster with the New York Yankees and eventually became a high-level baseball executive as president of the National League — doesn’t pay much attention to baseball anymore.

But not to Bill White.

“I just don’t really watch much baseball today, but these guys are great athletes,” said the 78-year-old White. “I don’t think you’ll find too many athletes — including today’s players once they retire — that will go out to watch someone else play. They’ll go to oldtimers’ days or when they’re honored or if they have a business interest.

“But a guy who drives a bus ain’t gonna go sit on a bus. Teachers, when they retire, they find something else to do; they don’t go back to that school,” he said.

That doesn’t mean that White — who played for the Philadelphia Phillies from 1966 to 1968 and then was a reporter and sports anchor for WFIL-TV in Philadelphia until 1971, when he began an 18-year relationship with the Yankees as part of a legendary television and radio broadcast team that included Hall of Famer and Yankees legend Phil Rizzuto — has divested himself entirely of anything baseball.

He’s got a new book out called “Uppity: My Untold Story About the Games People Play,” and he’s going to help out some baseball friends at the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society in Hatboro with a book signing and autograph session from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 14, at the Days Inn in Horsham.

“A lot of people who know me said, ‘How in the hell did you remember all that stuff?’ But I think what I went through early in my life is hard to forget,” said White, who chronicles his struggles in the book as a young African American minor league ballplayer in a racially segregated South, where he faced bigotry from both fans and those “inside” baseball.

“It made me who I am today and gave me a toughness,” said White in a recent interview from Bucks County, where he lives today. “Obviously, it helped me get through three or four phases of my career — I went from playing down South as a 19-year-old to playing in the Major Leagues to broadcasting and then as an administrator. I think it made me realize that if I got through that, I could get through anything and be successful at it.”

White said that the book’s title, “Uppity,” which by today’s social standards is considered a derogatory term toward blacks, might not necessarily have been derogatory in the 1950s.

“People assume, I suppose, that they’re better than you when they call you ‘uppity.’ And I would call them assholes,” said White, long known in the baseball world for his candid outspokenness. “But I was probably too young to think about it then. I’ve talked to people — a lady who is not black — and she called her daughter ‘uppity.’ Sometimes when you use the word, it loses its negative connotation.

“The book was titled based on what one general manager called me,” he said. “Now whether he thought, ‘This black guy shouldn’t do this [White had asked to be traded] or not, I don’t know. Knowing his family and his history, I don’t think at the time for him it had a racial connotation.”

White’s playing career lasted from 1956 through 1969 — with two years out for military service — as a first baseman for the New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals and Phillies, where he was a six-time Gold Glove winner and five-time member of the National League All-Star team.

After his broadcasting career, he was president of the National League from 1989 to 1994. But he said he enjoyed his time as a broadcaster as much as any other part of his life in baseball.

“Phil [Rizzuto] and I had a lot of fun. We worked together for 18 years and it was a learning experience for me because I’d never done baseball. It was great to learn how to do something new and I worked pretty hard at it.”

And that’s White’s message for young people — to work hard.

“I tell all kids to work hard, but let’s not think that we still don’t have preferences,” he said. “We still do have that. It might be color, it might be nationality, it might be gender. Some kids are born into wealth and have a better shot at doing things.

“My point, though, is to hell with that. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do it,” said White.

For more information on White’s appearance at the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society event, go to the group’s website at www.philadelphiaathletics.org, visit its museum and gift shop at 6 N. York Road in Hatboro or call 215-323-9901.

‘Uppity’? Or just a damned good baseball man?