"The Nine" - The great Royals teams of the '70s & '80s needed Willie Wilson and Frank White

In celebration of Black History Month, throughout February, teams across Minor League Baseball are taking a look back at five of the best Black players to suit up for their club. On February 1, the Jumbo Shrimp unveiled five of the best Black players to ever suit up for Jacksonville (Henry Aaron, Willie Wilson, Giancarlo Stanton, Frank White, Buck O'Neil), plus a legendary Negro leagues star with ties to the city (John Henry "Pop" Lloyd).

Here is a deeper look at Willie Wilson and Frank White, two of the best Black players in Jacksonville history.

Even now, the names still roll off the tongue so easily, like burnt ends from Arthur Bryant’s getting washed down with an ice-cold Boulevard brew. George Brett. Amos Otis. Willie Wilson. Frank White. Hal McRae. Dan Quisenberry. John Mayberry.

Anyone who pictures those great Kansas City Royals teams – and wow, were they great – from the 1970s and ‘80s can remember the audacious baserunning, the airtight defense and the winning. In those days, the Royals won. A lot.

In the 15 seasons from 1975-89, Kansas City earned six division titles, two American League pennants and the 1985 World Series championship. The Royals won at least 90 games eight times, finishing with a winning record in all but two full seasons (they were also 50-53 in the strike-shortened 1981 campaign.)

Over the 32 seasons since, the Royals, outside of the 2014 AL pennant and the 2015 World Series title, have mostly been not just bad, but atrocious. They’ve suffered 15 90-loss seasons, 10 times losing more than 95 games and six campaigns with at least 100 defeats. They’ve posted only six winning seasons, earning a division title just once.

In the minds of young fans, the Royals of the past three-plus decades have mostly been just a blip on the baseball horizon, a flyover for an easy series win. It’s the older fans who can recall the special style that stood out from cutting-edge roster construction of Kansas City’s winning days before then.

Perhaps most remarkably, on teams known for terrific defense, the Royals’ top two defensive players either did not even play a remotely similar position, or baseball at all, in high school. Wilson was a catcher at Summit High School in New Jersey. White attended Lincoln High School in Kansas City, which did not have a baseball team. White was only discovered post-graduation at a tryout for the Royals’ Baseball Academy.

With the Royals, the pair became known for the club’s bedrock stellar up-the-middle defense, with Wilson starring in center field and White anchoring second base.

Wilson had two idols growing up: Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Manny Sanguillen, which made Wilson want to play catcher at Summit, and Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers. Wilson’s football coach arranged for Sayers to visit Wilson in the hospital when Wilson was recovering from a foot injury. A part of championship teams in both baseball and football in high school, Wilson’s athletic prowess, at least partially inspired by his sports heroes, helped him earn an athletic scholarship to the University of Maryland.

However, after Kansas City used its first-round pick on Wilson in 1974, he opted to sign with the Royals for $90,000, using some of that money to pay off the bills that his single mother had accrued.

The Royals immediately moved Wilson to the outfield, where, learning a new position and facing more accomplished pitchers, he initially struggled. Still, despite posting a meager .663 OPS, Billy Scripture, his manager for the Rookie-level GCL Royals and later the skipper of the 1975-76 Jacksonville Suns, immediately recognized the type of talent Kansas City was trying to develop, telling reporters that “having Wilson in center field was like having four outfielders.”

After leading the Class A Midwest League in hits (132), setting a league record with 76 stolen bases and earning the circuit’s Player of the Year award while with Waterloo in 1975, Wilson moved up to Double-A Jacksonville for the 1976 season. Wilson hit .253/.309/.325 with the Suns and made his major league debut in September of that year. In 1977, Wilson converted to become a switch-hitter and played mostly with Triple-A Omaha before reaching the big leagues for good late in that campaign.

Wilson’s 19-year career was often breathtaking for fans to take in. He was a two-time All-Star, earned two Silver Slugger Awards and one Gold Glove Award, won the 1982 American League batting title (.332), set a league and club record in 1979 with 83 stolen bases and also set all-time Royals records with 612 steals and a preposterous 13 inside-the-park home runs.

After 15 seasons with Kansas City, Wilson ended his career in 1994 following two years apiece on the Oakland A’s and Chicago Cubs. He compiled 2,207 career hits and 46.1 bWAR, with his 668 career steals still ranking him 12th all-time in MLB history. A Royals icon, Wilson earned induction into the Royals Hall of Fame in 2000.

While Wilson was a first-round pick, with the Royals clearly seeing he had the potential for stardom, White was not drafted at all. Though White had wanted to play baseball, he simply did not think it was something he was good enough to get paid for as a professional. “I dreamed about it, but you dream about a lot of things that never happen,” he later said.

When Kansas City announced tryouts for the Royals’ Baseball Academy, a flagship program that sought to refine the skills of athletically-gifted prospects who had been neglected by other major league teams because they had not played much baseball in high school or college, White did not even plan to attend. He figured he would not be able to get off work, but Hall of Famer Hilton Smith, who coached his Safeway grocery sandlot team, and Bill Rowan, his high school science teacher and basketball coach, convinced White to find a way to attend.

On the first day of the tryout, White shined among the roughly 300 other applicants. However, with a wife and baby to support at home, he was crushed during the event when he overheard that the plan was to only send unmarried players to the Academy. White left the tryout thinking his baseball career was over.

Only then, something miraculous happened. While at his parents’ house, a limousine belonging to Royals owner Ewing Kauffman pulled up. The owner was not inside, but he had sent the limo so that he could speak with White on its car phone. Kauffman offered White a spot in the Academy and his wife a job in the camp’s ticket office so that the family could move and White could start a professional baseball career. White agreed to the offer.

As a graduate of the Royals’ Baseball Academy, White was one of eight players on the 1971 GCL Royals who had never played an inning of high school baseball. He spent time with both Class A San Jose and Double-A Jacksonville in 1972, slashing .252/.316/.318 with 13 stolen bases in 16 attempts over 91 games with the Suns. Sadly, though, he dealt with far more on his plate off the field than just simply learning how to play the game. As the only Black player with Jacksonville at the time, his teammates would bring him food and drinks while White remained on the bus at various stops to road games across the South. White often was not allowed in restaurants.

White moved back to the Midwest for the 1973 season to play for Omaha and made his major league debut later that season. He would spend the next 18 years at the keystone for Kansas City, earning eight Gold Glove Awards, five All-Star appearances and a Silver Slugger Award. White’s No. 20 was retired by the Royals in 1995, the same year he was inducted into the club’s Hall of Fame.

The honors and accolades tell quite the story for someone who didn’t even play baseball in high school. But it’s one thing to have a fairytale career and earn several accolades and awards. It’s another to do it with the utmost respect from your peers.

So then, how good was Frank White, according to his legendary teammate George Brett? “It`s like that song by Carly Simon,” Brett once said. “‘Nobody Does It Better.’”