CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The road to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., began on the back roads of rural southwest Virginia, where “you had to get lost to find” and poverty ran rampant.
Before Billy Wagner became one of the greatest relief pitchers in baseball history and wealthy beyond his wildest dreams, he lived in a tiny, white-framed house off U.S. Route 16 in Marion, Va., at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in a section of town known by the locals as the “Brickyard.”