FERRUM, Va. — Roy Clark was at home when the phone rang one day during the summer of 1991.
Abe Naff, a longtime friend and the head baseball coach at Division III Ferrum College, had a hard-throwing, 5-foot-8 left-hander that he wanted the respected major-league scout to come watch.
“Bring your radar gun,” Naff told him.
Then an area scout for the Atlanta Braves, Clark drove 30 minutes to Ferrum College, which sits in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and found 19-year-old sophomore Billy Wagner raking the mounds in the left-field bullpen area.