DUNEDIN — Billy Wardlow’s cellphone never stops ringing. At least it seems that way.
It comes with the job. As minor league equipment coordinator for the Toronto Blue Jays, Wardlow supplies the club’s Player Development Complex in Dunedin, home to a state-of-the-art rehab facility. He also supplies seven minor league teams, four in the United States, one in Canada and two in the Dominican Republic, and helps the major league club during spring training. It’s a wonder the phone holds up.
“I am in charge of all kinds of logistics,” Wardlow said, “from uniforms, bats, balls, everything from top to bottom. My focus is everywhere.”
With hundreds of players moving through the system each season, there is no such thing as a slow day. Now in his 27th season with the organization, Wardlow added another title earlier this year: equipment manager for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic.
Wardlow, who lives in north Tampa, always wanted a career in pro ball, maybe as a player or a coach. A fan of Braves second baseman Glenn Hubbard growing up, he played second base, third base and some outfield at Key West High School, Hillsborough Community College and the University of Tampa. He then became a graduate assistant coach at Tampa.
“I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and where things were,” Wardlow said. “I realized I wasn’t going to play pro ball and thought maybe coaching. Then there was a job opening with the Yankees, and I ended up in their spring training clubhouse in 1998.”
That Yankees team was loaded. With Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, David Cone, Darryl Strawberry and Joe Girardi on the roster and Joe Torre as manager, the 1998 Yankees won the first of three straight World Series titles. That run eventually reached five American League pennants in six seasons.
“It was wild,” Wardlow said. “I didn’t think I belonged there. It was crazy.”
After a stint with a Class A club, Wardlow spent 1999 with the Atlanta Braves’ farm club in Orlando, where he got a crash course in equipment management. Unsure of his status with the Braves for 2000, he started looking around after the season.
“I heard there was a job opening with the Blue Jays,” Wardlow said. “It was a different time. You didn’t have a computer or a cellphone. I had to go to a Kinko’s and fax my resume to Canada. I didn’t know if it would get there or not.”
It did. Toronto hired him in December 1999, and three days into the job he was on his way to Anaheim, California, for baseball’s annual winter meetings.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Wardlow said, laughing. “I didn’t have a computer. Everything I did for the first two years was with a pencil and 8 1/2-by-11-inch pieces of paper. Now you’ve got computers and cellphones — it’s all at your fingertips and on a screen.”
More than a quarter-century later, the calendar still has no offseason.
“My season never really ends,” Wardlow said. “I always say it starts the first week in December with the winter meetings, then you are getting ready for spring training and then the season. I am always ahead of the game in that I have ordered all my equipment for the next year by April or May.”
The World Baseball Classic squeezed this year’s schedule even tighter. And no matter how much planning goes in, the job is rarely smooth.
“You get those last-minute challenges,” he said. “Maybe it’s the weather up north, tariffs, logistics getting equipment to the Dominican — little things come up that need to be taken care of.”
Wardlow has looked into major league clubhouse jobs a few times. None worked out, and he’s fine with that.
“I am blessed and lucky to be with the Blue Jays,” said Wardlow, who oversees a staff of five or six over the course of a year. “I have seen plenty of changes; however, it’s always been a family atmosphere here, very close. It’s been an awesome experience and run with them. I’ve met a lot of great people and am still in touch with a lot of guys who made it to the majors.”
Another longtime friend is Blue Jays great George Bell, the 1987 American League MVP.
“People told me he was harsh, stubborn, but we got along,” Wardlow said. “I still help him every year with his fundraiser golf tournament.”
Over the years, Wardlow has watched plenty of players climb to the majors and plenty more fall short, can’t-miss prospects and long shots alike. He says he has always treated them the same, whether they were making a few dollars or a million.
As for that cellphone?
“I always have phone calls coming in,” he said, “from somewhere, somehow.”