Billy Pierce - Retirement

Retirement

Through the 1950s, Pierce generally spent the offseason helping his father run the family's Detroit pharmacy. He did not pursue a coaching career, even though a 1963 spring training poll of sportswriters had named him the top managerial prospect on the Giants. After leaving baseball, he was a Chicago White Sox television announcer/analyst in 1968, briefly a partner in Oldsmobile and Cadillac dealerships, a stockbroker, then worked as a sales and public relations representative for the Continental Envelope company from 1974 until retiring in 1997. He also worked as a White Sox scout, discovering 1983 Rookie of the Year Ron Kittle. The White Sox retired his number 19 in 1987; he is one of only eight players so honored. He was named to the Sox Team of the Century in 2000, and was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2003. On October 4, 2005, Pierce threw out the first pitch before Game 1 of the AL Division Series against the Red Sox (a 14–2 win), as the White Sox began the postseason which culminated in the 2005 World Series title – their first championship in 88 years. In 2006 he was inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame. On July 23, 2007, the White Sox unveiled a statue in Pierce's honor in the center field concourse of U.S. Cellular Field, joining likenesses of Charles Comiskey, Minnie Miñoso, Carlton Fisk, Luis Aparicio and Nellie Fox. Sculptors had borrowed photographs and measured his face, leading him to comment, "I don't know why; it isn't the same measurement it was in the '50s." Adding that he hoped statues of Hall of Fame shortstop Luke Appling and pitcher Ted Lyons – both stars of the 1930s and 1940s – might be added in the future, he nonetheless admitted his excitement over the honor, saying, "I think of it more, in times to come, when my grandkids go out to the park, they'll see it. It's going to be there for years." The book "Then Ozzie Said to Harold...": The Best Chicago White Sox Stories Ever Told, coauthored by Pierce, was published in March 2008.

Pierce married Gloria McCreadie, who he had dated since high school, on October 22, 1949, and they have three children, William Reed (born July 6, 1953), Patricia "Patti" (born October 4, 1955) and Robert Walter (born July 16, 1958). Pierce told one interviewer of his wife, "She's not only a loyal fan, but a smart one, and there was the day I had to go to Marty Marion – he was the White Sox manager then – and tell him that he'd better change our bunt sign because Gloria had stolen it, so very likely the opposition would be stealing it too." Although he had by then been traded to the Giants, following the 1962 season they relocated from Birmingham, Michigan to the southwest Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park. (For several years while he was with the White Sox, they had also maintained a summer residence in the south side's landmark Flamingo-on-the-Lake Apartments, where teammate Jim Rivera and his family also lived.) Currently, at 81, he is a member of the White Sox community relations department, making frequent public appearances in the Chicago area. In addition, since 1993 he has headed the not-for-profit Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities, a cause he began supporting after Nellie Fox's death in 1975 at age 47.