Billy Wagner says the Hall of Fame process is ‘a nightmare.’ But it offers a lesson for his high school team.

The Baseball Hall of Fame told Billy Wagner last January to watch TV and stay near a phone when the election results were announced. It finally seemed time for Wagner, the former Phillies closer who retired in 2010 with Atlanta, to be inducted.

Wagner instead spent that afternoon the way he usually does: coaching high school baseball. The former big-leaguer had batting practice to throw and ground balls to hit.

If Wagner was to make the Hall of Fame, he would find out on the field at the Miller School of Albemarle in Charlottesville, Va.

Camera crews soon arrived, shadowing Wagner as he moved around the field and hoping to capture the moment that eluded him for years. It was his ninth year on the ballot and it finally felt like Wagner was in. And then a reporter stopped practice to tell Wagner what happened.

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He again missed the Hall of Fame, falling short by just five votes.

“It’s been a nightmare,” said Wagner, 53. “Everyone wants to make the Hall of Fame and I’m no different.”

A player can remain on the ballot for 10 years, meaning that Wagner will be eliminated if he does not make it on Tuesday night. He then will have to be inducted by one of the Hall’s special committees, which meet every four years to determine the fate of players left behind by the baseball writers.

Wagner often tells his high school players about his 16-year career, citing examples for them on what to do and what not to do. But last January, he said, was the greatest lesson of all. They watched their coach miss the Hall of Fame.

“They saw the adversity in front of them,” Wagner said. “I couldn’t throw a fit, I couldn’t do these things. I just had to be under control. That’s the purpose of a coach. You have to tell them that you just have to keep moving forward. Sometimes, life is a tough gig.”

Wagner grew up in rural Virginia, a town so small that the addresses didn’t have box numbers.

“Everyone just wrote Tannersville,” Wagner said. “The mail service knows everyone there so they don’t even need a number.”

He was one of baseball’s elite closers, made seven All-Star games, and has a better ERA+ than any reliever in the Hall of Fame except Mariano Rivera. Wagner’s fastball touched triple digits before it was commonplace, he is one of eight pitchers to record 400 saves, and he has the highest strikeouts per nine innings (11.9) among all pitchers with at least 900 innings.

But Wagner’s path didn’t always appear to be pointed toward Cooperstown, N.Y.

His parents were teenagers when he was born and soon sent him to live with his aunt and uncle and eventually his grandparents. Wagner spent his summers as a teenager working on a farm, baling hay in the fields. He grew up in poverty near the base of the Appalachian Mountains, where reaching the major leagues was not even a thought, let alone a dream.

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“We were so blue collar in very rural Virginia,” he said. “So to think about pro baseball …”

Wagner’s path to the Hall of Fame likely traces back to the two times he broke his right arm, forcing him to improvise and throw lefthanded. But that path also connects to Lucian Peery, Wagner’s coach at Tazewell High who also made sure the fields were immaculate and provided much more to the kid with the rocky upbringing.

“He was steady and consistent and that’s what you’re looking for as a kid, someone who is consistent and not up-and-down,” Wagner said. “He made you feel special and you wanted to please him. He was always there to pat me on the back or kick me in the butt.”

Wagner moved on to Ferrum College, a small Division III school in the Appalachians where his older cousin went. By then, it was obvious that Wagner’s left arm was special. The small-town kid still wasn’t thinking about the majors. But that didn’t stop major league scouts from thinking about Wagner.

He became an All-American and set the Division III record for strikeouts (372 in 182⅓ innings) and the NCAA single-season record for strikeouts per nine innings (19.1 in 1992). Houston drafted him 12th overall in 1993 and then came to Tannersville to present his contract.

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“They wanted to negotiate,” Wagner said. “We’re paycheck to paycheck. No one even understands what money even looks like. The scout who signed me is wearing a cardigan and penny loafers. I don’t think we even owned suits. Our nicest stuff was probably a good T-shirt.”

A storm had just knocked out the power in the tiny town, so Wagner — who made $93 million over his career — signed his first professional contract with a Coleman lamp on the table.

“It was just fitting that my negotiations were like no one else,” he said. “It’s easy to look back and see how blessed I am just because of how far I’ve come. I tell my players now that there’s nothing impossible. You have to focus on your dream.”

Wagner was at home with friends in November of 2003 when a reporter called. The Astros, the reporter told him, had traded Wagner to the Phillies. He saved 44 games in 2003 and was an All-Star for the third time in five seasons. The guy who bounced around homes as a kid felt like he was being discarded again.

“It goes back to how I was brought up,” Wagner said. “You go out there and you’re doing well and you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, then all of a sudden you get traded for no apparent reason. As a young adult, those are things that catch you off-guard. I think you just need to be able to handle it in a different way.”

Bitter about being traded, Wagner said he came to Philadelphia frustrated and angry. He pitched well in his two seasons — “Probably the best two seasons of my career,” Wagner said — but he struggled to enjoy it, unable to shake the feelings from being traded.

“I was very immature when I was in Philadelphia,” Wagner said. “I wasn’t very good at shielding my emotions.”

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Wagner created a stir in June of 2005 when he said there were reasons to be hopeful about the struggling Phillies, but “anybody who says we have a clear shot to the playoffs right now is fooling themselves.” The players called a team meeting a few days later and Wagner didn’t back down. He was telling the truth, he said then.

Wagner became even more isolated from his teammates and finished the season before leaving for the rival Mets as a free agent. The Phillies missed the playoffs by a game and Wagner had blown a gut-wrenching save in September. It was a difficult way to end two challenging seasons.

“The things I hated were not being able to play in the playoffs,” he said. “Now I see how the fans in Philly react in the playoffs. My last year we were just a smidge away from having that team.

“But it gave me an opportunity for a coachable moment. I tell kids that no matter where you end up, you have to embrace it and enjoy it. I didn’t have that background. Now I use my experience to help my kids. I was the angry kid who was mad he got traded after the greatest season in Astros history. I wasn’t prepared for it. I should’ve handled it better.”

Wagner made his seventh All-Star Game in 2010, recorded 37 saves for Atlanta, and had the lowest ERA (1.43) of his career. He was 39 years old and showed no signs of slowing down. Wagner still had it.

But he walked away, deciding it was time for him to go home. His kids were teenagers and Wagner knew where he belonged.

“I was raised by multiple sets of people,” Wagner said. “I wanted to be there. I wanted to be there to have those conversations. I didn’t want to be on the road and have those conversations about things they’re going through or not even be able to have them. As a professional athlete, you become very selfish and self-consumed with what you have to do. You have to have that selfish commitment to do what you do. It’s something that I knew my family was way more important than one more save or one more year or more money.

“There’s a million ways to look at it. Could I have played another year or two? Yeah, probably. But there’s things that I felt were more important.”

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Wagner arrived at the Miller School in 2011, a year after retiring, to meet with the athletic director. A kid he knew was having trouble on the baseball team and Wagner wanted to know what was going on. The athletic director asked the former big leaguer if he thought he could do a better job.

Wagner came home and told his wife, Sarah, that he found a new gig as the head coach. It would only be a couple hours a week, he said. It would keep him busy in retirement. Instead, coaching became his life.

“Being type A, I’m there all day,” Wagner said. “It’s a full-time job with no pay. I took it as a sign from God that this was something that could help others and I could be an influence and say, ‘Hey, here’s some things I experienced. Good and bad. Here’s what you should do. Here’s what you shouldn’t do.’”

“What I get out of it is just helping someone else. I always think that it’s better to give than to receive. What I receive in return is them going and being successful. If I can help a young man or woman be successful in whatever, those are things that you look back and see what’s important.”

“What’s important isn’t the wins or losses. It’s not the number of games. It’s not the bells and whistles. It’s the relationships. You can have an impact on people. Then they call you from time to time for advice. Those are the things that are the reward to me.”

Wagner has coached kids who followed his path to pro ball like his son Will, a second baseman who debuted last season with the Blue Jays, and Ethan Chenault, a Phillies minor-league pitcher. He’s also coached kids who played their final game as high schoolers. He hopes he prepares them for whatever they do, aiming to be the kind of coach who influenced him in high school and made a kid from rural Virginia believe he could do anything.

On Tuesday, Wagner will be at baseball practice. And this might be the year his kids see him reach his dream.

“I don’t know if there’s even a phrase or word to describe how emotional I’ll be,” Wagner said. “It is the process of going through 10 years of good and bad, close and not close, the comments and non-comments. The things that are a part of it. You look back at 16 years of playing and doing everything you can, you hope you get to a point where you can get to that Game 7.

“This is like Game 7 for me in the World Series. It’s my 10th year. Hopefully, this is the breakthrough.”