Fond memories: Fisher, retired voice of Penn State, goes back a long way with Pirates

He met Honus Wagner and saw Babe Ruth hit his last home runs

By Lou Prato
The Altoona Mirror
http://www.altoonamirror.com/
March 18, 2012

Fran Fisher, Penn State football's radio announcer, gazes at Beaver Stadium from the Press Box. (Collegian Photo / Timothy Gyves)


STATE COLLEGE - Two of the most memorable days in the history of the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field were on October 13, 1960 when Bill Mazeroski hit his dramatic game-winning home run in the ninth inning of the 1960 World Series and on May 25, 1935 when the legendary Babe Ruth hit the last three home runs of his career.

There is at least one dedicated Pirate fan in the region who not only witnessed those immortal home runs in the now extinct Oakland ballpark, but he also met the equally legendary Honus Wagner during Pirate batting practice when Wagner was an honorary coach around 1930.

The fan may not be as famous as those three Hall of Famers, but he is also well known in his own right. After all, Fran Fisher was "The Voice of Penn State football" for nearly 40 years.

"I was raised as a Pirate fan by my dad," Fisher, now 88, said as he gears up for another Pirates' season. "My father, Homer, was a devout Pirate fan, and the company he worked for was a box holder at Forbes Field, and he used to take me to games. I met Honus Wagner, and it came about in an unusual way."

The Fisher family then lived in Dormont, and Homer Fisher had became a friend of pitcher Wilbur Cooper, the best Pirate pitcher of his era (1912-1926) and a teammate of Wagner's until Wagner's retirement in 1917.

Homer was a pioneer in the building and constructing of the Memorial Park concept - cemeteries without tombstones - and as sales manager of a local company, he hired Cooper to sell cemetery plots after Cooper retired.

Cooper, who is still the Pirates' winningest pitcher in history with a 216-178 record, invited Homer and his young son to watch a Pirate batting practice.

"I think I was around 6 or 7," Fisher said, "and Wilbur Cooper suggested to my father that since I had become such a fan, it might be enjoyable to me and my father if he would take me to the Pirate dugout before the game to watch batting practice and maybe get some autographs. Wilbur arranged that, and we went to a game and sat right next to the water cooler, as Wilbur had suggested, because when the players finished batting practice, they always wanted a drink of water.

"We got there very early and prior to the start of batting practice, this old, bowlegged guy comes waddling over to the dugout and tousled my head like a guy would do with a youngster. When he walked away, my dad said, 'Do you know who that is?' and I said no, and he told me it was Honus Wagner.

"He was an honorary coach then ... as a PR thing. I've read recently that the Pirates hired him as an official coach in 1933, and reportedly he helped players with their batting and fielding, pitched a little batting practice and did some other little things. But was really still there for public relations, and he did that until he died [in 1955]."

In 1935, Fran Fisher had another brush with greatness. Homer and his son were sitting a couple of rows behind the Pirates' dugout along the first-base line for the final game of a three-game series against the Boston Braves. Along with most of the 10,000 other fans that Saturday afternoon, the Fishers were there to see Babe Ruth, who had been traded by the New York Yankees to the Braves in February. By that time, the Fisher family had moved to Greensburg, where Homer had created and owned the new Westmoreland County Memorial Park.

Everyone in baseball, including the fans, knew the great home run king was close to the end of his playing career. His skills had deteriorated, and he could hardly do anything but hit and trot slowly around the field.

Ruth was batting just .157 in 20 games, and had hit just his third home run of the season in the Braves' previous game at Chicago when Boston opened a three-game series with the Pirates on May 23. The Braves were in last place with an 8-18 record and the Pirates in fifth at 16-17. Forbes Field could seat up to 41,000, but attendance at each of the three games was estimated at about 10,000.

Fisher was 12 at the time, and he witnessed history.

"I remember he hit one into the lower deck, dropped it right over the right field screen, hit the second one into the second deck, and then hit his third one over the roof and clear out of the ball park, the first of only four guys in history to hit one clear out of Forbes Field," Fisher said with excitement still in his voice after what he had witnessed 77 years ago. "Those were his final home runs - 712, 713 and 714. He played just five games after that until he retired completely."

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Related: Lion broadcaster takes place among radio's elite -
http://www.collegian.psu.edu:8080/archive/1997/10/10-09-97tdc/10-09-97d03-006.htm

Day of the Dock

By Dan Epstein
Big Hair and Plastic Grass
http://www.bighairplasticgrass.com/
March 11, 2012

Dock Ellis would have been 67 today. The man died way too young, felled by cirrhosis of the liver in December 2008, but there's no question he lived his own life to the fullest and — despite his erratic behavior during his playing days — made a positive difference in a lot of other people's lives, both on and off the field.

Yes, he pitched a no-hitter on LSD (one of the most amazing feats in the history of sports, when you think about it), wore curlers in his hair in the bullpen, and once tried to bean the entire Reds lineup — to name the three things he's probably best known for — but Dock was no mere flake or fuck-up; there was an intense competitive streak and a pure cosmic embrace of existence lying behind so much of what he did. Dock's life was a huge inspiration to me, both as a writer and a person; I never had the opportunity to meet or interview him, but I tried to do him justice with this tribute I penned on my other blog, La Vie En Robe, in early 2009.

One of the interesting things that I wasn't really able to fit into Big Hair & Plastic Grass was Dock's relationship with Billy Martin. When the Pirates traded Dock to the Yankees in December '75 (pretty much as a throw-in on the deal that brought Ken Brett and Willie Randolph to New York in exchange for Doc Medich), most folks figured it was only a matter of time before the legendarily erratic hurler would clash with the legendarily volatile Yankee manager, but the two got on famously. Martin recognized and respected Dock's competitive fire, while Dock recognized and respected Martin's managerial savvy; Billy kept the New York press off Dock's back, and Dock responded by going 17-8 with a 3.19 ERA in 32 starts, despite only fanning 65 batters (as opposed to the 76 that he walked).

I spoke at length about Dock's time in pinstripes last month for No No: The Dockumentary, the forthcoming documentary on Dock's life and career; hopefully it'll make the final cut. But even if it doesn't, I've seen some of the other interviews and footage these guys have assembled for the project, and I can't wait to watch the whole thing. Dock may not have had Hall of Fame numbers, but he was definitely a Hall of Fame character, and someone infinitely worthy of an in-depth filmic salute.

He's also worthy of a truly awesome musical salute — and while I know some of you out there dig Todd Snider's "America's Favorite Pastime" and The S.F. Seals' "Dock Ellis," I don't think either song comes close to capturing his funky, firey spirit. To my mind, the perfect Dock Ellis tribute would involve hard-grooving Latin percussion (he grew up in LA, remember), some bad-ass wah-wah pedal action, and a screaming Eddie Hazel guitar lead, not to mention some lyrical bon mots from Dock himself, a la "We gonna get down. We gonna do the do. I'm going to hit these motherfuckers!"

Ah well, a man can dream, can't he? Until that comes to pass, I'm just gonna rock "Shaft" by Isaac Hayes, and sing "Dock!" in the chorus. He was a complicated man, after all... Rest in peace, Dock; you are truly missed in this country of baseball.

- Dan Epstein is an award-winning journalist who lives in Southern California. His first book, 20th Century Pop Culture, was published by Carlton Books in 1999. His latest book, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s, was published by Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Press in May 2010. He does his best writing in his bathrobe.

It Went All The Way!

And so did Pittsburgh's Pirates when Bill Mazeroski swung his bat and hit the ball over Forbes Field's distant left field wall. Yankee hopes were dead, the seventh game was over and the Pirates had won their first World Series in 35 years.

By Roy Terrell
Sports Illustrated
October 24, 1960
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/

Credit: Image by Corbis - Bettmann

In one of baseball's most exciting moments, Bill Mazerowski hit the 9th inning home run in the 7th game that defeated the New York Yankees for the 1960 world championship. In doing so, Mazeroski became the first player in World Series history to to hit a game ending home run in the seventh game.

AN UNFORGETTABLE FINISH FOR AN UNUSUAL SHOW

The 1960 World Series ended just a week ago, but the Great Debate it engendered is still raging everywhere except, possibly, on TV. The question: Did the Pirates win on their remarkable determination and higher over-all level of skill, or did the Yankees lose through an amazing sequence of mischances?

The answer to Part 1 of the question is yes, and the answer to Part 2 is no. Certainly the Pirates got some breaks (see opposite page), and they took advantage of them, as a good ball club will. But the Yankees got breaks, too. They had to face perhaps the best Pirate hitter, Bob Skinner, in only two games; he missed the others because of an injured thumb. Dick Groat, the National League batting champion, was still recovering from a broken wrist. If there was one bad hop in the Series, there were a dozen for each team, a fact Casey Stengel admitted after it was all over. If a Bill Skowron home run curved foul, so did one by Vernon Law. The Pirates had breaks, the Yankees had breaks, and breaks have a way of evening out.

Hardly anyone has mentioned what really happened: the Pittsburgh Pirates, playing the same kind of baseball they played all year, beat a New York Yankee team which was playing over its head. If anything, the Pirates were subpar. With a season-long team batting average of .276, they were able to hit only .256 in the Series—and that, more than anything else, is a tribute to the ability of Whitey Ford. The Pirates were shut out only four times all season—never by Warren Spahn or Lou Burdette, not by Don Drysdale or Sam Jones or Mike McCormick or Larry Jackson—yet Ford did it twice in two attempts.

Not once could a Pirate pitcher throw a complete game, not even Vernon Law, who completed 18 during the regular season, or Bob Friend, who completed 16. Law beat the Yankees twice in three tries and he made them look bad, but Law was pitching with an injured ankle and he needed help in all three games from Roy Face. What happened to Friend is anyone's guess; during the season he was as good a pitcher as Law, sometimes better, yet the Yankees drove him out three times. Vinegar Bend Mizell failed, too. Harvey Haddix pitched very well for six innings, which is the way Haddix pitches. As for Face, he saved three games, and the surprising thing is that he failed to save a fourth, for Roy Face is the best relief pitcher in the business. So the Pirate pitching was generally subpar, too. But the Pirates won in seven games.

During the 1960 season the Yankees batted .260. They set an American League home run record of 193, but only one Yankee hitter was over .300 ( Moose Skowron at .309), and not another was over .284. Yet in the World Series the Yankees hit .338 as a team. Elston Howard was .462, John Blanchard .455, Mickey Mantle .400, Skowron .375, Bobby Richardson .367, Tony Kubek .333, Yogi Berra .318. Richardson, in particular, was sensational. A .252 hitter with one home run and 26 runs batted in for the year, Richardson set records for runs batted in during a game (six) and during a Series (12). As a team the Yankees set records for most hits (91), most runs (55), most RBIs (54) and highest batting average. It was a spectacular performance, but if anyone thinks this is the way the Yankees play baseball all the time he has not seen much of them in the last two years.

Until the final game, it was a World Series lacking in many things. The three games which the Yankees won were so one-sided that pity for the Pirates was the predominant emotion; there was no suspense at all. If suspense existed in the three early Pirate victories, it was there merely because of an awareness of what the Yankee hitters might do, not because of what they did. The Yankees, once behind, seemed content to stay there.

There were only two stolen bases, both by the Pirates in the first inning of the first game. Bill Virdon's wonderful catches and a superb job at third base by Don Hoak supplied most of the fielding excitement; the two shortstops made a total of five errors, and the two fine second basemen had nothing but routine chances.

Then came the seventh game.

It was not a great game, in the sense that a no-hitter or a 2-1 victory in 11 innings is. In some ways it was not even a good game. There was only one error, which did not affect the outcome, but there were several bad plays by both infields, and the pitchers on both sides made far too many mistakes. Yet it was one of the memorable games of World Series history. The Pirates won 10-9, and no one who was there will ever forget it. For dramatic impact, for climax piled upon climax with never an anticlimactic moment, it was unique. There are many who say it was the most exciting baseball game ever played. Some say it was the most exciting game that ever will be played.

The Pirates were ahead 4-1 in the sixth inning when Danny Murtaugh decided to take Vernon Law out. Rocky Nelson had hit a two-run homer off Bob Turley in the first inning and Bill Virdon had singled to center off Bill Stafford. Bill Skowron homered in the fifth for New York. Now in the sixth Law had given up a single and a walk, and it was apparent with each pitch that his ankle was hurting. So Murtaugh patted Law on the shoulder, took the baseball from his hand and called in ElRoy Face.

But now the Yankees caught up with Face. Mantle singled, and a run scored. Berra, whipping his bat around in the strange, violent arc which has turned so many previous World Series games upside down, hit a tremendous fly ball, up, up into the upper deck in right field. The ball was fair by inches, and when it came down the Yankees were ahead 5-4.

In the eighth the Yankees scored twice again off Face on a walk to Berra, singles by Skowron and John Blanchard and a double by young Cletis Boyer into left field. The score was now 7-4, and this seemed to be the end. But the Pirates would never have been in the World Series in the first place if they did not specialize in coming from behind in the eighth and ninth innings. That is the way the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates won ball games all year.

Gino Cimoli batted for Face and singled into right field. Bill Virdon hit a hard, skipping ball down to shortstop and, on the Pirate bench, Danny Murtaugh saw the double play coming, and he winced. But as Kubek moved into position to field the ball, it took a last quick hop over his outstretched glove and hit him in the throat. Tony fell backwards to his right, the ball dropped six or eight feet to his left, toward second base, and by the time Richardson got there to pick it up both Cimoli and Virdon were safe.

Kubek went off to the dugout and into the hospital with a bruised larynx, and up came Groat with two men on base and no one out. Perhaps the bad hop was the key moment of the game, the big turning point. In any event, it was a tremendous break for the Pirates—and they exploited it.

Groat lined a hard single into left field, scoring Cimoli and knocking Bobby Shantz out of the game. Jim Coates came in to pitch. Skinner bunted the runners along. Nelson flied out. Clemente, swinging wildly at bad pitches, topped a weak dribbler down toward first base. Skowron was playing deep, and he was slow getting to the ball; when he finally picked it up and turned to throw to first, there was no one there. Coates had failed to cover, and whether the Yankees could have caught the flying Clemente or not, they never had the chance. If this was a break for the Pirates, and it was, the Yankees—not Fate—provided it. Virdon scored, and Groat went to third.

It was then that Hal Smith hit his home run. Not many people know much about Hal Smith. They confuse him with the other Hal Smith who catches for the Cardinals, and they forget that this Hal Smith won half a dozen games for the Pirates this year with home runs and that he hit .295 while sharing the catching job with Smoky Burgess over the season. Coates worked the count to two-and-two and then threw a good fast ball across the plate just below the belt. Hal Smith swung and the ball was gone. It went over the left field fence just to the left of the 406-foot sign, and Berra, who was playing out there, did not bother to chase it very-far. He knew it was gone, too.

This caused quite a bit of noise in Forbes Field. It lasted while Groat danced hilariously across the plate, and it grew louder as Clemente came leaping down the line like a kangaroo. It grew to an indescribable ear-splitting confusion of sound as Smith stomped on the plate too, a huge grin crinkling his face into a hundred happy lines that stretched back to Kansas City and Quincy and Ventura and Twin Falls and all the places in baseball where he has been.

This should have been the ball game, for here was Bob Friend ready to keep the Yankees down.

Not the seventh-day Yankees. Richardson singled, a little looper into left. Dale Long, batting for Kubek's replacement, Joe DeMaestri, singled hard into right, and Murtaugh took Friend out. Harvey Haddix got Maris to pop out, but then Mickey Mantle came through with a single into left center field which drove in Richardson and sent Long around to third. Stengel sent in McDougald to run for Long. It was then that the curious 1960 Series produced its most curious play.

Berra swung and hit a hard ground ball down the first base line. Nelson was there; he gloved it, picked it up and stepped on first base for the out. Then he straightened up, drew back his arm to throw down to second to complete the double play—and suddenly realized there was no reason to throw, for Mantle was standing within a few feet of him. Nelson is a good ballplayer, but Mantle is younger and his reflexes are quicker. He dived safely back into first base, eluding Nelson's frantic stab, and McDougald scored. The Yankees had tied up the game—and Pittsburgh, unable to believe that such a thing could happen, was stunned. Had Nelson tagged Mantle for the double play, the Series would have been over. Break or brilliance? Both.

When Bill Skowron ended the Yankee half of the ninth by grounding to Groat, Fate truly intervened. Fate's particular Pirate, Bill Mazeroski, came to bat. He had produced the deciding margin in two earlier Pirate victories, with a two-run homer in the first game, which Pittsburgh won 6-4, and a two-run double in the fifth game, which Pittsburgh won 5-2. He let one of Ralph Terry's fast balls go by. Then he hit the next one over the left field fence.

There was noise in Forbes Field then, too, and it went on for more than an hour. Mazeroski took off his cap and swung it around his head as he went leaping and frolicking around the bases. The fans spilled out of their seats and mobbed the Pirates, especially Mazeroski, who had to fight his way to home plate. A man ran out with a spade and dug up home plate, which may be hanging over some mantel in Pittsburgh right now.

Anyway, the pennant is in Pittsburgh, and the World Championship, too. It was fitting that the Pirates should win in the ninth and that they should come from behind. The only irony is that the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the New York Yankees with home runs, for the home run is a Yankee weapon, not theirs. But Pittsburgh is a good baseball team, and it makes use of what it has—pitching, defense, line drives to the opposite field. A bit more courage than most, a little more hunger. So why not home runs, too? The important thing is to save them for when they count. The Pirates had been saving those last three for 35 years.

A KEY MOMENT OF THE BIG GAME came in the Pirate eighth when Bill Virdon hit a hard ground ball to shortstop. It hopped off a spike cut in the infield (not a pebble) and struck Tony Kubek a wicked blow in the throat. Kubek went down, the ball bounced away and both Virdon and Gino Cimoli, the Pirate runner on first base, were safe. Down 7-4, the Pirates went on to score five runs in the inning on singles by Dick Groat and Roberto Clemente and the tremendous clutch home run by Hal Smith.


Find this article at:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1071904/index.htm

Memo From The Publisher

Sidney L. James
Sports Illustrated
October 24, 1960
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/

Danny Murtaugh and Bill Mazeroski celebrates the Pirates' championship.

There hardly can be a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED reader who does not know that we picked the Pirates to beat the Yankees—against the gamblers' odds and against the best advice of many readers themselves, bless 'em, who don't mind giving it. And hardly a man is now alive who doesn't know that the Pirates did that which we said they'd do.

For Pittsburgh's victory SPORTS ILLUSTRATED can take no credit. That belongs to the Pirates, along with all the cheers. But while the corks were popping last Thursday in a Forbes Field dressing room we raised a toast in our own office to Roy Terrell. In Pittsburgh at the time, he was spared a response, for which he no doubt is grateful, since he is that contradiction in terms, a modest Texan. He well deserved the toast, however. In the front line of our baseball coverage all season long, he drew a close bead on the Pirates in spring training and then kept it on them until Mazeroski drew his own on the last pitch of the season.

Here are some of the things he wrote in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED:

April 11 - "The Pirates are an unusually sound defensive team, with adequate speed and sharp, line-drive hitting. They are an extremely tough club to beat in a close game. They seldom scare an opposing pitcher to death but they give hardly anything away; they hang in there and eventually they beat you."

May 30 - "To play against them is torture. They protect the plate, they slice doubles into the opposite field, they bounce singles over your head off the hardest-packed infield in all baseball. And then along about the 27th inning they score a run somehow, and the ball game is over. So you go home and sleep a couple of hours and get up and have to face it all over again. It is very frustrating."

October 3 - "No one should count on seeing a seventh game; the Pirates will win in six, maybe even five—no matter what the bookmakers said. The Pirates have been ignoring the odds all year."

So Terrell, one might say, was wrong. It took the Pirates seven.

Of course we reserve the right to be wrong. We only hope that most of the time we're about as wrong as Roy Terrell.

Bill Mazeroski and the end of an era

Book review: 'Farewell to the Last Golden Era: The Yankees, The Pirates and the 1960 Baseball Season,' by Bill Morales. McFarland & Company, $29.95.

By John P. Rossi
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
Sunday, September 04, 2011

The phrase "Golden Era" is thrown around a great deal by baseball writers with the 1920s and 1950s usually granted that title. Now Bill Morales stakes a claim to that designation with his new book about the 1960 season, one dear to Pirates fans.

As Mr. Morales notes, 1960 was the last year before expansion changed the face of Major League Baseball. There were 16 teams in the majors, the same number when the modern era of baseball began in 1901.

By analyzing developments in 1960, he traces how baseball was changed forever against the background of two great pennant races -- the Pirates drive for their first National title in 33 years and Yankees' manager Casey Stengel's last hurrah.

To give his story greater context, Mr. Morales, a history professor at Bergen Community College in New Jersey, weaves in the story of the Continental League, the last innovation of baseball's one true genius, Branch Rickey.

In 1959, Mr. Rickey, along with a group of business moguls, sought to challenge the monopoly of professional baseball by founding a third major league. They failed, but their challenge directly led to the expansion of majors in 1961 and '62 with the addition of the New York Mets, the Houston Colts (now Astros), the Los Angeles Angels and the new Washington Senators after the original Senators moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Mr. Morales also shows how baseball failed to adapt to new ideas and technologies such as television in contrast to professional football. The newly organized American Football League secured a lucrative financial deal with ABC by selling its games as a package. The new commissioner of the National Football League, Pete Rozelle, adopted the plan, launching professional football on its path to riches.

Sprinkled throughout this story of the 1960 season are some interesting insights about the state of baseball. Mr. Morales points out how the ethnic and racial nature of the game truly reflected the state of the nation in 1960. For example, Latin players did not want to be lumped with African-Americans, who in turn recognized the cultural gap that separated them from their Caribbean counterparts.

However, the heart of the book revolves around the two pennant chases that season. The Yankees, who had fallen to fourth place in 1959 after winning 10 pennants in 11 years, rebounded. Led by Roger Maris, whom they plucked from Kansas City, the Yankees ran away with the American League pennant.

For Pirate fans, 1960 was a dream season when a group of Pirate unknown scrappers led by Don Hoak, Dick Groat, Bill Mazeroski, Roberto Clemente, Vern Law and Elroy Face came out of nowhere to cop a pennant.

Picked no better than fourth, they dispatched such powerful rivals as the Milwaukee Braves, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, in the process turning Pittsburgh into a baseball-mad town. Unlike the Yankees, the Pirates started off fast but struggled toward the end of the season.

Mr. Morales concludes his book with a detailed analysis of the 1960 World Series. Behind Mazeroski's dramatic series-winning homer, the Pirates outlasted a superior Yankees team that outscored them 55 to 27. Perhaps Yogi Berra summed up what happened best: "We just got beat by the craziest team that ever played baseball."

John P. Rossi, professor emeritus of history at La Salle University, is the author of three baseball books.

The Pirates made history, statement in 1971

By Bob Cohn, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/?_s_icmp=nav_sports
Thursday, September 1, 2011

Back Row: Jim Nelson, Milt May, Bob Moose, Nelson Briles, Jim "Mudcat" Grant, Bob Veale, Bob Johnston, Dock Ellis, Bob Robertson, Richie Hebner, Roberto Clemente
Middle Row: Team Physician Dr Joseph Finegold, Trainer Tony Bartirome, Bill Mazeroski, Jackie Hernandez, Dave Cash, Gene Alley, Gene Clines, Willie Stargell, Dave Giusti, Al Oliver, Luke Walker, Charlie Sands, Traveling Secretary John Fitzpatrick, Equipment Manager John Hallahan
Front Row: Vic Davalillo, Jose Pagan, Coach Bill Virdon, Coach Don Leppert, Coach Frank Oceak, Manager Danny Murtaugh, Coach Don Osborn, Coach Dave Ricketts, Steve Blass, Manny Sanguillen

When he reported to Salem, Va., in 1966 for his first season of professional baseball, Gene Clines lived with seven other black Pirates minor leaguers in a house owned by a black woman known simply as Mrs. Johnson. The white players stayed in a hotel.

Only five years later, Clines played center field for the Pirates in a game against Philadelphia at Three Rivers Stadium. Every Pirates' starter, including Clines, was black or Latino. Such an event had never been recorded in Major League Baseball.

This was 40 years ago Thursday, Sept. 1, 1971. The Pirates were en route to winning the World Series, and the world was changing. Fast.

"You feel proud of being part of it," Clines said. "But it wasn't until a couple of years later you could sit back and think about what really, really happened."

Among Clines' young teammates sharing Mrs. Johnson's house was Dave Cash, who started at third base in that game.

"It was something for the ages," he said.

First baseman Bob Robertson hit 26 home runs during the Pirates' championship season and would have been the only white starter. But he was unexpectedly benched by manager Danny Murtaugh.

Robertson's initial disappointment would be superseded by the larger moment.

"I thought it was good for baseball. I thought it was good for the Pirates and something for the black and Latin players to be very proud of," he said.

Another everyday white starter, third baseman Richie Hebner, missed the game because of injury. Most of the Pirates pitchers were white, but not the starter that day, Dock Ellis. The rest of the lineup included catcher Manny Sanguillen, shortstop Jackie Hernandez and Pirates' legends Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell in right and left fields.

"At the time I don't think it drew a lot of attention, and people didn't make much of it," said local historian and author Rob Ruck, whose latest book, "Raceball," explores the issues inherent in the title. "Looking back, it was one of those watershed moments."

The Latino presence in professional baseball has since soared, but participation by blacks has dwindled. At the start of the 2011 season, blacks comprised 8.5 percent of big league rosters compared to 27 percent in 1975.

No clue

The historic outcome hinged on Robertson's benching. He was replaced at first base by Al Oliver, who played mostly in center field, and it didn't quite make sense. Robertson hit right-handed. The Phillies' pitcher, ex-Pirate Woodie Fryman, was a lefty. Oliver was a left-handed swinger who hit .227 against Fryman during his career.

But it made sense to Murtaugh. "Danny managed by his gut," former pitcher Steve Blass said.

Sure enough, Oliver doubled in the first inning during a five-run outburst, sending Fryman to an early exit in what would be a 10-7 Pirates victory. Ellis, meanwhile, lasted just 11/3 innings.

Robertson laughed at past speculation that Murtaugh might have been sending him a "message." Accounts of the game are scant because the two major local newspapers were on strike. No one but Murtaugh, who died in 1976, seemed to know why Oliver started at first base.

"I have no clue," Oliver said.

"I never asked Danny," Robertson said. "I had a wonderful relationship with him, and I never questioned him."

They could all play

It was no surprise or accident the Pirates made this kind of history. Their general manager in the early 1950s, Branch Rickey, became a towering figure for signing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Under Rickey, the Pirates got Clemente in the 1954 Rule 5 draft. Joe L. Brown replaced Rickey the next year and added more minorities.

In 1967, the Pirates started eight minorities, but the pitcher, Dennis Ribant, was white.

"(Joe) signed the best players he could possibly find, regardless of what color they were," said Oliver, who is from Portsmouth, Ohio, the same hometown as Rickey. "My first spring in 1965, there were four or five fields, and it was unbelievable to me how many black and Latin players were in our organization. And they could all play. I could have got lost in the shuffle myself."

Before playing the Phillies, some of the players noticed what was going on from the posted lineup card. Oliver said he had no idea until early in the game, when he turned to Cash and said something to the effect of, "Hey, we got all brothers out here!" (The line is attributed to Cash in some accounts, but Cash said it was Oliver's).

Clines said he heard a batboy say, "The Homestead Grays are playing tonight," referring to the famous Negro League team. He said he was thinking about the statement when it finally struck him while standing in the outfield. "Oh, wow," he thought.

By game's end, everyone was aware. Murtaugh was quoted as insisting he was not aware of starting nine minorities, nor did he care.

"He was a very intelligent man, and on some level he probably realized there weren't any white guys out there, but it didn't matter," said his son, Tim Murtaugh. "He was trying to do what was best for the team to win the game that day."

This was no gimmick: The Pirates had talented stars and solid role players, and race mattered little, if at all. The loud, unruly and supremely confident clubhouse was ruled mainly by future Hall of Famers Clemente and Stargell, a Puerto Rican and a black American. The Pirates beat San Francisco in the playoffs and defeated Baltimore in seven games in the World Series.

In a time of wrenching social, cultural and political change and just two years after man first walked on the moon, Sept. 1, 1971 provided a giant leap for sport but one small step for a ballclub with a single agenda.

"The objective centered on winning," Cash said. "It wasn't the color of your skin. It was your productivity."

Making history

Here is the Pirates' starting lineup on Sept. 1, 1971. It is considered the first time a Major League Baseball team started an all-minority lineup.

Rennie Stennett, 2B

Gene Clines, CF

Roberto Clemente, RF

Willie Stargell, LF

Manny Sanguillen, C

Dave Cash, 3B

Al Oliver, 1B

Jackie Hernandez, SS

Dock Ellis, P

Stargell to appear on postage stamp

Pirates great could really carry the mail

Friday, August 26, 2011
By Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/

Margaret Stargell has known for a while that a likeness of her late husband, the Pirates' Hall of Fame slugger Willie Stargell, would be on a postage stamp; the rest of us found out Thursday.

Having once compared hitting Sandy Koufax to "drinking coffee with a fork," Mr. Stargell would probably greet the news with a humor.

"I'm sure he would make some comment about how the envelope might not get to its destination if he's on it," she said from her home in Wilmington, N.C. "He would have fun with it but would clearly be honored."

The U.S. Postal Service chose Mr. Stargell as one of four baseball greats to appear on an All-Star set of new stamps to be issued next summer. Yankees great Joe DiMaggio and Larry Doby, the second black player to play in the major leagues, for the Cleveland Indians, were chosen first; the fourth is a player to be named later.

Stephen Kearney, executive director of stamp services for the U.S. Postal Service, offered this hint to figuring out his identity: The four players are being announced in alphabetical order.

The Pirates' slugger, who died at age 61 on the day PNC Park opened in 2001, was the captain of the 1979 "Lumber Company" team that won Pittsburgh's most recent World Series. He played his entire 20-year career as a Pirate, the latter years with the nickname "Pops."

The likeness of Mr. Stargell, in a batting stance wearing the sun-gold jersey of the late '70s, will travel on mail as a "forever" stamp -- one you can use without adding to it if the cost of stamps goes up.

"I love it," said Ms. Stargell, from whom the postal service got permission. "I think it's Willie. It's vibrant. He comes to life on that.

"It is an extraordinary honor for an extraordinary human being. To know he will be on a forever stamp to be remembered for years to come is overwhelming, and it warms my heart."

Steve Blass, whose entire Pirates' pitching career was played with Mr. Stargell as a teammate, was elated.

"Willie Stargell getting a stamp," he said. "I love it. I'm so glad to hear it, and I wish Willie was here and we could have a glass of wine together. He goes beyond just being a great ball player."

Mr. Blass said that when his good control on the mound went so inexplicably south in 1973, "I don't know of anyone who stood any taller for me than Willie."

Mr. Kearney said Mr. Stargell's inclusion in the stamp group was recommended by the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, a group that reviews 40,000 suggestions a year for new stamps.

Fans reacted on the Post-Gazette's Facebook page Thursday when the news broke.

"Pops was one of a kind!" Heidi Miller commented. "His star will always shine brightly in Pittsburgh ... glad the entire country will soon honor him too!"

Chauncey Ross wrote, "Pops has done it!"

Mr. Kearney said the postal service plans a Hall of Fame weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y., when the stamps are issued and to hold individual promotions with each of the teams whose player is being honored.

Mr. Stargell is only the second Pirates star to appear on a postage stamp.

Roberto Clemente was honored on a stamp in 1984, when they cost 20 cents for the first ounce, and again in 2000 as part of the "Legends of Baseball" series. The rate is now 44 cents.

The Major League Baseball All Star stamp set will be issued in July 2012.

Artist/illustrator Kadir Nelson of Los Angeles based his artwork on historic photographs of the four players.

Mark Saunders, a spokesman for the postal service, said commemorative stamps such as these are issued "to engage more interest in stamp collecting."

The stamps are shown on Facebook at www.facebook.com/USPSStamps, through Twitter @USPSstamps or at http://beyondtheperf.com/2012-preview. Beyond the Perf is the Postal Service's site for philatelic news.

Diana Nelson Jones: djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. Read her blog City Walkabout at www.post-gazette.com/citywalk.



Stargell honored on 2012 All-Star stamp set

By Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/?_s_icmp=nav_sports
Friday, August 26, 2011

Pirates legend Willie "Pops" Stargell, who intimidated opposing pitchers by swinging a sledgehammer, will be immortalized on a "Forever" postage stamp in 2012.

"It's an extraordinary honor for an extraordinary human being," said Stargell's widow, Margaret, 52, of New Bern, N.C. "I know Willie would be very humbled."

Stargell died in 2001 at age 61. The stamp will be part of the Postal Service's Major League Baseball All-Star Stamp set.

The slugger, who played 21 seasons from 1962 to 1982, led the 1979 "We Are Family" Pirates to a World Series championship and hit 475 career home runs. He pounded 2,232 career hits and twice led the National League in home runs -- 48 in 1971 and 44 in 1973. Baseball's Hall of Fame inducted him in 1988.

He joins Joe DiMaggio, one of the game's most graceful athletes, and Larry Doby, the American League's first black player, in the All-Star set. The postal service will announce a fourth stamp on Sept. 2. Los Angeles artist Kadir Nelson based their designs on historic photos.

The Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee recommended the players to Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe, a Pittsburgh native, said Stephen Kearney, executive director of stamp services. The committee gets 40,000 suggestions a year and "made a judgment call, just like an umpire," he said. "Willie earned it."

Pirates fan Joe Landolina, 53, of Squirrel Hill counts Stargell, with his windmill-style batter's windup, as his all-time favorite player.

"Some pitchers used to try to quick-pitch him in the middle of that swing and the next thing you know, they'd be turning their necks to watch (the ball) go over the wall," he said.

Out of Left Field

By Dan Epstein
http://www.bighairplasticgrass.com/
August 10, 2011

While doing the research for Big Hair & Plastic Grass, I combed through hundreds of books and periodicals from the era, but one book somehow eluded me — Bob Adelman and Susan Hall's Out Of Left Field: Willie Stargell and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Long out of print, I recently found a used hardcover copy of the 1976 first edition via Amazon; and while there isn't much in there that would have appreciably changed the content of my book, it is a really fascinating read, and one I highly recommend to fans of the era, if you can find it.

Adelman and Hall had the sort of access to Stargell and the Pirates that you would never imagine today, especially considering that they were working on an "unauthorized" book. They followed the team for the entire '73 season, a tumultuous and frustrating campaign that saw the Bucs struggling to adjust to the sudden loss of their leader, Roberto Clemente, and to the equally sudden meltdown of former ace Steve Blass. Manager Bill Virdon was eventually fired with a month left to go in the season, but all new/old manager Danny Murtaugh could coax out of the team was a .500 September and a disappointing third-place finish behind the Mets and the Cardinals.

Out of Left Field paints a surprisingly intimate portrait of this lost season, with many of the players (Stargell, Richie Zisk, Manny Sanguillen, Richie Hebner, Al Oliver, Dock Ellis) offering surprisingly frank assessments of their lives and their team that go well beyond the usual clichés and platitudes. While Adelman and Hall offer little in the way of historical context, and many of their photos are frustratingly un-captioned — and if my lack of SABR-style number-crunching in BH&PG pissed you off, you're really gonna hate this book — they do a great job of getting out of the way and let the players tell their story.

The book includes groupie tales and other snapshots of life on the road, as well as an ongoing discussion of racism, both in the game and within the context of the team. Most interesting to me is the assertion from several players that racism played a role in the team's attempted move of Sanguillen — a highly respected catcher — to right field in the wake of Clemente's death. The black and Latin players interviewed, for the most part, seem to think that the move was motivated by the front office's desire to add more white players to the lineup: therefore, instead of putting the speedy Gene Clines in right field, Pirates management put Sangy out there and brought (the white) Milt May in to catch, because white Pittsburgh fans aren't down with a mostly-minority lineup. Management, of course, denies that this is remotely the case... but eventually, Sangy's ineptitude in right (and his potent bat) will help him reclaim his rightful position behind the plate. Even so, Clines will lose the right field position to a young Polish slugger named Richie Zisk...

Of course, Bob Adelman's photos tell a story all their own. The book contains over a hundred beautiful black and white shots of the players on and off the field, and I've scanned a few of my favorites:

Here's pitcher Nelson Briles, who led the team's starters that year with 14 victories and a 2.85 ERA — and who talks in the book about pursuing a full-time entertainment career once his playing days are over — working on a song in the clubhouse.

Here's Al Oliver and his wife, lookin' fly and preparing for a night on the town.

Here's Dock Ellis, lookin' cool as he heckles an umpire from the dugout.

Here's Pops himself, gettin' down with some funky friends during a party at his house.

And my personal favorite: A fantastic Dock-in-curlers shot that I'd never seen before...

Somewhat controversial in its day — "Passages about some team-mates might make Ball Four read like a nursery rhyme," commented the New York Times at the time — Out of Left Field isn't so shocking now, but it is a beautifully-observed time capsule from a complex era. It would be lovely to see it come back into print again.

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Another Look: Lanny Frattare

By Bob Barrickman
Beaver County Times
http://www.timesonline.com/sports/
August 9, 2011

Pirates play-by-play man Lanny Frattare (right) shares the booth in 2003 with color commentator and former Pirates pitcher Steve Blass.(Tribune-Review file)

Three years after stepping aside as the voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Lanny Frattare is ready to begin his second year calling high school sports for the MSA Sports Network.

"I just love broadcasting high school sports," Frattare, 63, said.

Frattare recalled a conversation he had two years ago with Don Rebel, the operations manager for MSA Sports, an internet outlet that primarily broadcasts sports in the WPIAL.

"Don asked me if I'd be interested in working for MSA. I said, yes," Frattare said. "He asked me the same question months later because I wasn't sure if he thought I was serious. I told Don I really was and I started doing games last year. When I broadcasted a (WPIAL football) playoff game last November, it was the first playoff game of any kind that I did since Sid Bream touched home plate."

That was in 1992 when Frattare saw Bream score the winning run for the Atlanta Braves against the Pirates in Game 7 of the NLCS. Shortly after Frattare left the Pirates booth, he became the assistant professor of communications at Waynesburg University. He teaches four courses in sports announcing and public speaking and also serves as faculty advisor for the campus radio station.

A native of Rochester, N.Y., Frattare broadcasted games for the Pirates AAA affiliate in Charleston, W. Va., in the early 1970's. When the legendary Bob Prince and broadcast partner Nellie King were let go after the 1975 season, Frattare and Milo Hamilton (pictured below) were hired to replace them calling Pirates broadcasts.

The Bucs won the World Series in 1979 but since the Pirates didn't control the local broadcast rights at the time, Frattare and Hamilton were shut out of calling the Series that year. Hamilton left after '79 and a couple years later, Frattare, having called the basketball game in 1985 on ESPN when Indiana coach Bobby Knight threw a chair across the court, assumed the lead role on Pirate broadcasts.

Frattare announced more than 5,000 Pirate games in 33 years, both being highest in the history of team broadcasters. There were two games in 1990 that stood out above all for Frattare.

"When Doug Drabek came within one out of a perfect game against the Phillies was probably the best call of a game I ever did," he said. "The other game was when the Pirates clinched the NL East title in St. Louis. I was so happy for (manager) Jim Leyland."

With the local broadcast rights changed, Frattare came within an out of calling his first World Series. But, the Bucs couldn't hold a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 as Bream's run gave Atlanta a 3-2 victory.

"I wasn't so disappointed for myself as I was for Jim Leyland," said Frattare, twice divorced and now living in Collier Township. He has a son, David, 37 and a daughter, Megan, 29. Frattare's catch phrase was "No doubt about it" following a Pirate win. Frattare didn't get to say that phrase too often in his final 16 years.

"I should have left the booth three years before I did," he said. "I lost my zeal and enthusiasm and I wasn't doing a good job. I would never use the play of the team as a cop out."

Frattare said it was solely his decision to leave the booth after discussions with Pirate president Frank Coonelly. He hasn't been to a Pirate game since he left the booth.

"I don't watch or listen," he said. "I want the ball club to do well, but my father once told me that you have to know when it's time to move on. I want to care about something else."


Related:

Lanny Frattare's voice has become synonymous with Pirates baseball -
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/focus/s_523760.html

The Education of Lanny Frattare -
http://www.pghsports.com/PSR/node/284

Ex-Pirate Jackie Hernandez, a captivating champion who made a lasting impression on me

By Joe Capozzi
The Palm Beach Post
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/
Aug. 7, 2011

MIAMI — The last time I could recall seeing Jackie Hernandez, I was sitting in front of a bulky television set with my family in suburban Pittsburgh. I was 7 years old, but I remember it clearly because it was the moment I became addicted to baseball.

On the TV screen in our living room, Hernandez, the shortstop for the Pirates, glides to his left behind second base. He cuts off a grounder up the middle at the edge of the outfield grass, plants his feet, and fires to first base.

Bob Robertson catches the throw and thrusts his arms into the air. Then, my parents and two brothers and I see something I had never seen before - players jumping for joy and piling on top of each other.

Caught up in the excitement, we grab pots and pans from the kitchen and run into the street to bang them together, our way of celebrating the Pirates' World Series victory over Baltimore on Oct. 17, 1971.

Nearly 40 years later, I'm captivated by Hernandez again.

He's 70 years old and sitting on a folding chair at a batting range five minutes from Sun Life Stadium. A cigarette between his lips, a thermos of Cuban coffee at his feet, he's pulling baseballs from a bucket and flipping them to teenagers swinging aluminum bats.

His hair is gray and a goatee frames his mouth, but he has the same wiry frame I remember in the No. 2 uniform of the '71 Bucs.

"I wanted that ball. I wanted to make that last out. Ain't nothing better than that in baseball," Hernandez shouts from his stool, recalling the last play of Game 7 of the World Series. "That was the best thing that ever happened in my life in baseball.'

Hernandez was never an All-Star or a Gold Glove winner. He batted just .208 over nine seasons, from 1965 through '73.

But he was the kind of scrappy player who made a lasting impression on my childhood in the same way Glenn Beckert did for a kid growing up in Chicago or Bobby Tolan for a kid growing up in Cincinnati or Bud Harrelson for a kid in New York.

"We celebrated for three days in Pittsburgh," Hernandez shouts through a stream of "pings" as his students swat balls into a net. "You know how (the travel time from) the airport to downtown is 40, 45 minutes? Took us five hours to get there, because from the airport to downtown there were cars and cars and people and people.'

Hernandez credits the great Roberto Clemente for getting him to Pittsburgh. After playing together in the Puerto Rican winter league, he says Clemente put in a word with the Pirates front office about a shortstop they should go after.

After Pittsburgh got Hernandez in a trade with the Kansas City Royals before the '71 season, he made an error in one of his first games for the Pirates.

"Ball went right through my legs and we lost the game,' he says. "When I got to the dugout, I was crying. Clemente put his arm over my shoulder and said, 'No, no. You don't need to do that. We back you up here.' After that, my head was up every minute.'

Hernandez returned to Pittsburgh in June for a 40th anniversary celebration when the Pirates hosted an interleague series with the Orioles.

He still sees many of his old teammates and baseball friends in Miami. They often visit the batting range he has operated for 17 years with close friend and Cuban countryman Paul Casanova, a catcher for the Washington Senators and Atlanta Braves from 1965-74.

An hour into his lesson, Hernandez stamps out a cigarette and tells his kids to take a break. It's time for him to pose for a photographer, who instructs him to hold a bat.

Four snaps into the shoot, Hernandez suddenly drops down to bunt, momentarily startling the photographer the same way he used to surprise Bob Gibson or Tom Seaver.

"This was my specialty,' Hernandez says, grinning between hunched shoulders.

And for a moment, it's 1971 again.

Harnessing emotions took years of practice for Blyleven

Bert Blyleven was driven to win, and that drive has led him to Cooperstown after all these years.

by JOE CHRISTENSEN
Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/
July 24, 2011

Bert Blyleven looks at a Pittsburgh Pirates exhibit during his orientation visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. , on Tuesday, May 3, 2011. Blyleven, who helped pitch the 1987 Minnesota Twins to a World Series and had 287 victories in his Major League Baseball career, was elected to the Hall of Fame in January on his 14th try. (AP)

Bert Blyleven was a cross-country runner in high school. As a major league pitcher, he ran to build stamina and soothe his tormented soul.

"When I was going bad, I always ran a lot," Blyleven said. "I ran to get the frustration and all the bad crap out my body, whether it be Coors Light, or whatever it was."

Blyleven was frustrated a lot, especially early in his career. He won 287 games. He also lost 250. If his legendary curveball opened the door to Cooperstown, his inner drive pushed him through it. But his intensity got the best of him at times, too.

In 1972, Blyleven's third year in the majors, he started 7-3 for the Twins before anguishing through a five-game losing streak. It was a typical Blyleven skid, laced with good outings and poor run support, and he was at his wits' end by June 22.

The Twins held a voluntary off-day workout at Kansas City's old Municipal Stadium, and long after his teammates had returned to the hotel, the 21-year-old Blyleven remained, running sprints. Finally, Doc Lentz, the team's longtime trainer, intervened.

"He says, 'What are you doing? You're going to kill yourself out here,' " Blyleven said. "We sat there on the left field grass and talked, and I broke down and cried.

"I always looked at baseball as life. If you don't look at the positives, life can drag you down. It took me a long time to realize there's only so much I can do. Losing 2-1 or 3-2 -- I was going to work harder. That's what made me a stronger person, but I still hated losing.

"Doc Lentz kicked me in the butt. He said, 'You can cry all you want, but dang it, get your butt up and go do what you need to do.' "

It was an important lesson for Blyleven, who took as many hard-luck losses as any pitcher of his era. According to STATS, he made 104 quality starts -- at least six innings pitched with three or fewer earned runs allowed -- that didn't result in a win. That included 46 losses and 58 no-decisions.

No wonder Blyleven was often surly to the press. Still, former Twins manager Tom Kelly said Blyleven always brought out the best in his teammates.

"When he was on the mound, you seemed to play a little bit higher," Kelly said. "Listen, I wasn't a very good player, but when I did play behind Bert a couple times [in 1975], I found myself thinking, 'I'm not making any mistakes here today because it's going to be 2-1, 1-0, 3-2.' There was no room for misplays."

The 1970s were an angry time for baseball players anyway, as they fought for free agency. Even when they got it, it took a while before anybody became millionaires.

After a bitter contract dispute, the Twins traded Blyleven to Texas in 1976. Walking off the field at Met Stadium the night of the trade, Blyleven heard some Twins fans taunting him and gave them the middle finger.

The Rangers eventually traded Blyleven to Pittsburgh, where Blyleven was part of the "We are Family" Pirates that won the 1979 World Series. His stint with Pittsburgh from 1978 to 1980 was his only time in the National League. He always hated getting pulled from games, but this was, and is, a fact of life for an NL pitcher.

In 1980, Blyleven got so mad at the way Pirates manager Chuck Tanner was using him, he walked out on the team for 10 days. Tanner called him "Cry-leven," and the Pirates traded him to Cleveland that winter.

By the time Blyleven got traded back to the Twins in 1985, he had mellowed, becoming the staff's veteran leader.

"He'd be upset if he lost, and toward the end he gave up some home runs, which I'm sure didn't make him too happy," Kelly said. "But he handled that all very well."

Teammates saw the way Blyleven rubbed off on Frank Viola, making the eventual 1987 World Series MVP a better competitor.

"When [Blyleven] took the ball, he was going to go out there for nine innings," former Twins catcher Tim Laudner said. "It was his turn to pitch, so everyone else put your tennis shoes on. This is his ballgame."

The next day, Blyleven always had his running shoes on again. Win or lose. Had to get that stuff out of his system.


A bulldog on the mound, a hot dog on other stages

Bert Blyleven is known for his pursuit of clubhouse levity almost as much as his curveball.

by LA VELLE E. NEAL III
Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/
July 24, 2011

Pirates pitcher Jim Rooker was victimized by a Bert Blyleven prank involving a pig’s head before Game 6 of the 1979 World Series. Blyleven bought the pig head at a nearby meat market.(AP)

Bert Blyleven, one of baseball's merriest pranksters, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on Sunday. For the Hall of Famers who gather for the annual induction ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y., it means they will have to invest in fire-retardant dress shoes for the rest of their lives.

The master of the hot foot -- in which shoelaces are lit on fire -- is joining the fraternity.

"No hot foots the first year," Blyleven promised. "I'm a rookie to be seen and not heard. After the first year, though, watch out."

Blyleven is known for having one of the game's best curveballs. He's also known for his pursuit of clubhouse levity. Wherever he went in baseball -- Twins, Rangers, Pirates, Indians, Angels -- he was looking for a laugh and didn't care at whose expense it came. He once gave former Twins manager Tom Kelly a hot foot -- during a game.

"He was goofy," longtime Twins bullpen coach Rick Stelmaszek said.

It wasn't just lighting shoes on fire. Many of Blyleven's pranks can't be recounted in a family newspaper. As for the ones that can, he cut off the toe ends of dress socks. He stole dress shoes and froze them. He nailed teammates with shaving cream pies. And there were stink bombs.

"I did that on a plane once with Cleveland," Blyleven said. "I never did that again. The smell never left the plane. A lot of people were mad at me."

During the 1979 World Series, when Blyleven was with Pittsburgh, some Pirates players were walking around a market in Baltimore before Game 6. They were down 3-2 in the series, but Blyleven saw a chance to make his mark.

"I see this pig's head," Blyleven said. "I always called [teammate] Jim Rooker 'Pighead.' I asked how much it was, and it was like a couple hundred bucks.

"I bought the pig's head, brought it to the ballpark, put it in his locker, put his uniform underneath it, put a cigarette in its mouth. He was in uniform."

During the annual preseason freeway series between the Dodgers and Angels, Blyleven once smacked Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda in the face with a shaving cream pie while Lasorda was doing a pregame interview. Lasorda vowed revenge.

The next day, Lasorda stole a pair of jeans out of Blyleven's locker. In the middle of the fifth inning, Blyleven looked across the diamond and saw the jeans on fire in front of the Dodgers dugout. But Blyleven was a step ahead -- he had taken his clothes out of his locker and replaced them with those of a teammate.

Blyleven believes his zest for pranks came from his father, Joe, who raised a large family in Southern California.

"There was nine of us at the dinner table," Blyleven said. "He always had a joke. Always made us laugh."

There's no evidence Joe mooned his children -- an act that remains a part of Blyleven's repertoire.

To this day, the Twins don't inform Blyleven when the annual team photo will be taken because he shows up and moons everyone during the shoot.

"I have scouts who let me know," Blyleven said.

The element of surprise is not always a good thing.

"I love it," said Twins outfielder Michael Cuddyer, "but I feel bad when they raffle off a chance for a kid to be in the picture and he's probably scarred and the parents are scarred."

Blyleven's favorite such act was in 1991 with the Angels.

"I mooned the team picture," Blyleven said. "Two weeks later, a game is going on in Anaheim. [Manager] Doug Rader says, 'Bert, come here. Someone wants to see you.' It's Jackie Autry, [owner] Gene's wife.

"She pulls out this team picture. It's the moon shot. Gene is sitting there in front and, all of sudden, to the left of him is this big cheek.

"She goes, 'You gotta sign this for Gene.'"

Another Look: Former Pirate Dave Cash

By Bob Barrickman
Beaver County Times
http://www.timesonline.com/sports/
July 19, 2011

Dave Cash said one of his biggest baseball influences was Roberto Clemente. But his best teacher was another aging Hall of Famer from the Pirates of the early 1970s.

"He was a very big influence," said Cash, now 63, said of Bill Mazeroski. "He was the reason why I was able to make the transition from shortstop to second base. I had never played second before in my life."

A fifth-round choice of the Pirates in the 1966 amateur draft, Cash was groomed to take over for Mazeroski in the early 1970s. By 1971, Cash became the team's regular at second and batted .289 for the world champion Pirates that season. But the Pirates had a rare surplus of talented second basemen in their system -- including Rennie Stennett and Willie Randolph in the minors.

The Bucs thought Cash expendable and traded him to the Phillies for lefthander Ken Brett after the 1973 season. Stennett assumed the starting job for the Pirates.

"It was very difficult leaving the Pirates," admitted Cash. "But, I went to a larger market to try to help a team that finished in last place (in 1973)."

Cash flourished with the Phillies in 1974 and help made them contenders in the NL East. He hit with increasing regularity: 206 hits that years before leading the league with 213 hits in 1975 while batting .305. He helped the Phillies win the division in 1976 and made three All-Star teams as a Phillie.

"The things I learned in Pittsburgh, I took to Philadelphia with me," he said.

Randolph, incidentally, was traded in 1975 and became a perennial All-Star for the Yankees.

Cash signed with the Expos as a free agent following the 1976 season. He played three years there before finishing his 12-year playing career with the Padres in 1980. Cash batted a career .283 and drove in 426 runs.

Cash was a member of three NL East-winning teams in Pittsburgh (1970-72), his best moments coming when he had eight hits in 19 at bats in the 1971 NLCS win over the Giants.

Cash also remembered the fans during those glory days at Three Rivers Stadium.

"We couldn't have done it without the fans," he said. "In a 162-game schedule, there's no way you can come out every day and feel good. Sometimes, to hear that crowd makes you inspired to do your job."

A native of Utica, N.Y., Cash has made his home near Tampa, Fla. for 18 years. And this year, he's actually spending some time there. After a post-playing career spent as a coach in a number of organizations and with two independent teams, Cash retired from baseball after last season.

"When you get to my age, it's time to retire," said Cash.

Another Look: Milt May made Series history in 1971

Bob Barrickman
Beaver County Times
http://www.timesonline.com/sports/
July 6, 2011

Milt May wasn't a starter in 1971, but he found his way into baseball's record books during the World Series that season.

The former Pittsburgh Pirates catcher had an RBI pinch-hit single in the seventh inning of Game 4 of the 1971 Fall Classic played at Three Rivers Stadium, driving in the winning run of the first night game in Series history. The Pirates edged the Baltimore Orioles 4-3 to even the Series at two games apiece before winning the championship in seven games.

It didn't appear that May would be the hero of Game 4 after the Orioles scored three runs off Pirate starter Luke Walker in the first inning.

"With our hitting, we knew if we could hold them, we had a chance," May said. "Bruce (Kison) held them and it gave us a chance to chip away.

Kison, a 21-year old rookie, relieved Walker in the first and shut out the Orioles over six-plus innings to get the win. The Pirates scored two runs in the bottom of the first inning and tied the game with a run in the third. May untied it in the seventh.

"I dunked one in there and it worked out good for us," said May.

May was on hand two weeks ago when Pittsburgh honored the 1971 world champions before a game against the Orioles at PNC Park. Coincidentally, May, 60, now works for the Orioles as the organization's hitting coach for Sarasota (Rookie) and extended spring training. May, a Florida native, has resided in Bradenton since 1969, his first spring with the Bucs.

There weren't too many opportunities early in May's career as Manny Sanguillen was the established regular.

"Manny was an unusual commodity as a catcher because he ran very well," said May. "He could hit a ball neck-high or ankle-high."

May's at bats increased to 283 in 1973 as Sanguillen played some in right field. But May was dealt to the Astros after that season for pitcher Jerry Reuss.

May spent 15 years in the majors, including a second stint with the Pirates from 1983-84 before retiring. He also played for the Tigers, White Sox and Giants. After his playing career, May was the Pirates' hitting coach under manager Jim Leyland from 1987-96. The Pirates won N.L. East titles during that stretch from 1990-92.

"I don't think we had as dominant a team as Pittsburgh had in the early '70s," May said. "We didn't have anyone with the stature of a (Roberto) Clemente or a (Willie) Stargell."

That dominance gave May a skewed view of life in the majors. That '71 season was May's first full year in the big leagues.

"My first full year, what a thrill," May said. "I said, 'Is it going to be like this every year?' It took me (26 years) to get back in 1997."

That season, May was the hitting coach with the Marlins when Leyland took over as their manager. Just like in '71, May's team won the Series in seven games as the Marlins beat the Indians.

"It makes it more gratifying, because you know how tough it is to get there."

Forty years later, people still bring up May's game winning single on Oct. 13, 1971, which was the 11th anniversary of Bill Mazeroski's homer to the World Series in 1960.

"It doesn't bother me," May said. "It brings back good memories."

Another Look: Gene Clines

By Bob Barrickman
Beaver County Times Sports Correspondent
http://www.timesonline.com/sports/
June 29, 2011

Gene Clines never was a regular with the Pittsburgh Pirates but he got the starting nod in center field in the biggest game of his playing career.

Clines started in place of Al Oliver against Baltimore left-handed starter Mike Cuellar in Game 7 of the 1971 World Series. Pirate manager Danny Murtaugh platooned Clines, a right-handed hitter with the lefty swinging Oliver.

Clines wasn’t surprised to be Murtaugh’s choice.

“That’s the way it was all year,” said Clines, 64. “Why change once you get to the World Series?”

The Pirates beat the Orioles, 2-1, to win the Series. Clines recalled his thoughts after shortstop Jackie Hernandez fielded a ground ball and threw the ball to first baseman Bob Robertson to record the game’s final out.

“It’s finally over and I’m a member of a world championship team,” Clines said during his return to Pittsburgh last week to take part in the Pirates 40th anniversary celebration of the ‘71 world champs at PNC Park. Clines batted .308 in 273 at bats and had a career-high 15 stolen bases that season.

Clines has been a senior advisor with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the past five years.

“I work with the kids throughout (the Dodgers) minor-league system,” he said.

The Pirates train during the spring in Bradenton, Fla., where Clines makes his home. But Clines doesn’t get to see his old team since he is in Arizona with the Dodgers.

Though Clines batted .334 with the N.L. East champion Pirates in 1972, he couldn’t crack the lineup full time in a crowded Pittsburgh outfield. Two years later, he was traded to the New York Mets for catcher Duffy Dyer. Clines had a career-high 446 at bats with the Texas Rangers in 1976 and finished his 10-year career in 1979 following three seasons with the Chicago Cubs. His career average was .277.

Clines was the hitting coach for 11 years under manager Dusty Baker, the first four with the Cubs and then seven seasons with the San Francisco Giants. Thirty-one years after the Bucs won the ‘71 Series, Clines was in the dugout with San Francisco for Game 7 of the 2002 Fall Classic. The Giants came out in the short end to the then-Anaheim Angels.

When Clines played center for the Pirates in his first three of five seasons with the club, he was flanked by late Hall of Famers Willie Stargell in left and ‘71 Series MVP Roberto Clemente in right.

“Roberto and Willie were leaders by example,” Clines said. “You watch two superstars like they were go about their job, you say, if they can play that hard, I should play even harder.”

Clines recalled the “togetherness” of the ‘71 Bucs.

“The camaraderie we had and that we all played as one,” he said. “We were on the same page and were on the same mission to get to the World Series.”

Once the Pirates got down 2-0 to the Orioles, the intangibles took over.

“There was no sign of panic with our club all year,” Clines said. “We never doubted ourselves no matter what the media said about (the Orioles’) four 20-game winners (Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Dave McNally and Pat Dobson).”

Pirates starter Steve Blass outperformed them all by hurling complete-game victories in games three and seven.

“I was drafted in this system and it was tough to leave,” admitted Clines, who was the Pirates sixth-round pick in 1966. “Even though I was traded, I was drafted as a Bucco and I’ll be a Bucco ‘til the day I die.”

The 1971 World Series was played in a different world

Pirates and Orioles were powerhouses in an era of firsts


By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
Sunday, June 19, 2011

Roberto Clemente and Danny Murtaugh

Charles Manson got the death penalty that spring, though it was later deemed unconstitutional.

The Pirates and the Baltimore Orioles played six World Series games in broad daylight that fall, though daylight in the World Series was later deemed unconstitutional, at least effectively.

Seven thousand people were arrested in one day in one city protesting the Vietnam War that summer, just as the Constitution's 26th amendment was ready to give 18-year-olds the vote.

Forty years may have cobwebbed all of it amid drifts of mental dust, but a lot went down in 1971.

"It did; oh, it did," Al Oliver was saying the other day. "I didn't think much about it at the time, but I do now. I feel fortunate to have been part of history."

The Pirates first baseman/centerfielder, who was delivering line drives the whole summer, was talking specifically about the first day of September 1971, when manager Danny Murtaugh wrote the first all-minority lineup in Major League Baseball history. But he could have been appreciating the entirety of a season when cultural turbulence was little else but America's day-to-day backlighting, and when America's baseball was little short of divine.

The three-game series that starts here Monday night not only brings the Baltimore Orioles back to Pittsburgh for the dubious modern curiosity known as interleague play, it provides a homecoming for some 20 staff and players from that championship Pirates season.

Looking back through the prism of 40 years, the boys of lumber only grow fonder of its memories.

"When I think about it now, it's like I didn't realize how good we were," said Richie Hebner, the third baseman, now 63. "We had good pitching, but people looking back at the Lumber Company don't think about pitchers. Without pitching, it's a long, hot summer. You have to win a lot of games 2-1 and 3-2 to get to October, and we did, even if people came out to see us score 10 runs."

That was probably because Willie Stargell hit 48 home runs, because Roberto Clemente hit .341, and because those Bucs were offensively dangerous from one end of the dugout to the other. But Hebner is right. The pitchers were nearly as frightening. Dock Ellis was 14-3 at the All-Star break, and he started for the National League that July in Detroit. Steve Blass was on his way to 15 wins with a luminous 2.85 earned run average. Dave Giusti would be Fireman of the Year, with 30 saves.

And still with lumber and lightning and enviable depth, those Pirates were considerably overshadowed in that era by those Orioles, who were not only the defending world champions, who had not only followed that up with 105 wins in 1971, who not only had Boog Powell, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Paul Blair, but had four 20-game winners.

"Now you can look around some years and there aren't four 20-game winners on the 30 teams in the big leagues," Hebner said.

As recently as 2009, you could look around and not find even one anywhere.

"The Orioles were a machine," Blass said. "Sixteen in a row!"

That's a stat rarely unearthed in the 40 years since. When Blass pitched a complete game to beat Baltimore in Game 3 of the 1971 World Series, dragging Pittsburgh back to life, the Orioles had just run off 16 consecutive victories -- the last 11 games of the regular season, three in a row against the Oakland A's in the American League Championship Series, and the first two games of the Series by a combined 16-6.

"We were not in any danger of being overconfident," said Orioles ace Jim Palmer on the phone the other day. "I don't think you ever go into the World Series overconfident, but sure, we thought we could win. We had a formula for success on those teams and it had been long established."

That illustrates a particularly delicious aspect of baseball's 1971 climax. It matched two teams with a kind of confidence that could only have been equaled by the other.

"I don't know if we were cocky, but we knew we were good," Hebner said. "A lot of teams go to spring training and they know their last game is right there on the schedule. OK, we're here until, what is it, Oct. 2, yeah. But I remember when I went to spring training that yeah, I told my father, 'I won't be back here helping you dig graves that first week in October.' I used to tell a lot of people, you put that TV on in October and watch the Pirates. They're going to play a lot of games in October. I guess maybe that does sound a little cocky."

The Orioles assumed as much, as they'd been an October television staple in 1966, 1969 and 1970, all of which introduces the almost unimaginable counterpoint to this week's circumstance: Pittsburgh and Baltimore arrive at this series having combined for 31 consecutive summers of losing baseball. The Pirates, maybe you've heard, haven't had a winning season since 1992. The Orioles, even with a consistently robust payroll, haven't won since 1997. Not since 1983 has either team been to the World Series.

But baseball history, just like real history, comes with all manner of potential pratfalls, most without warning. In 1971, the Pirates and Orioles avoided all of them while the country continued the traumatic transition out of '60s culture and its attendant political upheaval. In March, 1st Lt. William Calley was found guilty at court martial of the murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians. In late June, officiating at the end of one of the most notorious intersections of sports and society, the Supreme Court cleared the one and only Muhammad Ali of all charges related to draft dodging. In another landmark ruling that year, the Court upheld the legality of busing and redistricting as tools for integrating schools. Integration might have been an issue best left to the top legal minds of the day, but it was no big deal in the office of the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

So here it is again for the record, Pittsburgh's starting lineup vs. Philadelphia, Sept. 1, 1971, or 24 years, 4 1/2 months after Jackie Robinson cracked the game's color barrier:

Stennett 2b

Clines cf

Clemente rf

Stargell lf

Sanguillen c

Cash 3b

Oliver 1b

Hernandez ss

Ellis p

The first big league lineup ever without a single white face. Cash said to Oliver, "Look, it's all brothers out here."

"We always started five minority players," Oliver remembered. "If Dock [Ellis] pitched, then it was six, so just three being added, it seemed normal. The Pirates were long known as an organization that went after black and Latin players. But I'll tell you, I didn't even know it at game time. What was tricky about it that night is that, when I look at it it's ironic, but Murtaugh did not start Bob Robertson [a white first baseman] against [Philadelphia's] Woody Fryman, which he normally would have been against a left-handed pitcher."

Danny Murtaugh shrugged everything off. They were the nine who gave him the best chance to win when he sat down to fill out the lineup card. The historians would have to take it from there.

The '71 Pirates were loud progressives in that area as a team could be in that era. The whites accepted the blacks, who accepted the Latins, who accepted the whites, all of which you knew because they all teased the snot out of each other. Ellis called Robertson Archie Bunker.

No one grew terribly serious until that postseason, when Robertson's three-homer performance in San Francisco in the National League Championship Series catapulted those Pirates to the World Series, and the ultimate measurement of their worthiness against a team that moved one press box wag to predict -- "Baltimore in three."

So after three games, the first two won by the Orioles in Baltimore, history came knocking again, or at least baseball history. On Oct. 13, 1971, the Pirates and Orioles played the first night game ever in the World Series.

Blass remembers it as pretty much the end of civilization.

"Do you believe the Pirates had a hand in starting that crap?" he said. "The World Series in the day was part of our autumn as kids. Part of October. It was running home from school to watch it. They're always trying to market the game to kids, but that night, they started stealing the game from kids."

NBC was the real culprit, but the promise of a larger TV audience was real. Sixty-one million people watched Game 4, which the Pirates won 4-3 to even the series two games apiece. No World Series game has been played in the day time since 1987.

"I can't stay up and watch a World Series game," said Hebner. "There are six freaking commercials between every half inning. I mean I'm no different than anybody else. It's too late. I think the playoffs are much more interesting. At least in the playoffs, you still get a couple of afternoon games. That to me is the best of baseball."

The best of baseball in 1971 came down to a best-of-three, with the Pirates winning Game 5 in Pittsburgh behind the late Nellie Briles, then the Orioles winning Game 6 in Baltimore in extra innings, the second time they won when Palmer started.

For Game 7, the tension in both cities bordered on the unbearable, and the players weren't holding up all that well either. Blass got out of bed a good nine hours before his starting assignment against the O's Mike Cuellar and started walking the streets of Baltimore. He wanted to win, but failing that, he wanted it to be over. He wanted to be on the other side of it.

In the fourth inning, Clemente homered to make it 1-0, and no matter how many times the story of that World Series is retold, his performance remains its most indelible.

Decorated baseball author Roger Angell would eventually write this of Roberto Clemente's play in his book, "The Summer Game":

"[It was] a kind of baseball that none of us had ever seen before -- throwing and running and hitting at something close to the level of absolute perfection, play to win but also playing the game almost as if it were a form of punishment for everyone else on the field."

Clemente's punishing numbers, when it was over, were a .414 batting average, or 12 for 29 including two doubles, a triple, two home runs, four runs batted in and two throws from the distant edges of right field that left eyewitnesses speechless.

"The first thing that comes to mind today is just how Roberto refused to let us lose," said Oliver. "He didn't do a whole lot of talking unless someone pushed his buttons, and some guys know what buttons to push and then he was just hilarious. But to see him put on that kind of show, I was just elated for him. We knew how great he was, and every day when I put on this World Series ring, I can't help but think of him."

Willie Stargell singled to start the eighth, only his fifth hit of the postseason, and scored on a double by Jose Pagan, who missed this week's reunion by less than two weeks. He died of Alzheimer's complications June 7. Baltimore finally nicked the indomitable Blass in the eighth on a pair of singles and an RBI groundout by Don Buford.

"There was never one visit to the mound in Game 7," Blass said. "It's still vivid when I choose to think about it, but the farther away it gets, the more I don't believe I did that stuff. I mean all those people, the enormity of that situation. Couldn't have been me."

As it ended, no one seems to remember anything other than Steve Blass.

"That's what I remember, just how good Steve Blass was," said Palmer. "You always think you have a chance, but sometimes you don't."

"Steve was pitching so well and I just remember thinking, 'Keep it up, big guy, because I'm not sure I want to get into a game like this,' " Giusti said. "He was so focused. He just had one great Series."

Hebner remembers thinking there would be a long bottom of the ninth.

"I just watching Steve Blass and thinking how tough it was going to be to get through an inning like that," he said. "Boog Powell was up there, then another stud on deck [Frank Robinson], and all of a sudden, Blass throws like 10 pitches and it's all over."

Merv Rettunmund slashed the last pitch of a 1-2-3 ninth into the dirt to Blass' right, but as Palmer said, "every ball we hit up the middle seemed to go right to where [shortstop] Jackie Hernandez was playing."

And so did that one, right into Hernandez's glove, and on to Robertson to end the Series, the season, and maybe even the last time baseball was absolutely everything it is supposed to be.

Except for that night game.


Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com.


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