Willie Stargell

by Frank Garland

  Following the 1967 season, Brown’s approach to Stargell’s conditioning changed to some degree. Instead of ordering a strict diet, Brown told Stargell about an athletic trainer he knew at the Pittsburgh Athletic Club by the name of Alex Martella. By this time, Stargell was a year-round resident of Pittsburgh, and he made a commitment to arrive at spring training in 1968 in the best shape possible. “Willie went over there every day except Sunday and went through a regime,” Brown said. “This guy really worked him and Willie worked hard—he got himself in good physical condition. He had him doing aerobic things, working on his arms, his legs, the whole body routine, the big ball. I watched one whole workout one day and even I was tired when he got through. But Willie never complained. He thought it was a good idea. After doing it a couple of weeks he said, ‘You know, I really feel good doing this—I feel better.’ He certainly had some marvelous years after that. I think he realized how necessary it was to stay in shape.”

  While Stargell focused on his waistline, Brown had several holes to fill, most notably in the manager’s office and on the mound. He filled his first vacancy by hiring veteran minor-league manager Larry Shepard, who knew a number of the Pirates players—including Stargell—by virtue of managing the organization’s Columbus team in the Class AAA International League from 1961 to 1966. On the field, Brown shipped two of the club’s top prospects—Don Money and Woody Fryman—to Philadelphia for veteran right-handed starter Jim Bunning.

  Now that Stargell was once again a family man—he and Dolores had their first child together, a son named Wilver Jr. that winter—he was eager to put down roots in his adopted home town. He focused on a neighborhood just outside downtown Pittsburgh that reminded him of his boyhood neighborhood back in Alameda. Known as the Hill District, it had at one time been a fashionable place to live but had fallen on hard times after a sizable portion of it was gutted to make room for the new Civic Arena. Within a couple of years, Stargell would become involved in a business there that caught the fancy of Pirates fans everywhere and spawned one of the most memorable phrases in baseball broadcasting history.

  But that was still two years down the road. Stargell and the Pirates were focusing on the upcoming 1968 season and making amends for their major flop the season before. In spring training, Stargell befriended Gene Clines, a young outfielder who had idolized him while growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area community of Richmond. Clines had met Stargell once before, while serving as a batboy at a March of Dimes benefit All-Star Game that involved Bay Area professional ballplayers including Stargell, Pinson, Robinson and others. “I used to go watch those guys come to the park to take batting practice,” Clines recalled. “I met Willie then, but not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d be his teammate and play with him or play next to him.” But in the spring of 1968, Clines found himself in Fort Myers, Florida, and had a chance to renew acquaintances with the now-established big league slugger. The two began talking and Clines told him some stories about the March of Dimes game back in Richmond. “From that day on,” Clines said, “he called me ‘Homes.’” Stargell became a mentor to Clines, who spent five seasons with the Pirates and played a key role in several division championship teams, and the two spent hours talking baseball. “He was the one who showed me how to play this game and play it the right way,” Clines said. “How to respect it. He was the one who took me under his wing to show me what professional baseball was all about and how I should carry myself.”24

  He didn’t do it in a loud way or call attention to himself, Clines said. “His demeanor was very low key. If you had something on your mind, if you had a question, you didn’t hesitate to ask. If you had information for him, you didn’t hesitate to give him that information. But one thing about Willie was, he would always say if you asked him a question, he was going to be up front. He’d say, ‘I’m going to tell you exactly how it is.’ So when I asked him a question, he shot right from the hip. He gave me the information I needed to know for what I inquired about, whether it was good news or bad. If I asked him a question, I knew I would get an honest answer.”

  All went well in spring training that year for the Pirates, but before the 1968 season could gain traction, the nation was rocked by one of its darkest deeds—the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. As they did in many urban centers across the nation, African Americans rioted in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, triggering a dusk-to-dawn curfew that lasted for five days in the city. In the hours directly following King’s shooting, the situation reached a boiling point. Sections of town hit by violence included Uptown, Herron Hill, lower Oakland and Lawrenceville, and firebombs were reported tossed on some streets. Dozens of windows were shattered, looting occurred in a number of stores and police cars were stoned.25

  Even after Mayor Joseph M. Barr lifted the curfew on April 9, several other “safety measures” remained in place, including a ban against outdoor gatherings of more than 10 people, a ban against the sale of alcoholic beverages anywhere other than by beer distributors, and a ban on the sale of gasoline unless it was directly dispensed into a vehicle’s tank.26 In Pittsburgh, state and local police joined with the National Guard to keep watch over the city, even manning check points at various locations. A Pittsburgh Press reporter who went on a ride-along after curfew related an incident in which a guardsman pulled over a car occupied by four “Negroes,” including a minister who was behind the wheel. As the guardsman checked the driver’s papers, he noticed a passenger in the back seat unzip his jacket. “Then, when the man in the back seat began to reach slowly inside his unzippered jacket, the lieutenant quickly cocked his gun, held it to the minister’s head and ordered everyone in the car to freeze or he would shoot. The man in the back seat stammered that he did not have a gun but was only reaching for identification papers. Nevertheless the four men were ordered out of the car and searched by the guardsman. Eventually they were sent on their way after the lieutenant “apologized profusely.” The unrest upset even those in charge of keeping the peace. “This whole scene is wild,” the guardsman said. “I mean like unreal and it scares the hell out of me,” he added, waving his hand in the direction of the Hill.27

  While blacks rioted in the Hill District and other urban centers across the land, black major-league baseball players wanted time to grieve in their own way. By April 6, two major-league openers scheduled for Monday, April 8, were postponed, but at that point, the Pirates’ scheduled opener for that day in Houston remained on. However, the Post-Gazette reported that the Pirates’ black players planned to boycott that game if it was not postponed—along with an exhibition game on April 7. The boycott never occurred, as the hometown Astros chose to postpone their opener with the Pirates until April 10, and the exhibition game was canceled.

  Stargell felt a kinship with the slain King and years later would talk about those feelings in more detail while narrating some of King’s writings as part of a symphonic piece performed by an orchestra in several of the nation’s largest cities.

  In 1968, though, Stargell was focused on hitting the curve ball and showing Pirates brass—and fans—that his down season of 1967 was an aberration and not a portent of things to come. The media certainly expected big things. In his preview of the season opener, the Post-Gazette’s Feeney wrote:

  HOUSTON, April 9—It’s the beginning of a new season for the Pirates tomorrow night in the Astrodome and it could be the year that Willie Stargell really makes it big.

  Feeney wrote that Stargell “could be the difference from a fourth-place finish and a pennant. He is capable of 40 home runs and 125 RBIs. He also has proven he can slump miserably and drag the club down with him.”28

  But for the second straight season, things didn’t go according to plan. It took Stargell most of April to lug his batting average above the .200 mark, and by May 19 the Bucs’ cleanup hitter and primary power source had just two home runs. He broke out of the doldrums in a major way on May 22 at Wrigley Fiel
d, when he went 5-for-5 with three home runs and seven RBIs and just about single-handedly propelled the Bucs to a 13–6 comeback win over the Cubs. He added a double and a single, giving him 15 total bases, and scored four times, helping the Pirates erase a 5–1 deficit.

  Brown, the Bucs’ general manager, was in Chicago that late spring day and watched his slugger assault three different Cubs pitchers—starter Joe Niekro and relievers Dave Wickersham and Chuck Hartenstein. “His double hit off the wall in left and I mean way up there—off the very top of the wall and bounced back in,” Brown said. Richard Dozer of the Chicago Tribune reported that Stargell missed “by a fraction of an inch” of getting his fourth homer that day, noting that it hit a yellow rail atop the left-field fence.29 Stargell couldn’t hide his elation afterward. “It’s a funny thing,” Stargell told reporters later about his just-miss double. “I thought I hit that ball better than the other three. But I guess it just wasn’t my day to get four of them.”30

  Even the enemy fans at Wrigley appreciated the performance, as some of those sitting near the Pirates dugout gave Stargell a standing ovation as he rounded the bases following his third homer of the game. “What a warm feeling that gives a player, especially a visitor,” Stargell remarked. “The home runs make you feel good all over and the applause is welcome music. I just wish I could do this someday at Forbes Field and reward the Pittsburgh fans. I never had a better day.”31

  Stargell’s surge continued for several weeks and he reached the .300 mark on June 2. But that would be his high-water mark for the season, as his average tumbled into the .260 neighborhood around the All-Star break and ultimately settled at .237 by season’s end—his lowest mark yet as a big-league hitter in what would become known as The Year of the Pitcher. His other numbers were equally disappointing—he played in 128 games, managed just 15 doubles in 435 at-bats and finished with 24 home runs and only 67 RBIs while striking out 105 times. He did manage a few noteworthy performances, however. On August 24, with Cardinal Bob Gibson in the midst of one of the greatest pitching campaigns in history, Stargell did what he could to inflict a little damage on the menacing right-hander, who absolutely hated hitters. Gibson, who would go on to post a 1.12 earned run average and a 23–9 record that included 13 shutouts—third-most all-time—and 268 strikeouts in 304 innings, was working on a 15-game winning streak when the Pirates visited Busch Stadium. Number 16 looked like a lock when the Cardinals bolted to a 4–0 lead, but Stargell connected for a three-run homer that pulled the Pirates within a run and then, with the score tied at 4–4, he led off the ninth inning with a double. His pinch-runner would score the winning run that snapped Gibson’s streak at 15 games.

  Stargell’s subpar year fit with most of the rest of the club, as the Pirates finished a disappointing 80–82 and wound up in sixth place, 17 games behind the league champion Cardinals. Stargell’s injuries, which he said sparked a run of periodic headaches that neither glasses nor a neck brace could cure, prompted the slugger to announce that he no longer wanted to play the outfield. That meant a transition back to the position he played both at Encinal and in the low minor leagues—first base.

  That wouldn’t be the only change to greet the Pirates in 1969. In fact, the baseball world in general was in upheaval. Both major leagues added two new teams—San Diego and Montreal joined the National League, while the American League welcomed franchises in Seattle and Kansas City. Both leagues also split into two divisions, with six teams in each of the East and West divisions. Changes also took place on the field—literally—in an attempt to negate the upper hand that major league pitchers had seized. The 1968 season saw an abundance of dominating pitching performances, with Gibson’s NL-leading 1.12 ERA and 13 shutouts being Exhibits A and 1-A. But Gibson was not alone; Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers became the major leagues’ first 30-game winner in 34 years. Both hurlers would claim their respective league’s Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards. Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers tossed six straight shutouts, putting together 58⅔ consecutive scoreless innings. And two other pitchers—San Francisco’s Gaylord Perry and St. Louis’ Ray Washburn—threw no-hitters on consecutive days. The pitching was so dominant that only one American League hitter finished with a batting average higher than .290, and the batting title went to Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski, who finished at just .301.

  In response, the major leagues made two substantive changes, lowering the height of the mound from 15 inches to 10 inches and adjusting the strike zone, essentially making it more difficult for pitchers to get the high strike called. The changes, in conjunction with watered-down pitching that resulted from the addition of the four expansion teams, seemed to work, as the mean earned-run average climbed from 2.99 in 1968 to 3.60 in 1969—a jump of 20 percent.

  The Pirates also were in the midst of several key changes. First, the club moved its spring training operation from Fort Myers to Bradenton, Florida, where it had constructed a complex known as Pirate City. In addition, an influx of young players began making their way into the Pirate lineup, players who would lay the foundation for an unprecedented run of success in the following decade. Bartirome, the long-time Pirates minor-leaguer who helped show Stargell the first-base ropes way back in spring training in Jacksonville Beach in 1959, became a trainer with the big-league club in 1967 and could see the young talent coming of age. “I used to tell people about the Instructional League teams we had in 1968 and ’69,” Bartirome said. “More than 90 percent of the guys we had on those teams went to the big leagues. Now, if you have two or three players from Instructional League make it to the big leagues, you’re doing something. That’s the kind of farm system we had.”32

  The players—particularly the young ones—certainly were aware of it. Young outfielders like Clines, for example, looked out from the dugout only to see two future Hall of Famers—Clemente in right and Stargell in left—patrolling two of the three positions. Catching prospect Milt May slugged 20 homers for the Bucs top farm team in Columbus and he was only 19 when that season started. But with young Manny Sanguillen almost ready to make the jump to the big club in 1969, the future was clouded for May. At second base alone, the Pirates had a future Hall of Famer in Mazeroski but nipping at his heels in the farm system were Dave Cash, Rennie Stennett and Willie Randolph—all of them All-Star caliber.

  “There were so many guys in our system,” Clines said. “Such an abundance of talent and a lot of us played the same positions. Guys had to be traded or shipped out to make room. But I never got discouraged. My whole focus, even with all that talent there, was to play in the major leagues. I never thought I would play for another organization when I came up as a Pirate.”

  Indeed, in 1969, the Pirates elevated three key players as everyday starters—catcher Sanguillen, a free-swinging Panamanian with an ever-present smile and a gun for an arm; third-baseman Richie Hebner, a left-handed hitting New Englander who dug graves in the off-season; and Al Oliver, a sweet-swinging left-handed line-drive machine who played mostly at first base but got into 32 games as an outfielder as well. Oliver finished tied for second in the Rookie of the Year voting after batting .285 with 17 home runs and 70 RBIs. Sanguillen hit a robust .303 in 1969, driving in 57 runs, while Hebner checked in at .301 with eight homers and 47 RBIs.

  The new talent helped the Pirates make an eight-game improvement over the previous season and kept the club in the pennant race for a while. Stargell also had more than a little something to do with it, as he rebounded from his two straight sub-par seasons to post an outstanding year. His batting average hovered in the uncharacteristic .340 range into the month of August before tailing off. Still, he finished with a line of .307 batting average, 29 home runs, 92 RBIs and 31 doubles in 522 at-bats. Stargell’s standout season and another Hall-of-Fame caliber year from Clemente (.345 batting average, 19 home runs, 91 RBIs) couldn’t save the Pirates or Shepard, who was fired with just five games remaining in the season and replaced by third-base coach Alex Grammas.

  That
season would be the last full campaign in Forbes; taking shape on Pittsburgh’s north shore, just across the Ohio River from the city’s Golden Triangle, was a new sports playground—one that would be home to numerous championship performances in both baseball and football for the next three decades. And one that ultimately became home to one of the most memorable collections of talent in Pittsburgh sports history—the Pirate Family.

  Chapter 4

  Becoming a Force

  THE DECADE OF THE 1960S had brought forth a slew of unpredictable, shocking and spectacular events—and people—the likes of which man had never seen before. Assassins cut down three of America’s top leaders—John F. Kennedy; his brother, Robert; and Martin Luther King Jr. Thousands of miles from America’s shores, a conflict in the remote Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam escalated into a full-scale war, claiming the lives of thousands of young Americans, sparking massive demonstrations on college campuses and dividing scores of homes. The use of drugs such as marijuana and LSD and liberalized attitudes toward sex came out of the closet and occupied a front-and-center spot in America’s consciousness. A landmark civil rights law took effect, aimed at ending racial and other types of discrimination once and for all. The Beatles burst upon the scene, revolutionized the world’s musical landscape forever, and disbanded, all in the course of a decade. In the final year of the decade, the formerly hopeless New York Mets did the unthinkable—they won a World Series championship—just three months after Neil Armstrong took one step down from a tiny ladder and set foot on the surface of the moon. Both events showed the world that the impossible was, indeed, possible. And in the decade’s final days, a St. Louis Cardinals outfielder named Curt Flood decided he would fight his team’s decision to trade him to Philadelphia, and in the process challenge one of the fundamental building blocks of Major League Baseball—the reserve clause.