Willie Stargell

by Frank Garland

  Although the outlook seemed bright in mid–August, a 1–9 skid to end the month had fans a little on edge. And when the Pirates lost three in a row the second week of September, the defending World Champion Mets grabbed a share of the NL East lead. But the Bucs rebounded to win seven out of the next 10 to right the ship and take command, and the club finally clinched the NL Eastern Division title with three games to play by beating the Mets 2–1 on September 27, capping a three-game sweep of their top rivals. Brown, the Bucs’ general manager, was all smiles in the champagne-soaked clubhouse afterward. “You were a helluva man in 1960; you were five times as great this year,” he told Murtaugh. Brown was alluding to the numerous replacements that the Pirates had called upon to spell injured players like Alley, Mazeroski, Stargell—who was dogged by a bruised heel most of the season—and Clemente at various times throughout the season. Brown saluted the role players—players like Clines, who was summoned twice from the minor leagues to fill in for injured players, and Jim “Mudcat” Grant, the veteran hurler who was acquired September 14 and appeared in seven games down the stretch, pitching 11⅓ innings and allowing just one run while picking up a pair of wins. “He’s another example of what I mean,” Brown said of Grant. The win had Stargell—who pulled a leg muscle the previous game and could not play in the division-clinching victory—talking in terms of a new magic number. That would be seven. “Three from Cincinnati and four from somebody else and we’re in,” Stargell said amid the popping of more champagne corks.22

  The Pirates, who drew more fans than any season since 1960—1,341,947, including 955,040 in 36 dates at Three Rivers—were a balanced bunch. Clemente hit a sparkling .352 but played in only 108 games while Stargell led the club with 31 homers and 85 RBIs and—displaying his powerful arm—also led all NL outfielders in assists with 16. Bob Robertson, the burly young first baseman, supplied right-handed power with 27 home runs and 82 RBIs to back the other productive youngsters—Sanguillen, Oliver and Hebner. On the mound, Blass, Ellis, Veale, Luke Walker and Moose each won at least 10 games. But perhaps the most valuable arm belonged to reliever Dave Giusti, who won nine of 12 decisions and closed out many a victory. Still, the Pirates went into the best-of-five National League Championship Series as underdogs to the Reds, who had beaten them eight out of 12 times during the regular season. Cincinnati won 102 games and boasted a lineup that included two future Hall of Famers in catcher Johnny Bench and first-baseman Tony Perez, not to mention the all-time hit king Pete Rose, and were skippered by another future Hall of Famer in George “Sparky” Anderson. Stargell had three hits in the opener, including a one-out double in the seventh that was followed by a walk to Oliver. But Reds starter Gary Nolan came back to strike out both Sanguillen and Hebner, and that ended the Pirates’ biggest threat. Pittsburgh’s offensive troubles continued in Game 2, as lefty Jim Merritt gave the Reds five-plus quality innings, and Cincinnati’s 3–1 win put the visitors up two games to none heading home to Riverfront Stadium.

  The Reds finished off the three-game sweep the following day, winning 3–2, although the Pirates had the tying run at third with two outs in the ninth before Oliver grounded out to end the game. Afterward, Murtaugh told reporters it wasn’t that the Pirates played poorly in getting swept but that the Reds played exceptional baseball. He compared them to the Brooklyn Dodgers “Boys of Summer” teams in the ’50s, a club that was fundamentally sound in all three phases of the game—pitching, defense and hitting. Pittsburgh held the high-powered Reds to just nine runs in three games but scored only three runs of its own, stranding 29 runners, including 12 in the deciding game. “If somebody had told me before this thing started that we’d hold the Reds to three runs a game and lose, I wouldn’t have believed them,” Murtaugh said.23

  Though disappointed, the Pirates’ fortunes were most definitely on the rise. While America continued to grapple with the myriad social issues that dominated the news, Stargell and his teammates were looking ahead to what would be an unprecedented run of success. But first, before the Pirates could mount a run at a second straight National League East crown and a longer run in postseason play in 1971, the big slugger had a little off-season business to take care of. He drove to the Hill District on a regular basis to work with youngsters and tell them the wrong way isn’t the only way. “I find out who they respect the most, the bad man,” he said in a 1970 interview. “He’s usually the strongest one, the one who smokes the most pot and takes the most pills. I tell the kids that I did almost all the things they’re doing, but somehow I always felt I wanted something more. I tell them they’re not chained and bound. There’s something they can do.”24 He had made similar remarks two years earlier when he first began working with youngsters in the Hill District. “They thought it was all uphill. I’d like to spend more time with them and show them how to get more out of life. I feel I owe it to them. If they learn I’m sincere, I know I can help them. This is the least I can do.”25

  Stargell’s other summer project took him much farther than the Hill District. His destination? Vietnam. He didn’t go alone. But Stargell was the unquestionably the biggest name among a group of major leaguers invited to tour the war-torn country in November 1970. He was joined by his Pirate teammate Grant, Braves knuckleballer Phil Niekro, two members of the new World Champion Baltimore Orioles—outfielder Merv Rettenmund and pitcher Eddie Watt—and the irascible Pirates broadcaster, Bob Prince. For 17 days, the group traveled around what was then called South Vietnam, looking to boost the spirits of U.S. servicemen and women who were hip-deep fighting in what had become a largely unpopular war that—along with deepening racial tensions—was polarizing the nation.

  Rettenmund had responded in the affirmative to a questionnaire sent out by the commissioner’s office months earlier, asking if he’d be willing to go on the tour. But he had forgotten about it until he received a phone call near the end of October inquiring if he would indeed give up nearly three weeks of his off-season. Roughly two weeks later, Rettenmund and the rest of the group met in the San Francisco Bay Area and took off from Travis Air Force Base. The first five-hour leg of the trip took them to Anchorage, Alaska, then another eight hours to Japan and five more hours to Saigon. “I’d never been on a plane for more than five hours,” Rettenmund recalled. “But the trip to Vietnam was just one flight after another—and all of them were long. But there was no sense complaining. The soldiers were doing it. And they weren’t going to be coming back in 17 days.”26

  The first night in Vietnam, the group was taken to an army hospital. They were told what types of things they could talk about—and what types of questions not to ask. You weren’t, for example, supposed to ask an injured soldier how he was doing. “They were in the hospital,” Rettenmund explained. “Obviously they were not doing well.” Most of the talk with the injured soldiers focused on where they were from—and when they were going home. “But even most of the injured ones would say they were going to re-up,” Rettenmund said. “Here they are, sitting there with a hole in their thigh and they want to re-up.” Although Rettenmund made a living playing baseball, it wasn’t hard for him or the others to put themselves in the place of those they were visiting. “I thought I’d be going over there [to serve] when it first started,” Rettenmund said. “But for some reason, I never even got a letter from the military. When you get over there and see what we saw, you just feel so bad. These guys had it so tough. They go out on patrols at night and they might not come back. It wasn’t like going 0-for-4.”

  Being in close quarters thousands of miles from home—and undergoing some stressful situations—brought the traveling contingent close in a relatively short period of time. Grant recalled flying through monsoons more than once—and one particular hairy occasion. “We were sweating that out pretty good,” he said. “We were in one of the oldest airplanes in the war. And we had to land somewhere in Cambodia. This was serious stuff. Eddie Watt was with us and he had taken a few drinks. He got pretty upset—he turned all kinds of colors an
d started sweating. Eventually we knew we’d get through the monsoons but we didn’t know if that plane would last.”27 Rettenmund said such incidents helped the visitors “learn about each other right away. Willie had that smile—he could make people talk and feel it ease. Being the big name player in our group made it easy on all the rest of us.” Grant said the Vietnamese people were most excited to see Stargell “because he was the largest person they probably ever saw. They called him the ‘beaucoup man’—much large man.”

  The group of ballplayers witnessed firepower—and devastation—beyond their comprehension. During their first night in Vietnam, they had to walk through a burn ward. Lying in a bed was a helicopter pilot. “You wouldn’t eat a steak if it was burned that bad,” Rettenmund recalled. “He was split up both sides so his skin could breathe. People told us not to spend too much time with him because he was going to die at any time. I felt so bad about that.” Later, Grant encountered one particular soldier who had sustained major injuries. The rest of the group moved on, but Grant stayed behind to visit a little longer. “They had his purple heart on his pillow, so that meant you were not going to last very long,” Grant said. “He had sat on a booby trap. I whispered in his ear that I was going to read some passages from a couple of books and I hoped that he would hear me.” Amazingly, Grant learned after returning to the states that the man did indeed hear him. The man and his family attended a game while Grant was pitching for Oakland and the man asked a clubhouse attendant if he could have a word with Grant after the game. “I went outside the clubhouse and there he was with his family,” Grant said. “He said, ‘I just had to come and tell you that I heard you.’ That was unbelievable.”

  Equally hard to believe, though, was the specter that was Vietnam. Rettenmund couldn’t get over the sheer mountain of raw materials waiting to be put to use by the U.S. military forces. “It was beautiful country, but from the air all you could see was miles and miles of tanks and jeeps all parked,” he said. “I think they had more equipment than soldiers to operate it. You could fly for miles and miles and see nothing but that equipment and bomb holes. Those bomb holes looked like swimming holes.” While they never were directly attacked during their visit, Stargell, Rettenmund, Grant and the others weren’t exactly on vacation in Vietnam. Up at the crack of dawn, the group would motor to the nearest military air base, hop on a helicopter, fly to their next destination—mostly hospitals and officers clubs—and hop off. “It was a tough 17 days,” Rettenmund said, “simply because we were going somewhere every day at least twice a day. They’d wash our clothes on the run—we’d put our clothes outside our door at night and they’d be back in the morning. We didn’t have much luggage.”

  One thing all of them packed was fear. “We were all kind of afraid,” Grant said. “We were in the Cambodia area and there was fire there. But they had us protected pretty good. One thing we were really worried about was Agent Orange—everyone knew about that.” It was the uncertainty about chemical warfare and other aspects of the fighting, Grant said, that weighed on the visitors’ minds. “Wars are not easy—they’re not easy to figure out,” he said. “You don’t know what’s going to happen in the next minute.”

  Stargell said virtually the same thing a few months after his return. “We were in enemy territory, flying in choppers with machine guns at the ready, and yes, I was afraid, to be very honest,” he told Jim O’Brien of the New York Post. “It was a different type of fear. At any given time, at any given moment, you could have your life taken from you.” Stargell said he had some doubts about making the trip and that, in fact, he had put it off for two years. “My family was against me going,” he said. “But I think we did some good and that made me feel good about the whole thing. It was some experience. I’ve been rewarded in many ways.”28

  The experience stayed with all of those who made the trip, and whenever any two of them would cross paths, they would reflect on their time together, far, far from home. “You talked about how fortunate you were not being in a war,” Grant said. “You talked about the complexity of it all, the family members those soldiers had to leave behind, many of them never to return, many of them battered and bruised and maimed. When you go into a war zone, baseball is the last thing that you think about in terms of what it means in life. You might think about maybe the soldier that you see might not be coming home when you leave there. It’s a whole different circumstance.”

  Stargell’s experiences in Vietnam certainly left an impression on him. That, combined with some complications that his oldest daughter, Wendy, began experiencing during the 1970 season, prompted him to want to make a greater contribution to his fellow man. Yes, he was providing top-shelf entertainment to a city that was starved for a winner, and his entry into the business world with Keys’ All-Pro Chicken restaurant showed that Stargell was serious about investing in the heart of an underprivileged—yet culturally rich—section of his adopted hometown. But when Wendy began having physical difficulties, a series of tests was completed and the verdict came down—Wendy was carrying sickle cell anemia, an inherited disorder that decreases the blood’s ability to deliver oxygen to the body. “A doctor said she could lead a normal life, but if she married a man who also had the trait, her children would stand a chance of having it, too,” Stargell told People magazine in December 1979. He knew nothing about sickle cell anemia in 1970 but began to research the disease in an effort to do something about it.29

  According to the Sickle Cell Society, the disease changes the shape of a substance within red blood cells known as hemoglobin, and these altered cell shapes can form blockages in veins and arteries. The result is a low blood count, or anemia, and this can lead to a number of other issues, including strokes, seizures, severe joint pain and tissue destruction.30 Research indicated that it’s vital that at-risk people—mostly those of color—undergo a simple blood test to screen for the disease. That test can tell if a person carries the sickle cell trait or actually has the inherited disease. According to the society, while sickle cell is a unique and difficult medical condition, it can be managed with the proper care.

  Little was known about the disease as the 1960s segued into the ’70s, but Atlanta Braves slugger Henry Aaron was already involved, lending his name to a benefit bowling tournament staged to generate funding for the Atlanta Sickle Cell Foundation. Stargell followed suit and began holding a similar tournament in Pittsburgh—a tradition that would continue for 10 years. He also began working with a group known as the Black Athletes Foundation, a national organization leading the effort to bring more screening opportunities to test for sickle cell anemia. “I’m worried about what is being done on this sickle cell thing,” he said in the fall of 1971, noting that some of his fellow athletes hadn’t followed through with promises to help the cause. “If I have to do it myself, I’m going to do all I can to fight this disease because it’s killing black folks the most.” Stargell said his desire to help was all just a part of his desire to give back. “I think the black ballplayer should be responsible to the black community. The people, in many ways, have helped to put him where he is. He should be visible to the kids in the ghetto. Sometimes just a smile and a word of concern from him can help change the life of a young brother toward the better.”31

  Later, the Black Athletes Foundation would morph into the Willie Stargell Foundation and serve as the receptacle for donated funds used to fund sickle cell-related activities, including research. Eventually, tax issues prompted Stargell to shut down the foundation, but his work for sickle cell continued unabated, as he later was named to serve on the Washington D.C.-based National Advisory Board.

  Although committed to pursuing what he envisioned as his heroic efforts outside the lines, Stargell—heading into spring training in 1971—remained focused on helping the Pirates finish what they started in 1970. In December, GM Brown pulled off the first of two key off-season deals, sending shortstop Freddie Patek, catcher Jerry May and pitcher Bruce Dal Canton to Kansas City for pitcher Bob J
ohnson, shortstop Jackie Hernandez and catcher Jim Campanis. Johnson made 27 starts and fashioned a 9–10 record with a 3.45 earned-run average while Hernandez did not hit much but played well in the field—particularly in the season’s final weeks. Then, in late January, with players just a few weeks away from reporting to Bradenton, Florida, Brown dealt outfielder and former NL batting titlist Matty Alou and pitcher George Brunet to the St. Louis Cardinals for pitcher Nellie Briles and outfielder Vic Davalillo. The trade opened up a ready-made spot in center field for Oliver to slide into, and Briles became one of the club’s most reliable pitchers that season, appearing in 37 games—including 14 as a starter—and winning eight of 12 decisions while posting a fine 3.04 earned run average. Davalillo, meanwhile, became a pinch hitter deluxe and a valuable spare outfielder.

  Most of the players remained quiet about their pennant chances, but Stargell wanted to set a tone even in spring training and the Bucs stormed out of the Grapefruit League gate, winning nine of their first 12. “A lot of people say that it doesn’t make any difference what you do in the games down here,” Stargell said, “but I don’t buy that. You go north losing more than you win in Florida, and you have to be thinking to yourself. This is the time and the place to create a winning aura.”32 The Bucs’ top brass was not shy, either.