The Pirates rolled to a 67–39 record by the end of July and at one time owned an 11½-game lead in the NL East. But they slumped badly in August, winning just seven of their first 22 games. By August 16, the resurgent Cardinals had pulled to within four games, but the Bucs rebounded with an 18–5 run and wrapped up the division title on September 22 by beating St. Louis 5–1.
Somewhat lost in the regular season’s final month was a game in Philadelphia against the Phillies on September 1. It was that night that the Pirates made major-league history by fielding an all-minority starting lineup. It wasn’t completely out of the blue; in a game at Connie Mack Stadium against the Phillies in 1967, the club started eight Latin or black players, with pitcher Dennis Ribant being the only white player. King wrote in his book Happiness Is Like a Cur Dog that Stargell got everyone’s attention that night in the clubhouse before the game and said, “Fellows, they will not be playing the National Anthem today. They’re gonna play ‘Sweet Georgia Brown.’”54 On September 1, 1971, though, there were no exceptions. Murtaugh’s lineup card read:
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
It wasn’t completely out of the ordinary, although it was unusual that the left-handed hitting Oliver—who had played mostly center field that year—would start at first base in place of Robertson against Phillies left-hander Woody Fryman. It didn’t take long for reporters at the game to notice that Murtaugh had fielded a starting nine consisting of all minority players and researchers concluded it was the first time that had happened since Jackie Robinson integrated baseball 24 years earlier. Bruce Markusen, in his book The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, wrote that several players certainly noticed the all-minority look to the lineup that night. “We had a loose group, [so] we were all laughing and hollering about it and teasing each other,” Blass said. “I thought that was a great reaction.” Oliver, though, was not even aware of the historic nature of the lineup until Cash mentioned it to him in the third or fourth inning. He said he didn’t think Murtaugh had the racial makeup of that lineup in mind when he wrote the names on the card that night. “I think Danny was just putting the best team on the field and he probably didn’t notice [the all-black lineup] until later. I didn’t know until the third or fourth inning.”55
While the Pirate players seemed most comfortable with the roster’s racial mix, the same could not be said for many of the hometown fans. Brown, the general manager, said he would hear about it during his public appearances. “There were bigots in Pittsburgh,” he said. “I would hear people say that the reason we couldn’t draw more people when we had all those good teams was that we had too many blacks. I remember going to a luncheon one day and the question/answer session was a major part of my talk. A guy in the back of the room stands up and says, ‘I know why you’re not drawing: you’ve got too many niggers.’ I said, ‘Let’s put it this way. Do you want me to get rid of Clemente?’ He said no. ‘Bob Veale?’ No. ‘Stargell?’ ‘Sanguillen? Oliver?’ No. I named all the blacks and he wanted me to keep them all. So I said, ‘I guess we don’t have too many.’ I didn’t see them as blacks. I saw them as black people who were good guys and could play baseball.”56
The Pirates’ win over the Cardinals on September 22 sparked the customary championship-clinching clubhouse scene, highlighted by the agitated Ellis dumping a small washtub filled with champagne and water on the head of the stately Clemente. “The old man got it, the old man got it,” Ellis kept repeating. Stargell, who had scored his 100th run of the season—the first time in his career he had ever reached that milestone—also went after Clemente with a bottle of the bubbly.57
Up next for the Pirates was a second straight trip to the National League Championship Series, this time against the San Francisco Giants. Pittsburgh, installed as a 6-to-5 favorite despite winning only three of 12 regular-season meetings with San Francisco, tabbed Blass to start the series opener but the Giants won 5–4. But in Game 2, Robertson—the young first baseman whom broadcaster Prince would occasionally refer to as “The Maryland Strongboy”—bludgeoned three home runs to go with one by Clines, enabling the Bucs to win 9–4 and earn a split in San Francisco. Meanwhile, over in the American League playoffs, Stargell’s boyhood friend from the Alameda projects and his former Encinal High School teammate Curt Motton drove home the tying run with a pinch-hit single that keyed a four-run seventh-inning rally and lifted Baltimore to a playoff series-opening win over the Oakland A’s. A 5–1 victory in Game 2 put the defending champion Orioles on track for their third straight World Series appearance.
The ever-unpredictable—and often volatile—Ellis made things interesting before Game 3, ripping Pirates management for what he viewed as substandard travel accommodations, both on the air and on the ground, during the trip to San Francisco. But Game 3 was even more riveting on the field, as Hebner—the young off-season grave-digger—put a nail in the Giants coffin by depositing a Juan Marichal screwball just over Three Rivers Stadium’s right-field fence, snapping a 1–1 tie in the eighth inning and giving the Pirates a pivotal 2–1 win. Right-fielder Bobby Bonds, who made a leaping attempt to flag down Hebner’s drive, told reporters afterward he missed it by five inches. Bonds and his teammates did not take the loss lightly. “Get the (bleep) out of here, you (bleep),” one Giant player told Press reporter Musick, who wrote that he “promptly got the (bleep) over to a small office where Giants manager Charlie Fox froze a used-car salesman’s smile on his wide Irisher’s face and allowed the words to leak from his mouth one at a time. Fox was more quotable than his players, at least for a family publication.”58
The Bucs wrapped things up the next day in a 9–5 win, getting key contributions at the plate from Hebner and Oliver—each of whom homered—and on the mound from Kison. The young right-hander allowed only two hits in 4⅔ innings after relieving a battered Blass, who surrendered eight hits and five runs in two innings. By the end of Kison’s stint, the Bucs had gained the upper hand and booked their tickets to the World Series for the first time since the magical 1960 season. “He’s ice water out there,” Murtaugh said of Kison. Oliver, meanwhile, who often played with a sizable chip on his shoulder, felt slighted because Fox ordered an intentional walk to Stargell—despite being 0-for-14 in the playoffs—in the sixth inning just after the Pirates had taken a 6–5 lead on Clemente’s RBI single. The walk put runners at first and second, and Oliver promptly lashed a three-run homer to put the game away. “I hate it when they walk someone to get to me,” Oliver said later. “I think I can hit, see.”59
The Pirates now turned their attention to Baltimore’s Birds, they of the four 20-game winners, the clutch-hitting Frank Robinson, slugging first-baseman Boog Powell and peerless third-baseman Brooks Robinson. The series opened in Baltimore, where the oddsmakers had installed the Orioles as 9–5 favorites and where hometown fans were justifiably confident that their club would polish off the Bucs for a second straight world title. Dave McNally, one of Baltimore’s four 20-game winners, would start for the home club against Ellis. Getting home runs from Don Buford, Frank Robinson and Rettenmund—Stargell’s traveling companion to Vietnam less than a year earlier—and a solid if not perfect pitching performance from McNally, the Orioles came from 3–1 down to post a 5–3 win in the opener. Baltimore collected 10 hits to just three for the Pirates, chasing Ellis in the third inning. After a rainstorm delayed things for a day, the misery continued in Game 2, as Baltimore parlayed 14 singles, seven walks and a Pirate error into an 11–3 beating, knocking out Pittsburgh starter Bob Johnson with one out in the fourth inning. If there was a silver lining, it was that Stargell’s long post-season hitting drought finally ended at 18 at-bats with a single in the seventh inning, but by then the Orioles we
re roosting on an 11–0 lead. Only Hebner’s three-run homer in the eighth stood between Baltimore starter Jim Palmer and a shutout.
The first two games seemed to substantiate what most of the experts predicted before the series—Baltimore clearly had the better ballclub. Jim Murray, the noted Los Angeles Times sports columnist, wrote after Game 2: “This World Series is no longer a contest. It’s an atrocity. It’s the Germans marching through Belgium. It’s the interrogation room of the Gestapo. It’s as one-sided as a Russian trial.”60
The Pirates finally made a series of it in Game 3, returning to Three Rivers Stadium, where they posted a 5–1 victory behind Blass’s complete-game three-hit gem. Pittsburgh was aided by—of all things—a missed sign that led to the game’s key hit. With the Bucs nursing a tenuous 2–1 lead in the seventh and Clemente and Stargell aboard, third-base coach Frank Oceak flashed the bunt sign to the slugging Robertson. But the big first baseman, not often called upon to lay one down, missed the sign and instead touched Orioles’ starter Mike Cuellar for a three-run homer that put the game away. Robertson learned of his missed sign as he crossed home plate and Stargell—there awaiting him—told him, “Attaway to bunt that ball.”61 Both Clemente and Stargell had seen the bunt sign, but Clemente wasn’t completely positive, given that Robertson hadn’t been given the sign all year, and he attempted to ask for time. But umpire Jim Odom rejected his request—thankfully for Robertson, his teammates and Pirate fans everywhere.
Game 4, played on October 13, had a historic tone to it, as it was the first night game in World Series history. It did not start out in promising fashion for the Pirates, as the Orioles mugged Bucs’ starter Luke Walker before he could work up a sweat, scoring three times in the top of the first inning. But the young Kison again turned in a masterful long relief appearance, holding Baltimore to only one hit while working 6⅓ innings. That enabled the Pirate batters to regroup and hammer out a 4–3 victory, squaring the series at two games apiece. Stargell, who claimed he’d been booed by Pirate fans in Game 3, had his best offensive game of the series, going 2-for-5 with a double and an RBI and he also scored once. Milt May, the young backup catcher, delivered the key blow—a pinch-hit single in the seventh inning that, he told Bing Crosby—one of the nation’s most beloved entertainers and also a member of the Pirate ownership group—“just fell in.” Crosby, who was on hand for the win, wasn’t buying it. “Fell in, nothing,” Crosby replied. “That ball was barkin’, bitin’ and screamin’ by the time it got out there.”62
That left the two teams to battle it out in a best-of-three for the title. For Game 5, Baltimore tabbed Game 1 winner McNally while the Pirates called on the versatile Briles, who delivered only the game of his life—a two-hit shutout as the Bucs took a 3–2 series edge with a 4–0 blanking of the O’s. The scene shifted back to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, with the Pirates needing only one win to wrap things up. They wouldn’t get it in Game 6, though, despite holding a 2–1 lead in the seventh inning, as Davey Johnson singled home the tying run off Giusti and Baltimore won it in the bottom of the 10th on a walk to Frank Robinson, Rettenmund’s single and Brooks Robinson’s sacrifice fly off reliever Bob Miller.
So it came down to Game 7, just as it did 11 years earlier, when the Pirates—again heavy underdogs—knocked off the vaunted Yankees on Maz’s once-in-a-lifetime, bottom-of-the-ninth game-winning homer. This time there would be no bottom-of-the-ninth heroics, only a classic pitchers duel between the clever Blass and the no-nonsense Cuellar. Earl Weaver, the Orioles’ crafty manager, tried to throw Blass off his game by complaining early on that the right-hander was violating a rule that required pitchers to maintain contact with the pitching rubber on the mound while delivering the ball to the plate. Blass said later that Weaver’s decision to come on the field and complain actually settled him down and helped him focus because had been a little out of sorts at the game’s outset.
The game was scoreless through three, and then in the fourth, Clemente—who had made the series his personal showcase, displaying for all the nation to see his splendid hitting, all-star fielding and other-worldly throwing arm—smacked a two-out homer on the first pitch he saw to give Pittsburgh a 1–0 lead. It remained that way through seven, with Blass limiting the Birds to just two hits. In the eighth, Stargell—dropped from the cleanup spot in the batting order for the first time all year due to his post-season slump—led off with a single. With Jose Pagan at the plate, Murtaugh called for the hit-and-run and Stargell took off with the pitch. Pagan lined a double to deep center and Stargell rumbled all the way around to score to boost the Bucs’ lead to 2–0. That play loomed most large in the bottom of the inning, as the Orioles finally broke through with a run against Blass and moved the tying run to third. But Johnson grounded out to end the threat and the O’s went down in order in the ninth, giving the Pirates a 2–1 win and the series championship, touching off a wild celebration that started on the field in Memorial Stadium and spread quickly to every corner of the greater Pittsburgh area.
The Bucs had gone all the way—again—and this time the hometown folks got carried away. What started as a celebration morphed into a small-scale riot as storefronts were smashed and stores were looted, at least three taxicabs were overturned and police reported a dozen rapes and more than 50 injuries. One estimate put the crowd that had made its way downtown at 100,000.63 The team plane arrived back in Pittsburgh about 8:30 P.M. and it took the team caravan 30 minutes to travel a mile from the freight depot—where the plane had landed—to the main portion of the old Greater Pittsburgh Airport, as well-wishers jammed the route. It wasn’t until 10:30 P.M. that the caravan traveled the 14 or so miles to reach downtown, as cars had jammed the Parkway West, parking in every direction as adoring fans fought to get a glimpse of their conquering heroes.
Stargell had a somewhat forgettable series, going 5-for-24 with just one extra-base hit—a double—and one RBI. And that came on the heels of his 0-for-14 performance in the NLCS. But he did walk seven times and scored three runs against Baltimore, including what proved to be the series’ winning run. Brown, the club’s GM, would say years later that Stargell’s performance in the clubhouse after those World Series games was among the classiest he’d ever seen in all his years in baseball. “He did nothing in that World Series,” he said. “But after every game, his locker was surrounded by the media. And Willie never retreated. He didn’t hide. He stayed and answered every question, until the last dog had died. He never alibied. He never gave excuses. He answered them all in the most gentlemanly fashion.” Brown said there was almost a sense of poetic justice that Stargell would score what proved to be the winning run on Pagan’s double. “I thought it was payback for him being such a class guy,” he said.
For Clemente, the ’71 Series was vindication of sorts, as he finally received the accolades he felt he had been unjustly denied for well over a decade. He hit a blistering .414 with two doubles, a triple, two home runs and four RBIs and walked away with the Series’ Most Valuable Player award. He showed his skills off the field as well. King, the Pirates’ broadcaster, recalled being in a Baltimore hotel elevator with his wife the night before the series opener and seeing Stargell and Clemente together in the same elevator. “Roberto says, ‘Willie, when we get off here, you go to your room if you have to, but come over to my room—I want to talk to you.’” A year or so later, King asked Stargell about that incident and he said Clemente told him that his first time in the World Series, in 1960, he was young and the flurry of excitement and all the publicity made the pressure seem more extreme to the point where it wasn’t the same sort of a game. Clemente told Stargell he had trouble handling that, and although he got a hit in every game, he didn’t think he performed particularly well. He told Stargell not to try to do too much and that because he’d been through it before, he would carry the load. “Well, Willie didn’t have a good World Series that year because he was hurt,” King said. “But Stargell really appreciated that a guy like Clemente would take the
time to discuss that with him. And he got that big hit and scored the winning run in Game 7.”
Although Stargell fared poorly in the postseason, he had figured he was in a good position to take home an award of his own—the National League’s Most Valuable Player award. He had carried the club through the first half of the season with power numbers of record proportions, and finished his first full year at Three Rivers Stadium with an eye-popping line of 48 home runs, 125 RBIs, 104 runs scored and a .295 batting average. But when the ballots were counted, the Cardinals’ Joe Torre was voted the league’s top player and Stargell was the runner-up. Torre, who received 21 first-place votes to just three for Stargell, certainly had MVP-worthy numbers, as he smacked 24 home runs and led the league in three offensive categories—hits (230), average (.363) and RBIs (137). But Stargell’s Bucs finished ahead of the Cardinals in the NL East and the Pirates slugger was surprised he didn’t win it. “I feel I deserved it,” he told a reporter after the voting. “I’m basing my thoughts on the fact that I did everything I set out to do and we won the World Series.” Stargell harkened back to the previous season when Billy Williams, Tony Perez and Johnny Bench all enjoyed standout seasons, but Bench earned the MVP award because many believed he played the key role in leading the Reds to the NL West title. “Now everybody says if the player does well day in and day out, he deserves it,” Stargell said. “I was under the impression that if a fellow had a big year and his team got into the division playoffs, he would win the MVP. I thought I had the credentials.”64
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