One of Stargell’s great qualities was his desire to include everyone in the act. For example, Garner said Stargell would go out of his way to softly needle Omar Moreno, the ultra-quiet Panamanian centerfielder. “We’d get on the bus going to the ballpark and Willie always had a little something to say to Omar. ‘Omar, is your room OK? I don’t know if they treat Panamanians well here.’ When we’d go into Montreal, we used to drive along the river going out to Olympic Stadium. At one point along the way, there was a pole that stuck out of the river about five feet. It looked like a periscope if you just glanced at it quickly. One day, Willie said, ‘Hey Omar, that’s a Panamanian submarine over there, trying to attack the United States. Those dirty sons of guns, they’re lost.’ So every time we’d go to Montreal, we couldn’t wait to go on the bus and hear Willie make a comment about the Panamanian submarine that got lost trying to blow up the United States. That’s how Willie was.”
Stargell didn’t just help the regulars; he made sure that the little-used players were a part of the action, even though several Pirates said Tanner had an unwritten rule that young players should only be seen and not heard—unless they were spoken to. “He took the rookies on like they were his own kids,” Blyleven said. “I remember one time on a bus, Willie asked Dale Berra if he’d ever eaten a fish called carp and Dale said no. So Willie says, ‘Let me tell you how to cook it up. Go down to the lumber store and get this good piece of redwood, two inches high. This carp you’re gonna catch is two feet long. Set the oven at 400, then take the carp, clean it up, gut it and everything.’ Then he describes all the spices and herbs that Dale is going to put on this piece of redwood with the carp on top. He’s going on and on and Dale’s sitting there with his mouth open, listening to how he’s going to eat this carp. Willie says, ‘After you cook it for 20 minutes, you broil it and get it all good and crispy. And then when it’s all said and done, Dale, you take it out of the oven, you throw the carp away and eat the redwood.’ He had us rolling. It was unbelievable. It was Willie. And his love of life.”13
Nicosia, who platooned with Ott behind the plate in his first full season in the big leagues in ’79, said he had been around Stargell for several years during spring training before he made the big club, and initially he wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real. “When he talked to you, he made you feel special, and it didn’t matter if you were the guy emptying the trash or cleaning out the bathrooms or the president of the United States. He greeted you with a smile and treated you with respect. At first, it made you wonder. But the longer you got to know him, the more you realized this was not a façade. This is the real deal. That’s how he treated everybody. That’s how he became so revered. People just loved the guy.”14
Stargell’s influence was well known throughout the game; former Pirate players who had shared a clubhouse with Stargell told their new teammates and it became common knowledge. Rudy May, who grew up near Stargell’s boyhood home in Alameda and worked out with Stargell during the off-seasons before Stargell relocated permanently to Pittsburgh, said he imagined the influence Stargell had on the Pirates was similar to the influence Thurman Munson wielded over the New York Yankees clubhouse. “When I was first traded to the Yankees, it was really weird how Thurman and I bonded,” May said. “I was older than Thurman but it wasn’t very long before I looked up to him as a leader on the field. So then you start to talk to people in the game—players and coaches—and it starts to get around what a great influence Stargell was in all of his teammates’ lives, simply because he took a personal interest in all the guys on the ballclub. The manager has to have a leader in uniform on the field that he can go to to get things done with certain players. And Stargell was that guy. And everyone on every team knew that.”15 Although Stargell certainly was an understanding and sensitive man, Nicosia said the big slugger was not all smiles, handshakes and pats on the back. “A lot of people have asked me about Chuck Tanner and while he was our guy, he didn’t have to do a lot of discipline or say much to anybody. If you didn’t run a ball out, or if you were out late or not getting the job done on the field, you had to go through Stargell. He didn’t say a whole lot, but all he had to do was look at you from his end of the bench and you knew it was time to straighten up. That’s the kind of presence he had, both on the field and in the clubhouse. I’ll never forget this one day, I was in my second or third year and feeling kind of cocky; I was a big-league veteran. I hit a lazy fly ball and jogged around first base, and then turned and headed back toward the dugout at Three Rivers. And Pops is standing there. All he did was give me that look of his, like he was scolding one of his children. He never said a word. But I knew. That was the last time I ever did it. He would be standing at the dugout waiting for you.”
But Stargell would also stand up for the young players if they needed a boost. Nicosia recalled one incident early in spring training during his rookie season when he was catching Dock Ellis during batting practice. Ellis, like all pitchers at that stage of spring training, was throwing nothing but fastballs and after Stargell had touched him for four or five straight homers, Ellis surprised Stargell—and Nicosia—by unleashing a big breaking curve ball, which bounced in the dirt in front of home plate and caught Nicosia in the throat. “Stargell stopped and walked out to the mound, whispered something to Dock and turned around and walked back,” Nicosia said. “I didn’t know what was going on; I was so embarrassed that I didn’t catch the ball and I had this lump in my throat. About an hour after the workout was over, Dock came up to me and apologized—and he didn’t apologize to anyone. He said, ‘Hey, catch’—he didn’t even know my name—‘Sorry—Pop told me what I did out there wasn’t cool, so I apologize.’ That was the kind of stuff Stargell did. He didn’t make a big deal out of it, but here he is, telling a 10-year vet to apologize to a rookie. You had to be around him every day to realize what he meant to everybody.”
Stargell’s influence wasn’t confined to the clubhouse, bus rides to and from ballparks, offering needed direction to young players momentarily losing their focus or arranging for apologies from veteran players to rookies. On the field, he delivered—and did so in a big way in 1979. Even at an advanced age, he continued to be a force at the plate. “He was a tremendous hitter,” Parker said of Stargell. “He would have hit .300 every year if he hadn’t tried to hit for power. He was maximizing his swing just about every time a run was needed or we were behind. He knew hitting inside and out. His bat speed was tremendous. You could hear his bat go through the air like a broomstick from the on-deck circle.” Nicosia said it was most evident from behind the plate. “Nobody else had that swoosh sound coming through the zone. The sound the bat made from his shoulder to meeting the baseball was something else. You could hear the bat go through the zone.” Garner said if you walked into a ballpark during batting practice, you’d know when Stargell was hitting in the cage. “There was just a different sound coming from his bat,” he said. “A different bat speed. You’d get a louder, better crack of the bat when he hit the ball.”
Parker maintains that when he was negotiating his contract before the 1978 season, Pirates management indicated that Stargell—coming off two straight sub-par seasons—might not be part of the plan. “I told them me and Willie had a dream of being in a World Series together. If Willie’s not there, I didn’t want to be there. We had that kind of relationship. I ended up signing, and he stayed. It was poetic justice. And then in ’79 he won the MVP.”
It was more than his power and bat speed that continued to make Stargell a dangerous hitter, even at 39. It was his cerebral approach that played a major role in his success. Garner recalled an incident when the Pirates were playing in St. Louis against the Cardinals and Stargell was facing Darold Knowles, who relied more on guile in the form of a changeup and slider than velocity to get hitters out. “They bring Knowles in to face Stargell in the seventh inning with a couple guys on base and Darold strikes him out with a changeup in the dirt. I’m standing there and Willie walks back
and calmly puts his helmet in the rack. He says, ‘I’ll hit that changeup next time. I’ll hit it a long way.’ Well, it’s the ninth inning and Knowles is still in there and Stargell comes up. He throws a slider for strike one, then a fastball, and maybe a ball or two. Then here comes the changeup, six inches off the ground and Stargell hits it through an exit in the upper deck. It was one of the longest ones I’ve seen. Absolutely mammoth. Sure enough, it was that little changeup and Stargell hit it a mile.”
Nicosia remembered a similar episode in ’79 when the Pirates were facing the Mets and catcher John Stearns was calling pitches for right-hander Craig Swan. “The first pitch, Swan throws a fastball 88 miles an hour right down the middle and Stargell takes it for strike one,” Nicosia said. “Stearns asks him, ‘Will, what were you looking for?’ and Stargell looks at him and says, ‘It was not in my zone.’ Next pitch—fastball again, middle of the plate, he takes it for strike two. Stearns asks him, ‘Were you looking for something else again?’ and Willie says, ‘Not in my zone.’ He throws a ball, then throws a curve about ready to bounce—a 59-footer. But he’s a dead low-ball hitter, down and in. And he golfs it into the upper deck at Shea Stadium. He’s rounding the bases and comes down the third base line and says to Stearns, ‘Now that one was in my zone.’ That’s what Stargell would do—he’d look for a certain pitch in a certain zone and that was it.”
While the Pirates were fashioning a reputation as a rollicking, rabble-rousing group that knew how to cut up and have a good time, behind it all they were a seriously competitive bunch. Peterson, the general manager, said every player on that team was a fierce competitor. “They hated to lose. But when they did lose, it was still a happy-go-lucky type atmosphere. I think Willie played a part in that. He would say, ‘OK, we got beat today but we’ll win tomorrow.’ It wasn’t, ‘We got beat today and that’ll carry over to tomorrow.’ It was, ‘This loss was forgotten about and we’ll win tomorrow.’ It showed in the World Series when we were down three games to one. Baltimore had a good ballclub but the atmosphere around the clubhouse was, ‘We’re still gonna win this thing.’”16
It was a lesson that many Pirate players carried with them after they left the ballclub and went elsewhere. Ott, who stayed in the game and eventually wound up managing a team in the independent Can-Am League in New Jersey, said he attempted to pass that philosophy—the one he learned from Stargell—on to his players. “I tried to get them to understand that at the end of the game, it’s over. Once the last out is made, it’s history. And you can’t do anything about history. You have to look to the future. Put your heads in your lockers for five minutes, go over the things you did right and the things you did wrong. For the things you did wrong, you think about how you can correct them. For the things you did right, you try to remember them. But once you bring your heads out of your lockers, the game is over. If you bring yesterday’s game to today, an 0-for-4 can turn into an 0-for-8. Forget it—it’s history. It’s over and done. That’s basically what Willie taught me.”
Don Robinson, who won 14 games as a 21-year-old rookie in 1978 and played a key role on the ’79 club, said soon after his arrival in Pittsburgh, Stargell sat him down and offered some friendly advice. “He told me if I wanted to stay in the big leagues a long time, I had to be able to accept the failure part of the game. The success part, he said, was easy to accept. But things were gonna happen—you were gonna get whacked and beat up some time. It’s how you come back from those failures that determines how long you’re going to stay in the big leagues. I spent 15 years in the big leagues. I guess I took what he said to heart because I had never really thought of it that way. Never in my whole career up to that point had I gotten hit very hard. Maybe once or twice. But he was telling me it was gonna happen.”17
Pirate players to a man say that one of Stargell’s greatest attributes was his ability to somehow release pressure that his teammates might be feeling. In Game 1 of the 1979 National League Championship Series against the Reds, Tanner summoned the young Robinson from the bullpen in the bottom of the 11th with runners at first and second and two outs. The Pirates were holding a 5–2 lead that Stargell provided with a three-run homer in the top half of the inning, but Robinson was a bit amped and walked the first batter he faced to load the bases. “I was throwing hard,” he said. “Willie came over and said a few words and put a grin on my face and took all the pressure off. After that, I kind of relaxed. This was the most important game of my career and he made me start laughing. I’m sure I’m not the only one.” After the game, Stargell was asked what he told Robinson on his visit to the mound. “I asked him if he wanted to play first base and let me pitch,” he told the media. “He laughed. He knew I was only kidding him.”18
While Robinson came up through the Pirate system, Rooker was obtained in a trade in 1972 and recalled that Stargell was one of the first Pirates he met after joining the club. “It didn’t take long for Willie to make you feel comfortable, to make you feel like you were part of the team,” he said. “You didn’t really have to earn your way even though you wanted to prove you belonged there. He wasn’t the type of person who made you prove yourself.”19
When people reflect on the ’79 club and the success that it enjoyed and the way it endeared itself to Pirate fans—and baseball fans in general—perhaps the two most enduring figures are Stargell and the club’s manager, Tanner. A native of nearby New Castle, Tanner signed as an 18-year-old with the Boston Braves in 1946 and spent nearly a decade in the minor leagues before making his major-league debut in 1955 at the age of 26 with Milwaukee. In that game, he homered in his very first big-league at-bat, against the Cincinnati Reds’ Gerry Staley, pinch-hitting for future Hall of Famer Warren Spahn. Tanner’s homer tied the game, which the Braves eventually won 4–3. He wound up spending parts of eight seasons in the big leagues and finished with a .261 career batting average. But it was in the dugout where Tanner earned his reputation, managing four clubs over 19 years, including his hometown Pirates for nine of them. Being a Pittsburgh area guy, Tanner was well aware of Stargell when Tanner came over from Oakland to manage the Pirates for the 1977 season. “He was a star,” Tanner said of the slugger. “He was a quiet leader. He just went about his job. He was getting older, so I kind of babied him that first year. I didn’t want to kill him. I’d just give him days off here, days off there. He had bad knees and I wouldn’t overuse him. He never complained. He knew he couldn’t be in there every day. His legs wouldn’t let him. He was 37 years old.”20
Stargell had played sparingly in ’77—just 63 games—but Tanner liked what he saw. “I thought he did a good job that year. I was pleased. He made the other players better. They had a chance to watch him play and at the same time they got their rest. Against certain pitchers, I’d play guys they had good luck against. Some of the guys they had problems with, I’d play Stargell. I’d try to pick my spots, not just for Willie, but for Bill Robinson and others. I tried to use their pluses—and I used everybody.” And if Stargell wasn’t in the regular lineup, he always posed a major threat off the bench as a pinch hitter. Tanner would look for strategic spots to use him; he’d never insert him with first base open, for example, because the opposing pitcher would simply walk Stargell. “I put him in when people had to pitch to him,” Tanner said. “But people were afraid of him. They’d even want to walk him with runners at first and second.”
While Stargell’s playing time was somewhat limited in ’77, Tanner found a way to get his bat into 122 games in 1978, and Stargell responded with 28 homers and 97 RBIs. Tanner used a similar approach in ’79, as Stargell played in 126 games and produced similar numbers (32 home runs, 82 RBIs). “Down the stretch, I played him every game,” Tanner said of Stargell. “He said, ‘I feel good.’ I said, ‘That’s all I want to hear—you’re in there every day.’ And he said, ‘I’m ready.’ When I played him, he felt strong—he acted like he was 29. He appreciated the way I used him. I really believe that using him the way I did kept him feeling like
he was 29, not 39. That’s what made him so effective.” The two talked often; Tanner wanted to keep his finger on Stargell’s playing pulse. “I’d ask him, ‘How do you feel today, Willie?’ Sometimes he’d say, ‘I feel great.’ Sometimes he’d say his knee or his back or his shoulder was bothering him and I’d say, ‘All right—be ready in case I need you coming off the bench.’ We communicated a lot.” Tanner obviously appreciated Stargell’s leadership qualities, but said it was his ability to produce that was the key. “When the other players see that, it gives them more incentive to do well,” he said. “They realize he’s busting his tail. Here’s a guy 39 years old and he’s going out there and winning games for us. Parker was just as important in his own way, though. He was a leader, too—he led us with 95 RBIs and had 25 homers.”
It sounds like the hokiest of clichés, but the Pirates truly were a team that season, as Tanner had a wealth of players who could perform at multiple positions—and perform well. Players like Milner and Bill Robinson could play both first base and the outfield; the young Berra provided some middle infield depth, and even Garner saw action at shortstop in addition to second base and third base. Matt Alexander, an outfielder by trade, was used almost exclusively as a pinch runner; he scored more runs (16) and stole as many bases (13) as he had at-bats that year, but he appeared in 44 games. “It was just a well-rounded group,” Tanner said of his team. “You know that ‘We Are Family’ song? That’s what we really were. They all fed off one another. But Stargell was the quiet man on top.” Tanner did not discourage the “We Are Family” talk. “I loved it. That’s what you want—a family. They argued all day in the clubhouse and then went out there like a family and they played to win. That’s what we were like.”
Willie Stargell Page 18