By Jenifer Langosch / MLB.com
http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/
06/18/10 10:00 AM ET
PITTSBURGH -- As the Pirates celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchise's third World Series championship this weekend, MLB.com is revisiting the 1960 Pittsburgh ballclub.Quite frankly, Pittsburgh needed the 1960 Pirates.
Mayor-turned-governor David L. Lawrence had been actively facilitating a rebirth of the city since the nation had come out of World War II. There were serious smog problems to battle, crumbling infrastructure to address, frequent river flooding issues to combat.
On the sports side, Pittsburgh's two predominant professional sports franchises -- the Pirates and the NFL's Steelers -- had enjoyed only minimal success since the end of the war a decade and a half earlier. By 1960, the Steelers had only made one playoff appearance. As for the Pirates, they were a dismal 616-923 in the previous decade.
But as the 1950s progressed, so, too, did the city. The Pittsburgh renaissance featured myriad urban renewal projects, and the city began to thrive.
And -- with a swing at 3:37 p.m. on October 13, 1960 -- the Pirates capped that renaissance.
"That 1960 Series was that symbolic civic cement," said Robert Ruck, a University of Pittsburgh lecturer and local sports historian. "Pittsburgh had shown its ability to rebuild, but it still needed something psychologically that announced to the world that we were back. I think the 1960 Series and playing the Yankees did that."
While Bill Mazeroski's home run off Ralph Terry's pitch squared the nation's attention on the growing Steel City, Pittsburgh had forged its special bond with this particular Pirates club six months earlier.
It began, at least as shortstop Dick Groat tells it, on April 17. It was a Sunday, the final game of a four-game series against the Reds. With 16,196 in their Forbes Field seats to watch, the Pirates scored six times in the bottom of the ninth to stun Cincinnati with a 6-5 win.
"That kind of stirred up the confidence right from the go," recalled Groat. "That was the way that team won games all year. It just grows and grows and grows and grows to where you think you're not supposed to lose."
The Pirates would go on to win 41 games in come-from-behind fashion that year. They won 11 games in which they trailed at the start of the seventh inning. The city, captivated by the comebacks, was drawn in.
"It was the way they were winning," said Ruck, who moved to Pittsburgh during the summer of 1960. "There was the sense maybe this team could be something special."
Once Pittsburgh fell in love with its baseball team, the excitement only grew as the club finished out the season with 42 wins in its last 64 games to run away with the National League pennant.
Still, standing between the Pirates and their first World Series title since 1925 were Casey Stengel's vaunted Yankees. New York was the obvious favorite, though human nature has an affinity for the underdog, and the matchup evoked such rooting interests.
Quickly, though, the nation's hope that underdog could hold its own shifted into the reality that it might win. After the Pirates won Game 5 to move within one of a championship, Pittsburgh sat poised to celebrate."You could walk down the street and hear people's radios going," said Elroy Face, who saved the team's first three Series wins. "I came home from New York when we were leading 3-2 and 1,500 people were in my yard waiting. I was surprised. I had to get to the upstairs window to thank them for coming."
And this was before they won. This was before Mazeroski's Game 7 game-winning homer sent Pittsburgh into a frenzy. This was before officials had to shut the tunnels entering the city because of the volume of traffic, before bars ran out of liquor, before street cars were stuck because of all the confetti.
It was before Pittsburgh had a victory in a baseball game to announce that the city was back.
"It gave the city a tremendous boost," Groat said. "I think it pleased the whole country to see an underdog come out of nowhere. It was uplifting certainly to the city, but I think people in general starting respecting Pittsburgh."
"As a blue-collar industrial city, there was that sense that you're not quite up to the level of style or cultivation of New York City," added Ruck. "When you win something, you want to beat the best. There was no question that the Yankees were the team in baseball. There was an extra sense of accomplishment."
The World Series championship stands as the third of five the Pirates have captured in the franchise's 123 seasons. Some will argue that it was the biggest and most rewarding because of how it was won, who had to be defeated and what type of boost it provided to a rebuilding effort.
Mazeroski's home run lives with Franco Harris' "Immaculate Reception" in a 1972 NFL playoff game as the two most enduring sports moments in Pittsburgh's history. Fans still live Mazeroski's homer every year, too, gathering at what remains of Forbes Field to replay the broadcast and relive the joy each October 13.
"The Pirates had won a couple World Series after, but the people, they just gravitated to the 1960 team," recalled Vern Law, the winning pitcher in Games 1 and 4. "Even today, a bunch will go down in October where the old wall was and point to where the ball went over the wall. I don't know of any other championship team that has that experience, or has people do those kinds of things."
That's likely because it was a championship for the city and its people as much as it was for a team.
"I can't even describe what it meant to the entire city," said Groat, who grew up in a Pittsburgh-area suburb. "The '60 Series gave this city as much pride as any championship that has ever come to this city."
Jenifer Langosch is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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