By Matt Fortuna / MLB.com
http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/
06/18/10 10:00 AM ET
PITTSBURGH -- As the Pirates get set to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchise's third World Series championship this weekend, MLB.com is revisiting the 1960 Pittsburgh ballclub through a series of stories.Vern Law often has a message for Bill Mazeroski: You got lucky.
"I've told Mazeroski on more than one occasion, 'You wouldn't be in the Hall of Fame if [manager Danny] Murtaugh let me stay in,'" Law joked.
Instead of leaving Law in with the 4-3 lead in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, Murtaugh pulled him in the sixth inning. Elroy Face gave up two runs in that frame, and the Pirates and Yankees then engaged in an epic back-and-forth in the eighth and ninth innings, culminating in Mazeroski's lead-off home run over the left-field wall at Forbes Field that gave Pittsburgh a 10-9 win and its first championship since 1925.
"I wouldn't have given up all those runs, and we wouldn't even have hit in the ninth," Law said. "I joke with Maz, but he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, without question. He probably saved as many runs with his glove. He's the best second baseman I've ever seen. No one can turn the double play like him."
Such banter is what Law has taken away from those days 50 years ago, when the Pirates were stunning the baseball world and winning over a city that came out in droves to Forbes Field.
"You remember those things just like it was yesterday," said Law, who won the National League Cy Young Award that season. "I can remember practically every pitch that I threw. Every ballplayer dreams of playing in the World Series, and I was no different. That was the pinnacle of success for any Major League ballplayer, to not only play in a World Series but to win a World Series and to have a World Series ring."
For a fan, the pinnacle may have been watching it.
But George Coury, despite holding tickets to all four games of the series at Forbes Field, was not able to attend any of the contests beyond Game 1 because of his job as a factory cost accountant. So, after giving his tickets to friends and family members, he and his co-workers gathered around a radio inside their office on the afternoon of October 13, right before the workday's end.
"I think we heard it at like 5:08 or 5:10," Coury recalled. "We just stayed in the office and listened to the end of the game."
Coury, four years removed from college, remembered the city going "berserk," with traffic jams all over town. He quit his job a month later, his only regret being that he didn't do it sooner so he could have used his tickets and been one of the 36,683 screaming fans who witnessed Mazeroski's home run live.
Of course, those are the only ones who can say they saw it in person.
"A lot of people I've talked to remember the series, but not too many were at the game," said Face, who had three saves in the series. "They just remember the series."
Coury estimated that the crowds back then to be about 95 percent pro-Pittsburgh, with a small gathering of Yankees supporters sitting among themselves with little to no contact with the home fans.
It made for a far different atmosphere from today's, which Coury, now 75, has been able to experience as a 41-year Pirates season-ticket holder. He's missed just 18 games during that time."It was a lot different," Coury said. "The park was more quiet. There was crowd noise, but no created electronic music. Fans talked baseball, talked about the game more so than everything else.
"Today they'll talk about the game and 16 other subjects. At that time it was a national pastime. Everybody was interested. Crowds were more enthusiastic than I believe a Super Bowl or Stanley Cup or Final Four crowd are today. The fans were more oriented toward the game."
In 2000, Coury attended a Pirates fantasy camp, where he got to meet his favorite player, Dick Groat, along with what he estimated to be 12 or 13 members of that 1960 team, then celebrating the 40th anniversary of their title.
His first encounter was his most memorable.
"The first night I got there, Sunday at 10:30 at night, I'm going to my room at my hotel, and a man's in the elevator with me," Coury said. "I said, 'You're one of the 1960 Pirates. I recognize your face but not who you are.' He said, 'I'm Hal Smith,' and I said, 'You hit the real home run.' He started to cry."
"The next day somebody bumped into me in the cafeteria and knocked my tray over and he helped me pick it up. He appreciated me saying that, I guess."
Be it through their recognition of Smith -- whose three-run homer in the eighth inning of Game 7 turned a 7-6 deficit into a 9-7 Pirates -- or their recollection of the club's first title in 35 years, all who were around for the 1960 championship team remember the city in the aftermath.
"For me, personally, to win a World Series in my hometown was the greatest thrill in the whole world," said Groat, the 1960 NL MVP. "I was so proud of the city itself because we hadn't won anything in 33 years [the Pirates won the pennant in 1927 but were swept by the Yankees in the World Series]. They actually closed the tunnels because the city was so crazy."
Law remembers the team's champagne-filled celebration at a hotel near Schenley Park while he went on the air at KDKA.
"The celebration afterward got a little bit out of hand," Law said. "I don't know if you've ever had champagne squirted in your face, but it sure burns your eyes, so I decided I'd get out of there as quick as I could."
He immediately raced home after the radio show to join his neighbors less than 15 miles away in Monroeville and celebrate with cake and punch.
On Thursday, he and 13 family members will have arrived in Pittsburgh. They will celebrate Law and his wife's 60th wedding anniversary on Friday before the 50th anniversary celebration of the 1960 team.
And they all know just how special it will be.
"The Yankees could have very easily won the championship that year, but we also had 25 guys that had great years," Law said. "We went into the Series thinking we could win if we played our game, and it turned out we had a lot of blowouts. They hammered us pretty good after they got by our starting pitching, but we won all the close games."
"That was a thrill for me, and of course we won all three games that I pitched in," he added jokingly. "I didn't get credit for the last one because nobody could get anybody out."
Matt Fortuna is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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