Another year, another trip to the wall for Game 7 Gang

By Craig Smith
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/
Monday, October 11, 2010


Herb Soltman heads up the Game 7 Gang, the group that organizes the annual gathering at the Forbes Field wall in Oakland to commemorate Bill Mazeroski's home run that won the Pirates the World Series in 1960.
Justin Merriman Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Rick Gagliardo was too young to sneak a transistor radio into school to listen to his beloved Pirates beat the New York Yankees in the final game of the 1960 World Series.

"I was eight years old ... in third grade," he said. "So not only did I not hear the game, I've never heard a rebroadcast, nor ... have I ever seen a tape of the game."

That will change Wednesday when Gagliardo, 58, of Pinehurst, N.C., joins hundreds of other Pirates fans expected in Oakland to relive the magic of Game 7, in which second baseman Bill Mazeroski broke a 9-9 tie with a famous game-winning home run.

It will be a special moment for the Central Catholic High School grad when he parks his lawn chair near the plaque marking the spot where Maz's ball cleared the wall at Forbes Field and gets to hear a tape of the game played 50 years ago that day.

Eight members of the 1960 team are expected to attend. If the weather is good, organizers said they are expecting about 500 people to attend this year's event. The gathering usually draws 200 to 250 people, said Herb Soltman, of the Game 7 Gang. About 400 people attended the 40th anniversary in 2000.

Police said the event is well behaved and normally doesn't require a police presence.

On Tuesday, Pittsburgh City Council is going to recognize members of the Game 7 Gang for their work in preserving this tradition over the years.

"I grew up loving baseball. It's just been so tough the last 20 years," said Gagliardo, a semi-retired teacher who taught in Maryland, North Carolina and Saudi Arabia, and holds season tickets for the Steelers.

The walls of his "man cave" are covered with framed newspaper front pages of the 1960 World Series, and magazine covers and photos of Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell, he said.

Among the travelers who made the trek over the years: A father and son from Atlanta who jumped on a plane with little more than hope the event would be held; three brothers who came from Ohio to honor their father's 100th birthday; a Chicago businessman who convinced his boss he had to spend two days in Pittsburgh before a meeting in Philadelphia.

It may be the only gathering of sports fans in the country to commemorate a specific game, said Mark S. Dyreson, a Penn State University professor and author of "Mapping an Empire of Baseball: American Visions of National Pastimes and Global Influence, 1919-1941."

"Baseball especially appeals to memories and notions of nostalgia," Dyreson said.

Soltman, 75, of Scott was in the crowd at home plate that welcomed Mazeroski after his homer. He has attended the yearly pilgrimage to Oakland since 1992. Each year, when Soltman buys a day planner, he immediately turns to Oct. 13 and writes: "The Wall -- Noon."

''Two weeks before the 13th, I start praying to every god I know for good weather," said Soltman, a retired retail packaging distributor.

The tradition started in 1985 when Saul Finkelstein of Bellevue was having a bad day and decided that listening to a cassette recording of the game near where Forbes Field stood might cheer him up, Soltman said.

"So he went to the flagpole and sat and listened to the game," Soltman said. A small crowd joined him.

Finkelstein returned each year, and the crowds grew. Soltman was making a sales call in Fox Chapel when he heard a radio announcer talking about the gathering. "I slammed on my brakes, made a U-turn and headed straight for the wall," he said.

Joe Landolina -- 2 years old when Maz hit the homer and 12 when Forbes Field was demolished -- has gone to the Oct. 13 gathering since 1994. His wife and daughter think the event is silly, but he considers it "one of the last pure (sports) events that you can attend" without corporate sponsorship or commercialization.

Landolina, 52, of Squirrel Hill acknowledges his wife is right to characterize it as "just a bunch of old men listening to a tape."

A kinescope of the game recently was discovered in the California home of the late Bing Crosby, a part-owner of the Pirates in 1960, but organizers of Wednesday's gathering don't plan to include a DVD of the broadcast in future festivities. They prefer the old radio broadcast, Landolina said. Finkelstein passed away in 2004.

"I'd like to keep it that way," he said. "And at the risk of sounding corny, I think Saul would have wanted it this way."