Fewer than 100 people in the recorded history of recorded history can say they threw the final pitch of the World Series, and two of them are typically at or near PNC Park for any given game.
"[Steve] Blass and I talk about that all the time," Kent Tekulve was saying Wednesday night at PNC Park. "How many kids in America grow up throwing the tennis ball off the garage door imagining either, A) they hit the home run to win the World Series like Maz or B) they get the last out of the World Series?
"How many kids dream that dream, and we both actually had the ability or had the luck to be able to do it."
Not sure what turned the conversation to the World Series on a late May evening an hour before the Pirates would attempt to pull within seven games of .500, but I suspect it was the roomful of 1979 Pirates assembled right there in the news conference area.
Yes, it has been 35 years, which deserves to be said slowly and deliberately, don't you think?
Thir-ty-fiiive yeeeaars.
"Teke" got Baltimore's Pat Kelly to fly out to Omar Moreno to vacuum-seal the Pirates' last World Series title, and clearly "last" may be interpreted either way, in the sense of being the most recent, or in the sense of cold finality. It was just as accurately a pitch Teke threw to Eddie Murray an inning before that won it.
"Runners on second and third, two out, and we walked Kenny Singleton to load the bases and get to Eddie Murray," Teke said. "The good news is, at that point in time, I didn't know Murray was gonna be a Hall of Famer. He was just pretty good then. I was just makin' pitches. We made the right pitch. He hit the ball to warning track in right field, but he had to kind of reach out and extend for it, so he didn't get it all."
He got enough of it that it initially crossed-up Dave Parker, who thankfully, Wednesday night, was sitting not 30 feet from Tekulve.
"He hit a line drive to me, a carrying line drive," said Parker, at 62 a still regal presence as he fights off the early onset of Parkinson's. "I broke to my glove side, slipped, and almost fell. I recovered and managed to catch it. If I don't catch that ball, I'd have kept running right through the fence and on out into Baltimore somewhere.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/gene-collier/2014/05/22/Lumber-Company-reflects-on-Pirates-1979-Series/stories/201405220256#ixzz32deFzDmN
Former Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Omar Moreno shows off the World Series ring he won with the 1979 Pirates against the Baltimore Orioles before the baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday, May 21, 2014, in Pittsburgh. The Pirates pre-game festivities honored the last Pirates team to win a World Series. Photo: Keith Srakocic, AP
Phil Garner
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