Sports Legends Selling Relics? Hey, That Glove Really Is Gold

By RICHARD SANDOMIR

http://www.nytimes.com

October 12, 2013

There comes a time when a sports legend must decide whether to hang on to this championship ring and that game-worn jersey, or to cash in on the memorabilia market, which can fetch stunning sums for rare and historic artifacts.

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Hunt Auctions

The uniform Bill Mazeroski wore as he hit a title-winning home run will be auctioned.

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Associated Press

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Bill Mazeroski, rounding third after winning the 1960 World Series with a home run against the Yankees, agreed to sell his uniform, a glove and other personal artifacts.

Bill Mazeroski, the former Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman best known for his World Series-winning home run against the Yankees in 1960, was the latest to choose to purge his house of decades-old keepsakes. This summer, as the Pirates were heading to the playoffs for the first time in 21 years, he received an offer from the Hunt Auctions company to sell the uniform and many other items cluttering his basement.

“My wife, Milene, goes along with me, that we might as well get rid of it,” he said by telephone. “One of our sons said, ‘Ah, it’s hard to get rid of,’ and the other said, ‘O.K., get rid of it.’ ”

The Mazeroski auction heads into a memorabilia market in which Chris Chambliss recently received a combined $121,874 for the home run bat he swung, and the ball he hit, to win the 1976 American League Championship Series for the Yankees, and in which Mike Eruzione, the captain of the 1980 United States Olympic hockey team, sold the “Miracle on Ice” uniform he wore during the defeat of the Soviet team for $657,250.

Sam Snead’s family sold the claret jug he received for winning the 1946 British Open for $262,900. And the son of Angelo Dundee, the boxing trainer who died last year, received $385,848 for the boxing gloves Muhammad Ali wore when he beat Sonny Liston in 1964.

Dan Imler, a vice president at SCP Auctions, said that some former athletes regarded their game-used wares with sentimentality.

“But to a lesser extent than most people think,” he said. “It’s not that they don’t value the memories or the accomplishments. They just don’t equate the objects to their achievements.”

And if they want fans to see their wares, few have the opportunity to put it in a museum of their own, as Yogi Berra did.

Mazeroski, 77, had kept the uniform and the socks he wore when he hit the home run 53 years ago Sunday in a cedar chest at home in Greensburg, Pa. Once, years before he received the offer from Hunt to sell his collection, he opened the chest to see if moths had damaged it. Seeing the uniform was intact, he closed the chest again. He did not weep over the Champagne-stained flannel even though he is a softy; in 2001, he broke down as he tried to deliver his Hall of Fame induction speech. But those tears were ignited by memories, not memorabilia.

Now, with nearly all his trove gone, Mazeroski said, “I won’t miss it because it hasn’t been a part of my life.”

Although Mazeroski said he did not need the money, he was thinking of his sons.

“I want to see the joy on their faces when the boys get it,” he said.

Mazeroski’s sons could benefit considerably from next month’s auction, at the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. The uniform alone could sell for $250,000 or more, said David Hunt, the president of Hunt Auctions, which displayed the uniform last month at its memorabilia store at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. In all, the auction will include more than 200 Mazeroski items.

“It’s not like there was a master plan to do this a year ago,” Hunt said. “But in June, I got a chance to talk to Bill and I said, ‘Do you know what happened to the jersey?’ And he told me where it’s been. I told him if he wanted to evaluate it, I’d be glad to.”

In deciding to sell his collection, Mazeroski dealt with some of the personal issues and business forces that other former players and families face. Some need the money or areestate planning. Others want to finance their grandchildren’s educations or vacations, and some no longer want to house the old uniforms, caps, bats, balls and trophies — sometimes, they do not have the room or are moving to smaller quarters. And the costs of storage, preservation and insurance can loom large as the artifacts rise in value.

Bob Cousy, the Boston Celtics great, kept his memorabilia in a somewhat haphazard state in the cellar of the house he has lived in for 50 years in Worcester, Mass. He did not see his collection much except to take people downstairs to visit it. But his daughters, both schoolteachers, needed money, one to pay off a mortgage and another to help with her children’s college tuition.

So he sold nearly all of his collection in 2003, netting about $160,000 for each daughter.

“That was a much greater priority than hanging on to it,” Cousy said. “It was a godsend.”

Robin Roberts, the Hall of Fame pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, was quite fond of his collection, and he used the artifacts to decorate his homes in Pennsylvania and later, Temple Terrace, Fla. But when he died in 2010, his four sons were left to wonder what to do with it. Sell it? Divide it in an N.F.L.-style draft? Very quickly, they realized that they did not want the responsibility of keeping it.

Roberts’s memorabilia included a ball signed by Babe Ruth at the Phillies’ spring training camp in 1948, Roberts’s rookie season. That raised a serious question: “How do you split that ball four ways?” Robin Roberts Jr. said in an interview. And who would get the oil portrait of their father? His 1952 player of the year award? His Hall of Fame ring and replica plaque? His 1952 All-Star Game bat?

“I told one of my brothers, ‘This stuff is for collectors; they’re serious about it and they want to display it in their houses,’ ” Roberts said. “I’d have loved to have kept stuff and pass it on to my son, but all I would have done is get a giant safe deposit box for it.”

Ultimately, the brothers shared $300,000 from an auction.

As the oldest child of Warren Spahn, the winningest left-hander in baseball history, Greg Spahn inherited a vast collection.

“I remember he sold a 1957 World Series jersey when I was in college, and when I found out, I threw a fit,” Spahn said. “I think he got $1,200 and gave me the money. But I told him, ‘This stuff will be worth a lot more later.’ His attitude was that he didn’t care — they were just artifacts of his career.”

Indeed, Spahn created a personal category of collectibles: he kept one ball from each of his 363 wins.

Spahn waited a decade after his father’s death in 2003 to sell the memorabilia that had been stored in several places.

“I didn’t have the time to catalog and preserve it,” he said from his ranch in Broken Arrow, Okla. “I have five kids. How would I split a Cy Young Award five ways or four gloves five ways? I would regret turning it over to them and turning it into a big fight. So I just decided that money was more splittable than memorabilia. And I do have three more kids to put through college.”

Spahn’s 1957 Cy Young Award sold for $110,000 in an auction in July. His Hall of Fame induction ring brought $48,000.

“I have no regrets,” Spahn said. “I don’t have a security problem any longer, and I don’t have the fact that the balls and gloves are not being properly stored.”

It Went All The Way!

And so did Pittsburgh's Pirates when Bill Mazeroski swung his bat and hit the ball over Forbes Field's distant left field wall. Yankee hopes were dead, the seventh game was over and the Pirates had won their first World Series in 35 years.

By Roy Terrell
Sports Illustrated
October 24, 1960
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/

Credit: Image by Corbis - Bettmann

In one of baseball's most exciting moments, Bill Mazerowski hit the 9th inning home run in the 7th game that defeated the New York Yankees for the 1960 world championship. In doing so, Mazeroski became the first player in World Series history to to hit a game ending home run in the seventh game.

AN UNFORGETTABLE FINISH FOR AN UNUSUAL SHOW

The 1960 World Series ended just a week ago, but the Great Debate it engendered is still raging everywhere except, possibly, on TV. The question: Did the Pirates win on their remarkable determination and higher over-all level of skill, or did the Yankees lose through an amazing sequence of mischances?

The answer to Part 1 of the question is yes, and the answer to Part 2 is no. Certainly the Pirates got some breaks (see opposite page), and they took advantage of them, as a good ball club will. But the Yankees got breaks, too. They had to face perhaps the best Pirate hitter, Bob Skinner, in only two games; he missed the others because of an injured thumb. Dick Groat, the National League batting champion, was still recovering from a broken wrist. If there was one bad hop in the Series, there were a dozen for each team, a fact Casey Stengel admitted after it was all over. If a Bill Skowron home run curved foul, so did one by Vernon Law. The Pirates had breaks, the Yankees had breaks, and breaks have a way of evening out.

Hardly anyone has mentioned what really happened: the Pittsburgh Pirates, playing the same kind of baseball they played all year, beat a New York Yankee team which was playing over its head. If anything, the Pirates were subpar. With a season-long team batting average of .276, they were able to hit only .256 in the Series—and that, more than anything else, is a tribute to the ability of Whitey Ford. The Pirates were shut out only four times all season—never by Warren Spahn or Lou Burdette, not by Don Drysdale or Sam Jones or Mike McCormick or Larry Jackson—yet Ford did it twice in two attempts.

Not once could a Pirate pitcher throw a complete game, not even Vernon Law, who completed 18 during the regular season, or Bob Friend, who completed 16. Law beat the Yankees twice in three tries and he made them look bad, but Law was pitching with an injured ankle and he needed help in all three games from Roy Face. What happened to Friend is anyone's guess; during the season he was as good a pitcher as Law, sometimes better, yet the Yankees drove him out three times. Vinegar Bend Mizell failed, too. Harvey Haddix pitched very well for six innings, which is the way Haddix pitches. As for Face, he saved three games, and the surprising thing is that he failed to save a fourth, for Roy Face is the best relief pitcher in the business. So the Pirate pitching was generally subpar, too. But the Pirates won in seven games.

During the 1960 season the Yankees batted .260. They set an American League home run record of 193, but only one Yankee hitter was over .300 ( Moose Skowron at .309), and not another was over .284. Yet in the World Series the Yankees hit .338 as a team. Elston Howard was .462, John Blanchard .455, Mickey Mantle .400, Skowron .375, Bobby Richardson .367, Tony Kubek .333, Yogi Berra .318. Richardson, in particular, was sensational. A .252 hitter with one home run and 26 runs batted in for the year, Richardson set records for runs batted in during a game (six) and during a Series (12). As a team the Yankees set records for most hits (91), most runs (55), most RBIs (54) and highest batting average. It was a spectacular performance, but if anyone thinks this is the way the Yankees play baseball all the time he has not seen much of them in the last two years.

Until the final game, it was a World Series lacking in many things. The three games which the Yankees won were so one-sided that pity for the Pirates was the predominant emotion; there was no suspense at all. If suspense existed in the three early Pirate victories, it was there merely because of an awareness of what the Yankee hitters might do, not because of what they did. The Yankees, once behind, seemed content to stay there.

There were only two stolen bases, both by the Pirates in the first inning of the first game. Bill Virdon's wonderful catches and a superb job at third base by Don Hoak supplied most of the fielding excitement; the two shortstops made a total of five errors, and the two fine second basemen had nothing but routine chances.

Then came the seventh game.

It was not a great game, in the sense that a no-hitter or a 2-1 victory in 11 innings is. In some ways it was not even a good game. There was only one error, which did not affect the outcome, but there were several bad plays by both infields, and the pitchers on both sides made far too many mistakes. Yet it was one of the memorable games of World Series history. The Pirates won 10-9, and no one who was there will ever forget it. For dramatic impact, for climax piled upon climax with never an anticlimactic moment, it was unique. There are many who say it was the most exciting baseball game ever played. Some say it was the most exciting game that ever will be played.

The Pirates were ahead 4-1 in the sixth inning when Danny Murtaugh decided to take Vernon Law out. Rocky Nelson had hit a two-run homer off Bob Turley in the first inning and Bill Virdon had singled to center off Bill Stafford. Bill Skowron homered in the fifth for New York. Now in the sixth Law had given up a single and a walk, and it was apparent with each pitch that his ankle was hurting. So Murtaugh patted Law on the shoulder, took the baseball from his hand and called in ElRoy Face.

But now the Yankees caught up with Face. Mantle singled, and a run scored. Berra, whipping his bat around in the strange, violent arc which has turned so many previous World Series games upside down, hit a tremendous fly ball, up, up into the upper deck in right field. The ball was fair by inches, and when it came down the Yankees were ahead 5-4.

In the eighth the Yankees scored twice again off Face on a walk to Berra, singles by Skowron and John Blanchard and a double by young Cletis Boyer into left field. The score was now 7-4, and this seemed to be the end. But the Pirates would never have been in the World Series in the first place if they did not specialize in coming from behind in the eighth and ninth innings. That is the way the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates won ball games all year.

Gino Cimoli batted for Face and singled into right field. Bill Virdon hit a hard, skipping ball down to shortstop and, on the Pirate bench, Danny Murtaugh saw the double play coming, and he winced. But as Kubek moved into position to field the ball, it took a last quick hop over his outstretched glove and hit him in the throat. Tony fell backwards to his right, the ball dropped six or eight feet to his left, toward second base, and by the time Richardson got there to pick it up both Cimoli and Virdon were safe.

Kubek went off to the dugout and into the hospital with a bruised larynx, and up came Groat with two men on base and no one out. Perhaps the bad hop was the key moment of the game, the big turning point. In any event, it was a tremendous break for the Pirates—and they exploited it.

Groat lined a hard single into left field, scoring Cimoli and knocking Bobby Shantz out of the game. Jim Coates came in to pitch. Skinner bunted the runners along. Nelson flied out. Clemente, swinging wildly at bad pitches, topped a weak dribbler down toward first base. Skowron was playing deep, and he was slow getting to the ball; when he finally picked it up and turned to throw to first, there was no one there. Coates had failed to cover, and whether the Yankees could have caught the flying Clemente or not, they never had the chance. If this was a break for the Pirates, and it was, the Yankees—not Fate—provided it. Virdon scored, and Groat went to third.

It was then that Hal Smith hit his home run. Not many people know much about Hal Smith. They confuse him with the other Hal Smith who catches for the Cardinals, and they forget that this Hal Smith won half a dozen games for the Pirates this year with home runs and that he hit .295 while sharing the catching job with Smoky Burgess over the season. Coates worked the count to two-and-two and then threw a good fast ball across the plate just below the belt. Hal Smith swung and the ball was gone. It went over the left field fence just to the left of the 406-foot sign, and Berra, who was playing out there, did not bother to chase it very-far. He knew it was gone, too.

This caused quite a bit of noise in Forbes Field. It lasted while Groat danced hilariously across the plate, and it grew louder as Clemente came leaping down the line like a kangaroo. It grew to an indescribable ear-splitting confusion of sound as Smith stomped on the plate too, a huge grin crinkling his face into a hundred happy lines that stretched back to Kansas City and Quincy and Ventura and Twin Falls and all the places in baseball where he has been.

This should have been the ball game, for here was Bob Friend ready to keep the Yankees down.

Not the seventh-day Yankees. Richardson singled, a little looper into left. Dale Long, batting for Kubek's replacement, Joe DeMaestri, singled hard into right, and Murtaugh took Friend out. Harvey Haddix got Maris to pop out, but then Mickey Mantle came through with a single into left center field which drove in Richardson and sent Long around to third. Stengel sent in McDougald to run for Long. It was then that the curious 1960 Series produced its most curious play.

Berra swung and hit a hard ground ball down the first base line. Nelson was there; he gloved it, picked it up and stepped on first base for the out. Then he straightened up, drew back his arm to throw down to second to complete the double play—and suddenly realized there was no reason to throw, for Mantle was standing within a few feet of him. Nelson is a good ballplayer, but Mantle is younger and his reflexes are quicker. He dived safely back into first base, eluding Nelson's frantic stab, and McDougald scored. The Yankees had tied up the game—and Pittsburgh, unable to believe that such a thing could happen, was stunned. Had Nelson tagged Mantle for the double play, the Series would have been over. Break or brilliance? Both.

When Bill Skowron ended the Yankee half of the ninth by grounding to Groat, Fate truly intervened. Fate's particular Pirate, Bill Mazeroski, came to bat. He had produced the deciding margin in two earlier Pirate victories, with a two-run homer in the first game, which Pittsburgh won 6-4, and a two-run double in the fifth game, which Pittsburgh won 5-2. He let one of Ralph Terry's fast balls go by. Then he hit the next one over the left field fence.

There was noise in Forbes Field then, too, and it went on for more than an hour. Mazeroski took off his cap and swung it around his head as he went leaping and frolicking around the bases. The fans spilled out of their seats and mobbed the Pirates, especially Mazeroski, who had to fight his way to home plate. A man ran out with a spade and dug up home plate, which may be hanging over some mantel in Pittsburgh right now.

Anyway, the pennant is in Pittsburgh, and the World Championship, too. It was fitting that the Pirates should win in the ninth and that they should come from behind. The only irony is that the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the New York Yankees with home runs, for the home run is a Yankee weapon, not theirs. But Pittsburgh is a good baseball team, and it makes use of what it has—pitching, defense, line drives to the opposite field. A bit more courage than most, a little more hunger. So why not home runs, too? The important thing is to save them for when they count. The Pirates had been saving those last three for 35 years.

A KEY MOMENT OF THE BIG GAME came in the Pirate eighth when Bill Virdon hit a hard ground ball to shortstop. It hopped off a spike cut in the infield (not a pebble) and struck Tony Kubek a wicked blow in the throat. Kubek went down, the ball bounced away and both Virdon and Gino Cimoli, the Pirate runner on first base, were safe. Down 7-4, the Pirates went on to score five runs in the inning on singles by Dick Groat and Roberto Clemente and the tremendous clutch home run by Hal Smith.


Find this article at:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1071904/index.htm

Memo From The Publisher

Sidney L. James
Sports Illustrated
October 24, 1960
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/

Danny Murtaugh and Bill Mazeroski celebrates the Pirates' championship.

There hardly can be a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED reader who does not know that we picked the Pirates to beat the Yankees—against the gamblers' odds and against the best advice of many readers themselves, bless 'em, who don't mind giving it. And hardly a man is now alive who doesn't know that the Pirates did that which we said they'd do.

For Pittsburgh's victory SPORTS ILLUSTRATED can take no credit. That belongs to the Pirates, along with all the cheers. But while the corks were popping last Thursday in a Forbes Field dressing room we raised a toast in our own office to Roy Terrell. In Pittsburgh at the time, he was spared a response, for which he no doubt is grateful, since he is that contradiction in terms, a modest Texan. He well deserved the toast, however. In the front line of our baseball coverage all season long, he drew a close bead on the Pirates in spring training and then kept it on them until Mazeroski drew his own on the last pitch of the season.

Here are some of the things he wrote in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED:

April 11 - "The Pirates are an unusually sound defensive team, with adequate speed and sharp, line-drive hitting. They are an extremely tough club to beat in a close game. They seldom scare an opposing pitcher to death but they give hardly anything away; they hang in there and eventually they beat you."

May 30 - "To play against them is torture. They protect the plate, they slice doubles into the opposite field, they bounce singles over your head off the hardest-packed infield in all baseball. And then along about the 27th inning they score a run somehow, and the ball game is over. So you go home and sleep a couple of hours and get up and have to face it all over again. It is very frustrating."

October 3 - "No one should count on seeing a seventh game; the Pirates will win in six, maybe even five—no matter what the bookmakers said. The Pirates have been ignoring the odds all year."

So Terrell, one might say, was wrong. It took the Pirates seven.

Of course we reserve the right to be wrong. We only hope that most of the time we're about as wrong as Roy Terrell.

Only The Pirates

Written by Pat Lackey, 16 December 2010
Where Have You Gone Andy Van Slyke?
http://www.whygavs.com/

Larry Roberts/Post-Gazette

Among those on hand Saturday at the Byham Theater to view the long-lost kinescope of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series were (from left): former Pirates players Dick Groat, Hal Smith, Bob Oldis, Bob Friend and Bill Virdon, and series MVP Bobby Richardson of the New York Yankees.


"If the Pirates decided to trade me, I would quit. I would not play for another team, only the Pirates." Roberto Clemente as told by Vera Clemente to the crowd at the Byham Theater watching Game 7 of the 1960 World Series.

It's hard to know where to start with the broadcast of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. There are so many interesting and unique aspects to watching a previously lost piece of baseball history that I think I could watch the entire three-hour broadcast two more times and find something new to write about every time.

The game itself is a time capsule. Some of the players look like high school football coaches in 2010. They're burly but not ripped like today's players and they look pretty ridiculous in their saggy flannel uniforms. Some of the other players are skinny little beanpoles. The few guys that don't fit either mold -- the lithe Roberto Clemente (who in 1960 was built an awful lot like Andrew McCutchen is built in 2010) or Maris and Mantle (who are both built more like modern players) -- really stand out. The other thing that stands out is the quickness of the player's hands, which I think is because they're every bit as quick as modern players' hands even though the players themselves don't look nearly as athletic. Don Hoak fielding a groundball and whipping a throw to Bill Mazerosi at second and Maz just catching it is a thing of beauty.

The players in the game are the stuff of baseball legend. I mean, the Yankees bat Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle (above), and Yogi Berra back to back to back. Roberto Clemente is young and cocksure and just hitting the stride of his career. Previously, most of the footage I've seen of Clemente is from later in his career; I've seen highlights from when Three Rivers opened, I've seen all of Game 7 of the 1971 World Series, and everyone's seen his 3,000th hit. 1960 Roberto is different. In this game, he casually whips laser throws back to the infield after routine pop-ups, he makes ridiculous and unnecessary basket catches, and it's his hustle to first base on a slow bouncer to no man's land between the pitcher and first sets the table for Hal Smith's dramatic home run. The early 70s Clemente I'm more familiar with was a great athlete, but one who's body had slowly betrayed him. He rantenderly, he moved tenderly, and even though he could still swing a bat like few others, you can tell that he just wasn't 100%. In 1960, he was a guy that was just realizing he could do absolutely anything he wanted to on a baseball field. If there were just one game in a vault somewhere of him playing between 1961 and about 1967, after he really started to figure things out but before injuries started taking their toll, I think I'd give just about anything to watch it after seeing this game. He doesn't do much of anything exciting in this game and he's still breathtaking to watch.

Everyone knows about Maz's homer. Most Pirate fans probably know about Hal Smith's homer, which was the single biggest hit in the game. A few people know about Dick Groat's groundball off of Tony Kubek's throat that starts the Pirate rally that inning. That still doesn't start to capture the frantic pace of the game's last four innings. The Pirates take a comfortable 4-1 lead into the sixth, when Vern Law's bad ankle starts to give out and Elroy Face comes in and promptly serves up a three-run homer to Yogi Berra. What if the Pirates don't come back? That Berra home run might be a signature moment for him; a clutch hit to cap off a legendary career. The Yankees keep building their lead in the eighth and it's 7-4 before the Pirates come up to bat in that inning. It's one thing to see that in a line score, but another entirely in the context of a game. That's a hard lead to overcome on a Tuesday in July against the Nationals, much less in October against the 1960 Yankees. But the Pirates get their improbable rally with Virdon's grounder off of Kubek's throat and Clemente's infield hit and Smith's giant home run that Mel Allen says will be remembered forever but was promptly wiped from everyone's memory before the hour was even over. After Smith's home run, they cut to the Byham audience giving the 80-year old Smith a standing ovation and Smith is grinning like he'd just hit the home run in again 2010. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.

And somehow, after all that, it's not even close to over. The Yankees, down 9-7, lead off the ninth with Series MVP Bobby Richardson (who was the only Yankee in the Byham crowd and who whispers to Dick Groat at one point, "This really is a great game" with tears in his eyes and you can tell that even though Richardson played on three World Series winners and three other World Series losers with the Yankees, this game is the one he wants another chance at) and then after a pinch-hitter have Maris, Mantle, and Berra due up. How could a two-run lead be safe against that? The game tying play is a sharp groundball hit to Rocky Nelson with Mantle on first. Nelson smoothly nabs the ball and steps on first but Mantle freezes, thinking Nelson caught the ball in the air. If he ran to second and got in a rundown, the tying run would've scored easily. Instead, he pauses, head-fakes Nelson, and dives back into first, just beating the tag. I don't know how anyone but Mickey Mantle makes that play.

All of the great things leading up to Maz's homer make the home run one of baseball's iconic moments. It's the one part of the game that everyone knows everything about, and in this context it's kind of anticlimactic. It's like opening a wondeful surprise Christmas gift, then opening something you really want, but that picked out yourself and watched someone buy for you. The game is about the home run, but the best part of it all is seeing everything about that isn't the home run.

And I'm rambling on and on now and I still haven't gotten to my favorite part of the MLB Network's broadcast. I was skeptical when I heard they'd be including clips from the Byham and interviews with players and Bob Costas, but early in the game they pause between innings and go to the theater and Costas mentions that Vera Clemente, Roberto's widow, is in the crowd. And he says that while some players are remembered and other players are loved, that Roberto Clemente is revered in Pittsburgh. That every time he appears on the 1960 broadcast, the 2010 audience buzzes even if it's just a clip of him in the on-deck circle. And he asks Vera about this and even though her English isn't very good, you can tell that she's moved by this whole event and by the love that the city of Pittsburgh still has for her husband. She says that she can feel Roberto with her and then she gives the quote that I opened this post with, saying that Roberto always told her, "If the Pirates decided to trade me, I would quit. I would not play for another team, only the Pirates."

And that's the best part about the entire presentation. Times are awful for Pirate fans right now, but the Pirates will always be the team that toppled the invincible Yankees in 1960. The Pirates will always be the only team Roberto Clemente played for and the only team he ever wanted to play for. A cynic would say that in 2010 fans root for laundry, but that's not true. I root to be able to experience my own personal 1960 World Series. Right now the Pirates are a terrible 105-loss team, but they're still Pittsburgh's team and they're Roberto Clemente's team and Willie Stargell's team and Bill Mazeroski's team and Honus Wagner's team and Andy Van Slyke's team; they're still the team that shocked the Yankees in 1960, that toppled Walter Johnson in 1925, that beat the incredible Orioles' rotation in 1971, that overcame a 3-1 deficit as a Fam-a-lee in 1979. And even though they haven't won anything of significance in 18 years, they're the team that I grew up watching with my dad and my uncles and my brothers and my friends and that makes them my team, too. And it may take five or ten or 18 or 31 more years, but the Pirates will eventually get back to the top of baseball and when they do, that chapter of Pirate history will be my chapter of Pirate history. And I think it will all be worth it.

Pittsburgh treated to vintage Game 7 screening

Stars come out for game's first viewing since original broadcast

By Jenifer Langosch
MLB.com
http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=pit
11/14/10 2:06 AM EST

PITTSBURGH -- Some came in suits, others donning vintage Pirates apparel. There were those who came with vivid memories of a game -- arguably the greatest in Pittsburgh sports history -- that was played 50 years ago at Forbes Field. Others arrived with memories that had been crafted simply through the stories that they have been told.

But they all came to relive and to remember and to celebrate. With the unseasonably warm weather a fitting tease, there was, indeed, a baseball game to be played in Pittsburgh on Saturday night.


Dick Groat and Hal Smith

Approximately 1,000 people packed the downtown Byham Theater to be among the first to view one of baseball's greatest World Series games since the day it was played. A copy of the NBC telecast of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series between the Pirates and Yankees was unveiled by MLB Network less than a year after being discovered in the wine cellar of Bing Crosby's home.

MLB Network will air the game in its entirety for the first time in 50 years at 8 p.m. ET on Dec. 15. But as host Bob Costas noted in his opening remarks, "We thought it was only fitting to premiere this here in Pittsburgh."

Eight former Pirates who played in that Series -- Joe Christopher, ElRoy Face, Bob Friend, Dick Groat, Vernon Law, Bob Oldis, Hal Smith and Bill Virdon -- were in attendance on Saturday night. So, too, was Vera Clemente, the widow of Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente, and former Yankees infielder Bobby Richardson.

"Thank God for Bing Crosby," Groat said, shortly before the viewing. "It's going to be something special, especially with Bob Prince and Mel Allen doing all the commentary. That makes all the difference in the world, because they were two of the greatest announcers ever."

The most prominent missing face was that of Bill Mazeroski, who was slated to sit on stage with Costas during the broadcast. However, Mazeroski was admitted to the hospital earlier in the week after passing kidney stones, and was unable to attend.

"I'm sorry he's not here," Friend said. "He's been a great one. He would have enjoyed this very much."

The current Pirates management team was represented by owner Bob Nutting and president Frank Coonelly. Former Steeler Franco Harris -- whose immaculate reception rivals Mazeroski's home run as the greatest sports moment in the city's history -- came for the evening, too.

There were other notable guests, as well. Crosby's youngest son, Nathaniel, sat in the audience alongside actor and Pittsburgh native Michael Keaton, and Robert Bader, the archivist who discovered the original kinescope. Keaton provided a stirring introduction in which he recalled coming home from Pittsburgh's St. Malachy school to have his brother tell him that his favorite team had just won the World Series.

"It was the first time I experienced anything that was an event," said Keaton, who was 9 years old at the time.

Shortly after Keaton relived his memories from 1960, so, too, did Costas. Eight years old and living in New York, Costas' allegiance was on the other side. He provided a convincing-enough argument that his parents allowed him to skip school that day to watch the afternoon game.

As for the ending?

"That was the first time I remember being heartbroken," Costas recalled.

The black-and-white film -- which had no commercials, no replays and no fancy graphics -- lasted just over two hours. Fans watched the game as if they didn't know what was happening, seemingly breathing with every pitch. There were cheers and jeers and chants, clapping and timely standing ovations.

The film was paused periodically throughout for Costas to talk with some of the special guests in attendance. Some of the more interesting observations and insight included:

• Asked to recall the pitch sequence of his second-inning, two-run single, Virdon laughed and replied, "I don't have a clue."

• Asked about not stopping Mickey Mantle's RBI grounder up the middle in the sixth, Groat answered, "I should have knocked the ball down and made the play. It's one of the plays that has haunted me for years."

• Asked his initial reaction to the ground ball that went from being a sure double play to hitting Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat, Virdon recalled, "I said, 'Oh shoot!' Well, maybe not in those words."

• Asked to provide some insight into what Yankees manager Casey Stengel told reliever Bobby Shantz during an animated mound visit in the eighth inning, Richardson laughed, "I'm not sure it was about baseball."

• Asked his reaction to watching Mazeroski's home run clear the left-field wall, Groat replied, "To beat the Yankees, it was something special. The 1960 Pirates were a team of destiny."

There were touching moments, too. Nearly every time Roberto Clemente was shown on the broadcast, the crowd erupted in applause. Such continued adoration drew an emotional response from Vera Clemente.

"This was our second home," said Clemente, who didn't meet her future husband until after the 1960 World Series. "I'm very happy to be back. That's something that's very special."

Another poignant moment came in the bottom of the eighth, shortly after Smith pushed Pittsburgh in front of New York, 9-7, with a two-out, three-run homer.

Allen's words echoed from the screen: "That's one of the most dramatic home runs ever hit in the World Series. That base hit will long be remembered."

Smith's homer has been mostly forgotten because of the one that followed an inning later. On this night, though, it wouldn't be forgotten.

When Smith stood up to recognize the applause, the entire audience rose to its feet and gave him a standing ovation.

"I had no idea what happened until I hit second base and saw fans jumping on the dugout," Smith said. "No matter what happened after that, I was just glad to help Pittsburgh."

Of course, Mazeroski's walk-off homer drew the night's loudest cheers. And it was Prince's postgame interview show -- one in which he somehow shuffled through more than a dozen interviews in only minutes -- that drew the most laughs.

It didn't matter that everyone knew the ending before the night started. It was the chance to see the check swings, the balls that went foul by inches, the game-changing plays in the middle innings that were so captivating. It was finally a night for Pittsburghers to match the stories they had repeatedly been told with reality.

"It was really something we all wanted to see," Friend said. "It's one of the greatest games ever played in the history of baseball."

Jenifer Langosch is a reporter for MLB.com. Read her blog, By Gosh, It's Langosch, and follow her on Twitter @LangoschMLB. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

A half-century later, it's still the Pirates' day

By Bob Cohn, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/
Thursday, October 14, 2010


Bill Mazeroski is cheered by the hundreds who gathered at the former site of Forbes Field in Oakland to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1960 World Series and celebrate Mazeroski's famous home run that won the game and the series for the Pirates.
Justin Merriman Tribune-Review


Two men, each named Marty Brownsey, father and son, got out of their car shortly after 11:30 a.m. Wednesday after driving four hours from Buffalo. The younger Marty, 41, held a throwback Cleveland Indians cap. The older Marty, 69, clutched a box of donuts. "We're on a baseball pilgrimage today," the younger Marty said.

Soon they reached their destination, the intersection of Roberto Clemente and Schenley Drives on the Pitt campus in Oakland, the site of old Forbes Field, where a half-century ago to the day Bill Mazeroski and the Pirates won Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, beating the New York Yankees, 10-9.

The Brownseys are not really Pirates fans, but they came with a purpose nevertheless. "We dislike the Yankees," older Marty explained. Said younger Marty: "We're showing our appreciation to Pittsburgh for what they did 50 years ago."

So did about a thousand others on a sunny, warm fall afternoon not unlike the one they came to remember.

Each year since 1985, what became known as the Game 7 Club has gathered in the shadow of the remaining portion of Forbes Field's outfield wall to celebrate the Pirates' victory and hear a recorded broadcast of the game. Each year, Mazeroski comes through, leading off the bottom of the ninth inning with the most famous home run in World Series history.

Folks used to gather around a boom box. Now there are big speakers and attendance has swelled. Still, it was never like this. Streets were blocked off and fans arrived early with their folding chairs. 'This is really extraordinary," said Marilyn Holt, a librarian at the nearby Carnegie main branch and a Game 7 Club veteran, who set up her chair at 9 a.m.

They came wearing hats and Pirates garb of every vintage and variety, and carried with them old baseball cards and programs, framed photographs and yellowed newspapers. They filled the street that used to be center field before the ballpark was abandoned in 1970 and torn down two years later to make way for university buildings.

The overflow peeked through trees and watched from the lawn across the street. Fans clamored for autographs from several of the 1960 Pirates (Maz, Dick Groat, Bob Friend, Elroy Face, Vernon Law, etc.) who showed up. Some succeeded before security people cleared the area. They brought babies and dogs, at least one of which wore a T-shirt.

Almost everyone, it seemed, had a story. There was Don Gilson, 68, who used to live in Townville before moving to Ohio. While in the Army during basic training in Fort Benning, Ga., he said, a kindly officer ordered a cease-fire during maneuvers and piped in the game because so many soldiers were from Pennsylvania.

"I was lying on my belly in the sand when Maz hit the homer," Gilson said.

John White, 62, traveled from Case Grande, Ariz., just to be here. He admitted he was not a big Pirates fan, but he remembers Game 7 when he and a buddy ditched school to watch the game.

"It's one of my greatest memories I had in baseball," he said. "I soon realized it was one of the greatest games ever."

When they returned to school, White said he and his pal received "swats" from the principal. These were, of course, the good old days of corporal punishment.

"It was worth it," he said.

Several actually attended Game 7 and had the tickets stubs to prove it.

Stephanie Birkemeyer, 72, from Oakmont, said she took the 64-A trolley from North Braddock, where she lived at the time. According to her ticket, she sat in section 21, Row F, seat 16 (along the third-base line) in the $7.70 reserved seats.

"That's my greatest moment in sports," she said.

Another big moment for Birkmeyer came a few years earlier, when she joined a throng of onlookers camped outside the Sacred Heart Church where Mazeroski married a local girl, a team secretary named Milene Nicholson. It was the social event of 1958 in that part of the world.

"We had a celebrity in the Braddock area," Birkmeyer said.

Meanwhile, Mazeroski, who was honored with a large, granite sidewalk plaque from the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, marveled at all the attention.

"It's fantastic," he said. "Who would ever think we'd be out here celebrating something that happened 50 years ago. It's amazing that people have the memory and the thought about that. It's just overwhelming. I can't understand it."

"This exceeded all expectations," said Game 7 Gang leader Herb Soltman, who was part of the mob that swarmed Mazeroski at home plate. "The crowd was great, the weather was great. And we won again."

On Oct. 13, they always do.

Game 7 'still feels like it happened yesterday'

Throng gathers with 1960 heroes for radio broadcast

Thursday, October 14, 2010
By Robert Dvorchak, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/?m=1

Conway Keibler was in Forbes Field to see it with his own eyes, but he returned for the 50th anniversary of Bill Mazeroski's game-winning home run to savor the moment.

"I told my wife before I left that I hope Maz hits a home run, because I still don't believe it," said Mr. Keibler, 83, of Brownsville in Fayette County. "I'm still walking on air."

Larry Roberts/Post-Gazette

Bill Mazeroski looks at the plaque and historical information which was placed near the Forbes Field wall in Oakland on Wednesday.

Although Maz didn't swing a bat yesterday, he and his teammates from the 1960 Pirates scored big with a crowd that returned to the remnants of the old ballpark to revel in the rebroadcast of a World Series game that lives on in the city's heart. Later on, those Pirates were toasted once again at a black-tie gala at PNC Park that will benefit the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and Pirates Charities.

But in a corner of Oakland, it felt like Forbes Field, with the champs of yesteryear gathered by a remaining portion of the red brick outfield wall. It sounded like it, too, with a crowd of more than 1,000 cheering the baseball accounts on a cloudless day reminiscent of Oct. 13, 1960. It even smelled liked Forbes Field, with cigar smoke wafting on the autumn breeze.

"It brings back so many memories of such a wonderful time," said Bob Oldis, a backup catcher on the 1960 team who enjoyed another day in the sun. "I'm going to enjoy every moment. It still feels like it happened yesterday."

The day began with the dedication of a Mazeroski plaque near the intersection of Roberto Clemente Drive and Schenley Drive on what used to be part of Forbes Field but is now part of the University of Pittsburgh campus. The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy unveiled an engraved stone accompanied by an image of Maz jubilantly rounding third base on his way home after he hit the only home run to decide the seventh game of a World Series.

In addition to Mr. Oldis, the Pirates in attendance were Dick Groat, Bill Virdon, Hal Smith, Vernon Law, Roy Face, Bob Friend, Joe Christopher, George Witt and Joe Gibbon. Vera Clemente, widow of the late Hall of Famer, and son Luis were also on hand to hear Pirates president Frank Coonelly make the dedication.

It's been quite a year for Mr. Mazeroski. On Sept. 5 -- his 74th birthday -- a statue depicting his home run gallop was dedicated outside PNC Park. Yesterday was one of several reunions with his teammates.

"It's always fun to see these guys. It was a winning team," Mr. Mazeroski chuckled. "They don't have reunions for losers, so you know if you're having a reunion, it's because you've won something. It's good to see all of them."

Next came an annual ritual that is uniquely Pittsburgh -- the replaying of a game that happened 50 years ago in a ballpark that faded out of existence years ago.

It began quite innocently on the 25th anniversary of the triumph over the New York Yankees. Saul Finkelstein, who passed away in 2004, brought his lunch to the site of the old ballpark and listened to an audio tape on his tape player.

For the next several years, he sat mostly by himself at the base of the flagpole to hear NBC Radio announcers Jack Quinlan and Chuck Thompson call the action.

Then in 1992, local author Jim O'Brien made the story public, and the crowd grew each year. The largest previous attendance was about 400 on the 40th anniversary of the game.

The ritual has been carried on by Herb Soltman and the Game 7 Gang, a group of die-hards who never tire of listening to a sporting event that changed the city's image of itself.

"It's a day of good old-fashioned baseball. It's a celebration," said Mr. Soltman. "I don't know if we're hanging on to the past, but we're tickled to revisit it."

For his part, Mr. O'Brien was the first one on the scene yesterday, arriving at 6 a.m. as Parks Department crews made final preparations for the dedication.

"I don't know of any place else in America where this type of an event takes place," said Mr. O'Brien. "This is a team that the city fell in love with, and that team loved us back. It was a magic moment. Look at the beauty of this scene. The leaves are changing. The sun is shining. People are smiling. It just doesn't get any better."

The day had the feel of a picnic. People brought folding chairs or laid out blankets on the grass to enjoy baseball. They sang "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" and cheered during the game's dramatic moments, saving the loudest roar for the game's conclusion.

The scene drew bemused looks from college students who never heard of Mr. Mazeroski and never knew that a ballpark once sat on the grounds.

Colleen Hroncich autographed copies of "The Whistling Irishman," the book she wrote about her grandfather, the late Danny Murtaugh, who was the team's manager.

And a crew from the MLB Network filmed interviews in advance of the Nov. 13 showing at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum of the recently discovered NBC video of the seventh game.

As an example of how the 1960 outcome was a life-changing event in Pittsburgh, Susan and Earl Glotfelty of Fox Chapel carried a homemade sign that said: "We Met On Oct. 13, 1960, After The Game."

A student at what was then Carnegie Tech, she went to celebrate at the Holiday Bar on Craig Street but couldn't get in because of the crowd. She met Mr. Glotfelty while waiting in line, and they married eight months later. "It was a wonderful day for Pittsburgh, and a wonderful day for the Glotfeltys," she said. "It was the most exciting thing ever."

Robert Dvorchak: bdvorchak@post-gazette.com.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10287/1095059-63.stm#ixzz12KRRrv9d

This Week's Hit: "1960 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates."

(Click on title to play video)

Maz’s homer still big after 50 years

By John Mehno
The Altoona Mirror
http://www.altoonamirror.com/
October 13, 2010


PITTSBURGH - Ralph Terry made a bad pitch, Bill Mazeroski took a good swing, and we're still talking about it, 50 years later.

The count was 1-0, the time was 3:36 p.m., and it's a moment frozen in Pittsburgh Pirates history.

Mazeroski slammed the high slider over the left field wall at Forbes Field on Oct. 13, 1960, and the Pirates won the World Series with a 10-9 victory over the New York Yankees in the seventh game.

Mazeroski lived everyone's back yard Wiffle ball fantasy: Bottom of the ninth, one swing to win the biggest game of the season.

Terry recovered from the pitch. He won 16, 23 and 17 games in the next three seasons and was the pitching hero of the Yankees' Series win over San Francisco in 1962.

Mazeroski learned to live with it. In real life, he was better known for his defense and he was no more a home run hitter (138 in 8,379 plate appearances) than Forbes Field was a friendly power park for righthanded hitters.

Mazeroski was just 24 in 1960 and he had a lot more baseball ahead of him.

"I couldn't live off the home run," he said. "I had to put my career in."

He would play through the 1972 season, experiencing one more World Series victory with the Pirates.

He was a utility player in 1971, having ceded second base to Dave Cash.

Mazeroski was in and out of baseball after that. He spent a season as the Pirates' third base coach, but left when the front office wouldn't grant him a $5,000 raise.

Mazeroski coached for the Seattle Mariners and Montreal Expos, two teams that didn't even exist in 1960.

He played a lot of golf, fished whenever he could and has lived a quiet life, splitting time between Greensburg and Florida.

He's cut back on autograph shows because he doesn't really need the money and he's uncomfortable with a lot of attention.

The most famous home run in baseball history wasn't hit by Reggie Jackson or some other "look at me" guy. Instead, it belongs to a guy who went to work every day and just tried to blend in.

While Pittsburgh became one big street party after the home run, Mazeroski headed in the opposite direction. He and his wife headed for Schenley Park, the only quiet place in the city.

"We were up there with the squirrels," Mazeroski said.

For a generation of fans, the home run is one of those moments that makes people recall exactly where they were and what they were doing.

The Pirates are having a 1960 team reunion tonight (the third since April) and people will gather to celebrate at the Forbes Field wall.

Mazeroski will take it all in with his usual bemusement.

The modest man who touched off all the parties doesn't even wear his World Series ring.

"It's in a safety deposit box," he said. "I wore it one time on my right hand, I shook hands with some woman and she squeezed it so hard, I went to my knees. I said, 'I can't wear this' and put it away. I never wore rings anyhow."

John Mehno can be reached at johnmehnocolumn@gmail.

Photo credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

50 years later, Maz still amazed

By John Perrotto
Beaver County Times
http://www.timesonline.com/sports/
Tuesday October 12, 2010 11:52 PM

PITTSBURGH — Not a day has gone by in the last half-century that Bill Mazeroski has not thought about the moment, if just for a few seconds.

Baseball fans, especially those who follow the Pirates, are those who will most frequently remind him. They will reminisce about what it meant to them and many will tell him exactly where they were when it happened.

Occasionally, he will be reminded when watching television and it is replayed for approximately the 23,717th time.

Mazeroski, once in a great while, will think of the moment when he is alone. He will wonder why of the more than 17,000 men who have worn a major-league uniform he is the only one to experience such a moment.

Of course, we are talking about the Hall of second baseman's leadoff home run in the bottom of the ninth inning that lifted the Pirates to a 10-9 victory over the heavily favored New York Yankees in the decisive Game 7 of 1960 World Series. It was the ultimate walk-off home run, more than four decades before the term "walk-off" became part of the baseball lexicon.

Nobody had ever hit a game-ending home run in the seventh game of a World Series before. Nobody has since.

And today marks the 50th anniversary of Maz's drive off Ralph Terry that carried over Yogi Berra's head and the left-field wall at Forbes Field and into Schenley Park, touching off a spontaneous celebration in Pittsburgh unlike any the city has ever seen.

"It's really taken on a life of its own," Mazeroski said last month before the Pirates unveiled a statue of the Hall of Fame second baseman outside PNC Park. "When I hit the home run, I knew it was a big deal. Heck, it won the World Series. But never, ever, did I think people would still be making such a big deal about it 50 years later. It really amazes me."

Mazeroski then paused for a moment.

"The best part about it is how many people it made happy," Mazeroski said. "It's nice you did something that meant so much to that many people. It makes you feel good."

The ironic part is that Mazeroski was not a power hitter. He hit just 138 home runs in 17 seasons and his single-season high was 19 in 1958. Defense was Maz's game as he won eight Gold Gloves.

Yet Mazeroski went to the plate looking to hit a home run after grounding into a double play against Terry in his previous at-bat.

"I rarely ever thought about hitting a home run but I knew it was a special situation because one swing could win the series," Mazeroski said. "I overswung at Terry's fastball earlier and I told myself to just go up and put a nice easy stroke on the ball and it could out. Son of a gun, if that isn't what happened."

And fifty years later, the memory remains as vivid as ever.

Photo credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

1960 Pirates gather for artist's unveiling of painting

By Jerry DiPaola, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/pirates/
Wednesday, October 13, 2010


Johno Prascak's painting "3:36" depicts Bill Mazeroski's walkoff home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. In the painting, home plate umpire Bill Jackowski, New York Yankees catcher Johnny Blanchard and Mazeroski are watching the ball as it leaves the bat.


Three pairs of eyes looked skyward, watching the baseball rise off Bill Mazeroski's bat toward the Oakland sky, over the wall and into history.

The latest and possibly most colorful recollection of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series was unveiled Tuesday night at the Roberto Clemente Museum in Lawrenceville. It was the eve of Mazeroski's home run and several of his teammates — even batboy Bobby Recker — were there to relive the moment.

The painting is a product of the canvas of Pittsburgh artist Johno Prascak, who spent six weeks working on it. The inspiration for the painting arose from a photograph snapped by Sports Illustrated's Neil Leifer from the first-base dugout at Forbes Field. Curator Duane Rieder procured the photograph and hung it in the museum — a former firehouse on Penn Avenue — along with several other pieces of Clemente and Pirates memorabilia.

Prascak's painting captures home plate umpire Bill Jackowski, New York Yankees catcher Johnny Blanchard and Mazeroski watching the ball as it leaves the bat. The packed stands behind third base are in the background.

Prascak labeled the 4-foot-by-5-foot painting "3:36" for the recorded time of Mazeroski's home run off Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry. He said it is "truly Pittsburgh" because part of the surface is made from "sand from the bottom of the Monongahela River."

Several members of the '60 Pirates attended the unveiling, including Mazeroski, pitchers Joe Gibbon, George Witt, Bob Friend and Vernon Law, catchers Hal Smith and Bob Oldis and outfielders Joe Christopher and Bill Virdon. Clemente's wife Vera, with their son Luis, represented the former Pirates right fielder.

Also in attendance was Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland, a former Pirates manager.

"We still consider ourselves part of the Pirates family," Leyland said.

It was the second trip back to Pittsburgh for many of the '60 Pirates who had attended a special night at PNC Park in June.

Friend said the monumental upset of the Yankees has kept the memory of the Pirates victory alive during the past five decades.

"No one gave us a chance," Friend said. "The Pirates hadn't won anything in 33 years. The Yankees had a lot of big names. We didn't have a lot of big-name guys, but we really played ball. Everything clicked. Everyone had their best years."

Law, a former baseball coach at Brigham Young and in the Pirates and Chicago White Sox organizations, said the surviving members of the team remain friends to this day.

"I would say, this group that we had, that was one of the reasons why we won, because we are close," Law said. "We root for each other, pull for each other, pat each other on the back. As a result, we had a very close-knit ballclub. I think that really makes a difference. When people like each other and get along with each other, that makes for one big happy family."

The group will attend a ceremony today in Oakland at the site where Mazeroski's home run landed. A radio broadcast of the entire game will run from 1 to 3:36 p.m.

There will be no shortage of old stories and cheers.

Said Law: "We celebrate, no matter what the occasion."

Pirates' Bill Mazeroski: 50 years later, shot still echoes

By Mike Dodd, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/
October 13, 2010


OCTOBER 13: Baseball: Bill Mazeroski hitting 9th inning game winning HR vs New York Yankees, View of scoreboard at Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, PA 10/13/1960 (Photo by Marvin E. Newman/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images)

At 3:36 p.m. ET Wednesday, the Oakland neighborhood in Pittsburgh will come alive again.

Bill Mazeroski will be there, along with eight to 10 of his old Pirates teammates. A crowd expected to swell to 500 or so fans will gather at the remnants of the Forbes Field outfield wall in Schenley Park and listen to the radio broadcast of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series.

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of — arguably, of course — the greatest home run in 106 years of baseball postseason play.

Leading off the bottom of the ninth inning, Mazeroski hit a one-ball, no-strike slider from New York Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry at 3:36 p.m. It barely cleared the ivy-covered wall as left fielder Yogi Berra waited anxiously for a carom that never came, and the sport had one of its most memorable moments.

It is the only World Series to end on a Game 7 walk-off home run, giving the Pirates a 10-9 victory and their first world championship in 35 years.

Fifty years later, the hero of the day is floored by the legend that has grown around it.

"Hell, I thought it would be just another hit to win a ballgame," says Mazeroski, 74, who still lives in the Pittsburgh area. "It's bigger now, I think."

As well-grounded as ever, Mazeroski says someone will mention the home run to him "just about every day, if I'm out."

It was an unlikely home run to give the title to an unlikely team. Mazeroski, a second baseman known more for the defensive prowess that earned him election to the Hall of Fame in 2001, had hit 11 homers that season. He hit double figures in homers six times in a 17-year career.

The Pirates were outscored 38-3 in their three losses to the heavily favored Yankees and trailed 7-4 in Game 7 entering the bottom of the eighth. But Pittsburgh scored five in the eighth, thanks to a bad hop off shortstop Tony Kubek's throat on a double-play ball and Hal Smith's subsequent three-run homer. The Yankees scored two in the ninth to tie, setting the stage for Mazeroski.

Terry and autographs

While the hit is every bit as dramatic and important as Bobby Thomson's home run off Ralph Branca in the deciding game of the National League playoff nine years earlier, Mazeroski and Terry are not as inexorably linked.

1960 Topps

"We've never gone on an autograph tour together," Mazeroski says. "We've played golf together a few times. Everything seems normal. I would never bring it up; every once in a while, he'd bring it up."

But autographs are a different story. "He wouldn't sign a ball if I had signed it," Mazeroski says, adding he thinks it involved a promise to a youngster.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reporting on the 40th anniversary in 2000, Terry would sign photographs and the like but refused to sign balls or bats with Mazeroski's signature on it, saying he didn't want anyone profiting from the event. He made two exceptions in the first 40 years, both for charitable purposes, the newspaper said.

Terry became a golf pro after his baseball career, and the first exception involved an assistant pro who was paralyzed below the waist in a golf cart accident. He gave the assistant a bat signed by the pair and told him he would not sign another so it was a unique item, the Post-Gazette reported.

Terry, who could not be reached for this story, is equally well-known for his World Series against the San Francisco Giants in 1962, when he won two games, including a four-hit shutout in Game 7 to earn the MVP award.

The television broadcast of the game had long been considered lost, but a copy emerged this summer and will be shown on MLB Network on Dec. 15.

The kinescope — a 16-millimeter film of the television broadcast — recently was found in a wine cellar at the home of entertainer Bing Crosby, a former part-owner of the Pirates. Bob Costas will host the show — as he did the 2009 public unveiling of Don Larsen's perfect game on MLB Network — with Mazeroski and other Pirates commenting between innings. Costas also plans to interview Crosby's widow, Kathryn, and visit the wine cellar.

MLB Network is planning a preview of the show in Pittsburgh that week, with tickets available to the public. Mazeroski, who hasn't seen the film, is scheduled to attend.

Lost forever is the baseball that cleared the Forbes Field wall. One account is that a 14-year-old boy picked up the ball in Schenley Park and was allowed into the clubhouse to give it to the player, but Mazeroski signed it and told him to keep it. The fan says he later used it for a sandlot game and lost it.

Mazeroski has no such recollection, adding that the practice of autographing artifacts like that was unusual in the era.

"About six, seven or eight people came in and said this is the ball, give me five bucks," Mazeroski says. "I didn't know which one it was. … I never did see the ball, I don't think."


Tradition of 'The Wall'

This will be his second visit to The Wall on Oct. 13. He came for the 40th anniversary.

Joe Billetdeaux, Pirates director of alumni affairs, says a sidewalk plaque will be dedicated at the site before the game, and 11 members of the 1960 team are expected. The NBC Radio broadcast, with announcers Chuck Thompson and Jack Quinlan, will begin about 1 p.m., timed so that the call of Mazeroski's homer will come at 3:36 p.m.

It's the 25th year for the re-enactment, staged by a group of fans called the Game 7 Gang. It was started humbly in 1985 by fan Saul Finkelstein. "He took a cassette player and an audiotape … and listened at the wall by himself," Billetdeaux says. The event has been held every year since and typically draws 300 to 400 people, he added.

Mazeroski, who has always said he'd rather turn a double play no one else could than hit a home run, acknowledges growing up dreaming of winning a World Series with a homer.

"But it was with a broomstick and a bucket of stones," said the son of a Rush Run, Ohio, coal miner. "I wore out a lot of broomsticks, (pretending) 'I'm Babe Ruth and I'm hitting a home run to win the Series.' "

And yes, the reality did match the dream.

"It was so great," he says. "I don't know how to explain it."

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."

Blast That Shocked The World

50 years ago this week, Bill Mazeroski shocks Yankees in World Series with one mighty swing

BY Wayne Coffey
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
http://www.nydailynews.com
Saturday, October 9th 2010, 7:41 PM

An hour or so after the strangest and most improbable World Series in history finally ended, at exactly 3:36 p.m. on the day of the third Kennedy-Nixon debate, the coal miner's son who finished it was a hero in need of respite.

The Pittsburgh Pirates' clubhouse was a den of delirium, the hollering and whooping going on everywhere. Bill Mazeroski shared in it. Sure he did. How could he not, after hitting the only Series-clinching, Game 7 home run in October annals? After the Pirates had just won their first World Series since 1925 by beating the mighty Yankees, who had spent seven games not hitting baseballs as much as strafing them?

Still, there's only so much merriment a man can take. Mazeroski's ears hurt and his senses were overloaded. So he found his wife, Milene, slipped out of Forbes Field and walked over to Schenley Park, just beyond the right-center field fence, where Mr. and Mrs. William Stanley Mazeroski sat on a bench and listened to the birds and reveled in the stillness.

It wasn't a time to think about his own journey, how he came out of riverside poverty in Rush Run, Ohio, and lived without electricity or plumbing, or about how he was completing the big-league dreams of his late father, a promising prospect for the Indians before losing a foot in a mining accident.

This was just a time to be quiet in Schenley Park, and to be with Milene. The date was Oct. 13, 1960.

"There wasn't a soul there," Mazeroski says. "It was just the squirrels and us."

Bill Mazeroski pauses and says he can hardly fathom that he is still being asked about it all.

"When I hit (the home run) I thought it was just another hit to win a game. I didn't think I'd be talking about it 50 years later," Mazeroski says.

Bill Mazeroski is a Hall of Famer, and a 74-year-old grandfather now, a man who just last month was honored with a statue outside PNC Park, where the current Pirates just finished their 18th straight losing season. The statue depicts Mazeroski's gleeful trip around the bases, helmet held high in his right hand. He choked up at the ceremony, and deflected the glory, because Bill Mazeroski would much rather go fishing than take credit, or talk about himself. For a half-century, his perspective on his ninth-inning homer off the Yanks' Ralph Terry has not changed; if he hadn't gotten the hit, someone else - maybe Roberto Clemente or Don Hoak or Dick Groat – would have. It still seems entirely fitting that the last blow of a 10-9 game was struck by a defense-first second baseman whose glovework put him in Cooperstown.

"I've always said that if my wife could've caught a ground ball, she would've led the league in double plays playing alongside Bill Mazeroski," says Groat, the Pirates' star shortstop and NL MVP in 1960. "He was the greatest second baseman who has ever played. I don't have any doubt about it."


Bill Mazeroski and Dick Groat

Nor should there be any doubt about the bizarre ebb and flow of the 1960 World Series, seven ballgames that were more a miniseries than a set of competitions, a drama that wrapped up with 65 records being set, from most total bases by a team (142 by the Yankees) to most RBI in a game (Bobby Richardson's six), and that came to life again just last month, with the stunning discovery of the only complete film of the seventh game among the contents of Bing Crosby's wine cellar.

"In the World Series, unusual things happen," says Bob Turley, who started that Game 7 for the Yankees.

* * *

The most striking aspect of the 1960 World Series, from a Yankee perspective, was that they lost. Lost even though they had a record team batting average of .338 – 82 points higher than the Pirates' .256. Lost despite winning three games by an aggregate score of 38-3, and outscoring the Pirates by a record margin of 55-27. Lost even with the two complete-game shutouts they got from their best pitcher, Whitey Ford, who won Game 3, 10-0, and Game 6, 12-0, results that made Casey Stengel's curious decision to start Art Ditmar in Game 1 seem even more questionable.

Ditmar was a 15-game winner in the regular season, but pitched a total of 1 2/3 innings in two losing starts in the Series.

"None of the players could understand why Casey didn't start Whitey (in Game 1)," says Richardson, whose record 12 RBI and .367 average made him the first player from a losing team to be named Series MVP. "You have the Chairman of the Board, you don't wait until the third game to use him. Whitey won his two, but didn't get his third shot (in Game 7)."

Ford, indeed, kept the Yankees in the Series after Harvey Haddix and Elroy Face shut them down in Game 5 at the Stadium, won by the Pirates, 5-2. He yielded seven hits and the Yankees pounded out 17, and the Bombers seemed primed to capture their 19th championship as Game 7 arrived, with almost an entire lineup that was hot, led by Mickey Mantle, who would finish the Series with three homers, 11 RBI and a .400 average, and a memorable righthanded bolt in the top of the seventh in the Yankees' Game 2, 16-3 victory – a line drive to right-center off of Joe Gibbon that may well have traveled 525 feet or more. Pirate center fielder (and future Yankee manager) Bill Virdon called it "the hardest-hit ball I've ever seen in my life."


The Pirates may have been wowed by the Yankees' power, but they weren't going away. They had spent an entire season coming from behind, starting with their fifth game. They were down 5-0 to the Reds with one out in the ninth. They scored six to win.

"I don't think anybody on our club thought we could lose," Elroy Face says. Groat, for his part, says the one-sided nature of their three Series losses made them easier to forget.

"It's not like you're sitting there thinking, ‘If I had done this or done that, we would've won,' when you lose 16-3," Groat says.

* * *

And so began Game 7, two hours and 36 minutes of perhaps the greatest October drama of them all. The Pirates scored four times in the first two innings, on a Rocky Nelson homer and Virdon's two-run single, chasing Yankee starter, Bob Turley. Moose Skowron, the Yankee first baseman, homered off Pirate ace Vernon Law to make it 4-1 in the top of the fifth, before the Yankees exploded for four more runs to take a 5-4 lead, the big hit coming from Berra, who smashed a three-run homer off Face. The Yankees added two more in the seventh, and were up 7-4 with six outs to go, and Bobby Shantz, the little lefty reliever, who had given up but one hit in his first five innings of work, was looking for more of the same.


Manager Danny Murtaugh celebrates the 1960 World Series championship with Mazeroski.

What ensued was perhaps the most scrutinized half-inning the Yankees have ever played in October. Gino Cimoli led off with a pinch-single, before Virdon ripped a hard grounder to shortstop Tony Kubek, who was set to start a certain double-play when the ball bounded wickedly off the dirt. It hit Kubek in the throat.

"He didn't have a chance," Richardson says. "It was scary." Kubek, on the ground, gasped for air and had to be taken to the hospital. Joe DeMaestri replaced him. The Pirates had two on and nobody out, and Groat singled to make it 7-5. Shantz was lifted for Jim Coates, who got two outs and then overpowered Roberto Clemente, who hit a harmless chopper toward first. Skowron fielded it wide of the bag, and the inning should've been over, except that when Skowron looked to toss the ball to Coates, the pitcher wasn't there. Clemente had a gift single, the Pirates had another run and when catcher Hal Smith belted a ball over the left-center field wall, they had much more than that: a five-run inning and a 9-7 lead.

"We made too many wrong mistakes," Berra said later, referring to Coates' failure to cover.

The Yankees had hit all Series long. They weren't done yet. Richardson blooped a single for his 11th hit. Dale Long followed with another hit off the Pirates' Bob Friend, and Pirate manager Danny Murtaugh had seen enough, calling for another starter, Harvey Haddix. After Haddix retired Roger Maris, Mantle ripped an RBI single to right, sending Long to third. Up stepped Berra, the best 5-7, 185-pound clutch hitter around. Berra smoked a hard, low-hopping liner that first baseman Nelson snared near the line.


Nelson touched the bag for the second out, but as he looked momentarily toward second, Mantle was making a spectacular, sprawling dive back into first, barely eluding his tag. If Nelson had made the tag, the Series would've been over. Long scored, and the game was tied at nine.

The game moved to the bottom of the ninth.

Ralph Terry, who relieved Coates after Smith's homer, had warmed up five times during the game, his adrenaline on overdrive in each instance. He was 24 and about to pitch the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Series. "I had nothing left," Terry says. "My ball didn't have any life." Everything was up, even in warmups. He threw the first pitch to Mazeroski and it was up, too. Catcher Johnny Blanchard came out and told him he had to get it down. Terry nodded, got on the rubber, and wound and fired, a slider he wanted low and away, just what the scouting report called for. Don't throw anything up to Mazeroski, the report said.

The pitch was up. Bill Mazeroski, from Rush Run, Ohio, swung and drove it high and far toward left-center, and the 406 sign on the ivy-covered brick wall. Berra, the left fielder, raced back. Nobody in the Pirate dugout thought it was going to get out, Groat says. They were all thinking, "Get off the wall."

Says Mazeroski, "I didn't know if it was out, but I did know Yogi wasn't going to catch it."

At second base, Richardson watched Berra turn his back, and the sight of his No. 8 was a very bad sign. Berra hoped for a carom. It never came.

"I think it grazed the ivy going over," Berra says.

Thinking triple, Mazeroski was running full-out from the start, and was near second when he realized that the Series was over and the Pirates, whose last Series appearance had ended with a four-game sweep by the 1927 Yankees, were champions at last. He held his helmet aloft and by the time he hit third, he was being chased by fans and Forbes Field was exploding like a blast furnace, the upset complete.

In the Yankee clubhouse, Mantle cried and and 70-year-old Casey Stengel sat in his office, pants at his ankles and a beer in his hand. He would be fired not even a week later, his storied Yankee run finished. On the other side of Forbes Field, under the first-base stands, the celebration was just beginning, big and loud and rollicking, and at heart of it was Bill Mazeroski, coal miner's son turned Steel-City superman, who reveled for a while and then needed to get away. seeking the quiet of a park bench, where he and Milene sat with the squirrels and birds on a late autumn afternoon, the moment meaning everything, the history for others to ponder.