This Day in Pirates History
Much has been made of new general manager Neal Huntington and president Frank Coonley's desire to "change the culture" of the current Pirates. The two men, hired by principal owner Bob Nutting this past off-season, have spoken about reminding today's roster of the storied history of one of MLB's oldest franchises. They have done subtle things like bringing players from the '60, '71, and '79 World Series teams back into the fold of the franchise. They've hired Chuck Tanner, the manager of that '79 team, as a senior adviser. They've also added a famous quote by Roberto Clemente to the hallway that leads from the Pirates' clubhouse to the field, a reminder of what this franchise used to mean not only to the city of Pittsburgh, but to the sport of baseball as a whole.
Remembering Roberto and reminding today's Pirates that this team hasn't always sucked.
I've decided to add a section to the blog entitled "This Day in Pirates History" in hopes of doing my small part to "change the culture" of losing that has surrounded this team for the past 15 consecutive seasons. I hope to remind readers that the black and gold were once champions and have fielded some of the best teams in the history of Major League Baseball. Courtesy of the fantastic website, www.baseball-reference.com, I've been able to look up box scores from the 1979, 1971, and 1960 championship years. Box scores weren't available for the 1925 and 1909 seasons, so I'll limit this section to remembering '60, '71, and '79.
So let's get it started...
On this date in 1960, the Pirates:
Did nothing. Their opening day was April 12th, 1960. So we'll get to them tomorrow.
On this date in 1971, the Pirates:
Lost to the Braves in Atlanta, 3-1.
Dock Ellis pitched a complete game and took the loss for the Bucs. The Pirates held a 1-0 lead heading into the bottom of the 7th, but Ellis surrendered the tying run in that inning and two more runs in the 8th. Atlanta pitcher Jim Nash picked up the complete game win. Dave Cash drove in the only run for the Pirates that day as he hit leadoff for a lineup that boasted a 3-4-5 of Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Al Oliver. The loss dropped the Bucs to 3-2 on the young season, 2 1/2 games behind the first place Braves.
The greatest rightfielder of all time, Roberto Clemente, hit .341 in 1971 and won his 11th Rawlings Gold Glove Award.
On this date in 1979, the Pirates:
Lost to the Phillies in Philadelphia, 5-4.
Back in the 70's, when men were men and pitchers went longer than 6 innings per start, the Pirates and Phillies had a natural rivalry. Before the National League Central existed and the divisions were just East and West, Bucs/Phils games were similar to today's Pens/Flyers contests; gritty and hard-fought. The intrastate rivalry was something that only a common division could foster and in 1979, things were chippy at best between the two teams. On this day, Pittsburgh starter Bert Blyleven would hit Philadelphia starter Steve Carlton with a pitch and Carlton would return the favor by plunking both Dave Parker and Lee Lacy.
Both Blyleven and Carlton went the distance and Mike Schmidt hit a homerun in the 7th inning that turned out to be the eventual game-winning run. Phil Garner had a nice day for the Pirates, going 2/4 with a two-run homer in the 5th inning off Carlton, but it wasn't enough as the Bucs fell to 1-4 on the young season.
Phil Garner and Dale Berra practice tai-chi and groundballs at the same time in 1979. They later debated the merits of a thick, bushy porn-stache.
Remembering Roberto and reminding today's Pirates that this team hasn't always sucked.I've decided to add a section to the blog entitled "This Day in Pirates History" in hopes of doing my small part to "change the culture" of losing that has surrounded this team for the past 15 consecutive seasons. I hope to remind readers that the black and gold were once champions and have fielded some of the best teams in the history of Major League Baseball. Courtesy of the fantastic website, www.baseball-reference.com, I've been able to look up box scores from the 1979, 1971, and 1960 championship years. Box scores weren't available for the 1925 and 1909 seasons, so I'll limit this section to remembering '60, '71, and '79.
So let's get it started...
On this date in 1960, the Pirates:
Did nothing. Their opening day was April 12th, 1960. So we'll get to them tomorrow.
On this date in 1971, the Pirates:
Lost to the Braves in Atlanta, 3-1.
Dock Ellis pitched a complete game and took the loss for the Bucs. The Pirates held a 1-0 lead heading into the bottom of the 7th, but Ellis surrendered the tying run in that inning and two more runs in the 8th. Atlanta pitcher Jim Nash picked up the complete game win. Dave Cash drove in the only run for the Pirates that day as he hit leadoff for a lineup that boasted a 3-4-5 of Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Al Oliver. The loss dropped the Bucs to 3-2 on the young season, 2 1/2 games behind the first place Braves.
The greatest rightfielder of all time, Roberto Clemente, hit .341 in 1971 and won his 11th Rawlings Gold Glove Award.On this date in 1979, the Pirates:
Lost to the Phillies in Philadelphia, 5-4.
Back in the 70's, when men were men and pitchers went longer than 6 innings per start, the Pirates and Phillies had a natural rivalry. Before the National League Central existed and the divisions were just East and West, Bucs/Phils games were similar to today's Pens/Flyers contests; gritty and hard-fought. The intrastate rivalry was something that only a common division could foster and in 1979, things were chippy at best between the two teams. On this day, Pittsburgh starter Bert Blyleven would hit Philadelphia starter Steve Carlton with a pitch and Carlton would return the favor by plunking both Dave Parker and Lee Lacy.
Both Blyleven and Carlton went the distance and Mike Schmidt hit a homerun in the 7th inning that turned out to be the eventual game-winning run. Phil Garner had a nice day for the Pirates, going 2/4 with a two-run homer in the 5th inning off Carlton, but it wasn't enough as the Bucs fell to 1-4 on the young season.
Phil Garner and Dale Berra practice tai-chi and groundballs at the same time in 1979. They later debated the merits of a thick, bushy porn-stache.
"The greatest rightfielder of all time, Roberto Clemente"
I know this is a pirates blog and all, but Hank Aaron was really good at baseball. He played right field too.
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Hank Aaron - .305 career batting average, three gold gloves, one MVP, one World Series ring, most (legitimate) homeruns in MLB history.
Roberto Clemente - .317 career batting average, 12 gold gloves, one MVP, two world series rings, most hits in the decade of the 1960's.
Definitely debatable, Pirates blog or not!
Thanks for the comment!
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Hold on a second. Did you just engage in a statistical argument involving Hank Aaron and not include the fact that he hit 755 home runs? Wow.
Hank Aaron: .305/.374/.555, 755 HR, 2297 RBI, 3771 hits, 155 OPS+
Clemente: .317/.359/.475, 240 HR, 1305 RBI, 3000 hits, 130 OPS+
Hank Aaron > Roberto Clemente.
Oh, and come on! Using World Series titles, MVPs, and Gold Gloves?
I suppose Hank Bauer's 7 rings mean he's the best RF of all time.
As for MVPs, the fact Ivan Rodriguez won it over Pedro in 1999 renders that award virtually meaningless. (There are quite a few examples of this.)
But as far as worthless awards go, the Gold Glove takes the cake. That same year, 1999, Rafael won the 1B Gold Glove. He played 28 games at first that year. 28.
I'm actually a huge Roberto fan, but to say he's better than Hank Aaron is just weird, Pirates bias or no.
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As you can clearly see, I mentioned Hank Aaron's claim to the most legitimate homeruns of any player who's ever played the game.
Roberto Clemente died with 18 seasons under his belt. Hank Aaron played 23 seasons. Give Roberto five more seasons at the pace of his last full season in the Majors and he has another 700 hits. And that's being generous on my end considering Roberto only played 102 games in 1972 because of nagging injuries.
Also, Gold Gloves and MVPs may be meaningless now, but they weren't in the 1960's and 1970's. I firmly believe this. They weren't popularity contests then, or at least I don't believe they were. Roberto felt he should have won an MVP award in 1961 when he hit .351 (!) and finished fourth in the MVP voting that year behind Frank Robinson, Orlando Cepeda and Vada Pinson. My point in bringing up MVP's was that both Aaron and Clemente, both men who endured plenty of racism and bias in their respective careers, were shafted more than once and only won one each.
As far as World Series rings, Hank's teams got there twice and Roberto's teams got there twice. Roberto's teams won twice. Hank punished the ball in his two World Series appearances (.333, .393) as did Roberto (.310, .414).
Defensively, I have not encountered any writing or commentary that said Hank was better than Roberto in RF, Gold Gloves be damned. There is no debate on who was the better defensive player.
Nor did I ever claim Roberto was anywhere near the power hitter Hank was. So, in essence, these men held similar sway over the game when they played. Roberto collected the most hits of ANY PLAYER in the years of 1960-1969, Hank collected the most homeruns ever.
My point is, it's VERY debatable to say that Roberto was the greatest RF ever and include Hank Aaron in said debate and bringing World Series appearances up was meant to illustrate that in 1971, Roberto played out of his mind to bring the Pirates back from a 3-1 deficit to win. Look at these their WS numbers side-by-side: Hank (.364, 3 HR, 9 RBI) and Roberto (.362, 2 HR, 7 RBI).
As far as I'm concerned, brining Rafael Palimero and Ivan Rodriguez into this debate is silly considering neither of them were RF and neither of them played during the common years that Roberto and Hank shared, when the game and its awards and accolades were certainly handled much different.
And as you can see, your points vs. my points make this...a debate! You may think Hank > Roberto, I may think the opposite, but looking at their careers side-by-side, it's...DEBATABLE!
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