RMJ 147 July 12

SATURDAY, JULY 12 ● Pittsburgh, vs Pirates

Another early wake-up. I know I don’t have to do these things, but I can’t resist. It’s not that I love golf so much as I enjoy the company of old ballplayers.

Yesterday was my generation; today we skipped back a decade.

Bill Virdon set it up. His roommate with the Pirates, Dick Groat, owns a golf course about an hour out of Pittsburgh, just down the road from Latrobe — the home of golf legend Arnold Palmer. Bill Mazeroski was coming over to meet us for lunch.

I played against Virdon, Groat, and Maz at the beginning of my career. It would be great to see them.

Ash and Vern came along, and when we arrived and saw a parking lot full of cars and a tee box full of golf carts, we groaned. Bill had told Groat that we were coming, but he didn’t make a tee time.

As it turned out, we got the special treatment: Groat ran us right up to the head of the line, and we teed off into a sea of golf enthusiasts.

The play was slow and ugly; we hit the tree-lined rough more often than we hit the fairway. The going was slow, as we were not the only ones who couldn’t stay in the narrow fairways.

After nine, we decided to have lunch.

Groat gave us the tour. He has a bed-and-breakfast on site, and each room is named and decorated after one of the Pirates. We saw the Mazeroski Room, the Virdon Room, the Bob Skinner and Elroy Face Rooms.

There were a lot of photos of Forbes Field. I played against the Pirates there, and I also knew the history of the park from my broadcasting days. We talked a lot about what it was like playing there.

Bill described a home run that Mantle hit over his head and over the centerfield fence in the 1960 World Series:

“It was still fifty feet high when it cleared the 453-foot sign, and it wasn’t coming down yet. It was the longest home run I ever saw there. I turned and took about three steps, and then I just watched it fly.”

I recounted the story of Babe Ruth’s last home run — the first ever hit over the roof in right field.

One story led to another, and I was glad I made the effort, despite the crowded scene on the course.

When we got to the lunchroom, Maz was there. He was a little bigger than I remember him. Of course, he was always pretty big.

I remember Pete Rose saying that he couldn’t break up a double play on Maz, because Maz wouldn’t jump.

“He just stood there,” Rose said. “It was like sliding into a tree stump.”

 

The conversation turned to the dilution of talent in the major leagues.

Groat, Virdon, and Maz were pretty critical of the modern player. Ash stood up for today’s players.

“Don’t you think these guys can hit it farther, with all the weight training and everything?” he asked.

The response was that yes, these guys hit the ball a long way, but they don’t know how to play the game. If the old-time players had a chance to hit against the weak pitching of this era, they would have hit colossal home runs themselves.

Ash talked about the increase in population, and the addition of so many Latin-American players. Groat countered with the notion that almost every great athlete tried to play pro baseball back then; the game didn’t have so much competition from the other sports. Each team had more players in the farm system. With no multiyear contracts, there was constant competition. If you went into a long slump, there was always a good player in the minors, waiting to take your job.

I didn’t voice my opinion, because I have learned that most players are intractable in their own.

Most of the time, players romanticize their own era; it’s only natural. But I’m not sure my era was the best; I don’t know which era was the best. But I believe that the great players of the past would be great in today’s game as well.

In baseball, so much of the game is hand speed and hand/eye coordination; sheer strength and raw speed are less important than in other sports. I believe this would be true in golf and tennis as well, but not in football and basketball.

That’s just one man’s opinion, but I withheld it this day in favor of listening to the others talk.

 

With the two wins over the Bucs, we were now a game ahead of them. To stay ahead, we would have to beat Francisco Cordova, who pitched a two-hit shutout against us in the Dome.

Cordova was masterful in that game. He turned out to be just a little better in this one.

Chris Holt matched him zero-for-zero, but Cordova didn’t allow any hits! With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Chris Holt made an error on a chopper up the first-base line. I brought Wagner in to face Tony Womack, and the game went to the ninth still scoreless.

About this time, I started thinking that we were going to win.

If he pitches a no-hitter against us and we still win, I thought, it will be a springboard. We’ll probably win tomorrow, and we might get a winning streak going.

I sensed that this would be a pivotal game, and I really thought we might win it.  I know one thing: it was clearly the most emotional game of the year.

 

We failed to get a hit in the ninth, and Wagner held the line. In the tenth, Ricardo Rincón came in throwing bullets; we failed again. 

I had pinch-hit for Wagner, so I had to bring a new pitcher into the game. But no one has really been distinguishing himself out there lately.

I went with Hudek, because of the experience factor. As it turned out, he pitched like an inexperienced rookie: he overthrew and was wild. He walked two batters and got two out. When the Pirates pinch-hit with Mark Smith, I went to the mound.

“Just settle down,” I said. “Nobody is going to die out here tonight. Take a deep breath, let your body relax, and go get him. You have the stuff. This guy is not that good of a hitter.”

I turned to Brad. “Do we know how we want to pitch him?” I asked.

“In,” Brad said. “Fastballs in and breaking balls off the plate.”

That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.

“All right, let’s go. Get him out, and we’ll score. You’re going to be the winning pitcher in this game.”

Hudek threw a fastball in for strike one. Brad called for another one. Hudie threw it right out over the plate, and Smith crushed it. It was a three-run game-winning homer, and it brought 44,000 fans to their feet in mass hysteria.

Those who came for the post-game fireworks show got a special treat: a ten-inning combined no-hitter.

I didn’t see the home run clear the fence; I was really pissed.

It wasn’t so much that we had a no-hitter pitched against us, and it wasn’t so much that we lost the game. The focus of my ire was Hudek.

The two guys he walked couldn’t hit the ball out of the park if their lives depended upon it. You have to make weak hitters hit the ball. You just cannot walk them.

 

I was a little short with the writers.

“What do you want me to say?” I said. “We only hit one ball hard all night. The kid pitched a great game. Young made a nice play on Bogar, but other than that, there was nothing that resembled a hit.      

“Go ask the guys out there,” I said, motioning to the locker room. “They had a better view of it than I did.”

I wasn’t hungry. Couldn’t eat a thing, even though I knew I hadn’t had much to eat all day. I paced around the locker room like a caged animal.

It wasn’t so much that we lost the game, but that we lost the opportunity to find the spark I’ve been looking for all year.

Winning a game like this, where you are overpowered throughout, would have been a spark. Now we have to come back out here in a few hours and climb out of an emotional hole, while the Pirates will be supercharged.

I saw Biggio, Spiers, Berry and a few others huddled in the far corner of the room. “C’mon,” I said. “We can’t let this affect tomorrow. We gotta get back up and go. It’s a gut check. We’re going to have to kick ourselves.”

I got a look of disinterested disgust form Bidge. That’s all right; I could have been looking in the mirror, because that’s exactly the way I felt. I’m not worried about him getting “up” for the game tomorrow. He’ll be fired up, as usual. I’m more worried about what this will do for the Pirates than what it will do to us.

 

Gerry came in about half-an-hour after the game.

“I know you have confidence in Hudek, but I’m tired of looking at him,” he said. “Maybe we should send him down instead of Minor.”

“I can’t argue that, Gerry,” I said. “He’s been horseshit. No doubt about it.”

“Well, we don’t have to decide that tonight,” he said. “Let’s sleep on it. I don’t want to make an emotional decision.”

Gerry is pretty good at containing himself. He’s impulsive by nature, but he knows when to think twice.

I just kept talking about the emotional opportunity we lost.

“I just felt we were going to win that game somehow,” I said, “even after Wagner was out and Hudek was in. I thought we would win it, and that it could start us off on a good winning streak. Now we’re going to have to play our asses off to win tomorrow.”

 

It didn’t make me feel any better to sit on the bus in traffic for half an hour, trying to go two miles. I should have walked; Three Rivers Stadium doesn’t empty well. The rivers and bridges make for bottlenecks in every direction.

I was still out of sorts when we got to the hotel. Giusti was waiting for his old manager, Virdon. Bill went in and said, “C’mon.”

I said, “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” not knowing if I would.

When I got to the room, I packed for getaway in the morning, and I decided to join the boys in the bar. I’m glad I did. We told a few stories, shared a few laughs.

Giusti was always one of my favorites, and I couldn’t help but think about how he would be a good coach. He has a college education (Syracuse) and a great personality.