Sport: Pops Go the Pirates

Captain Stargell leads his family to a World Series comeback

Dave Parker, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ All Star rightfielder, gave Willie Stargell his nickname, and the title was a matter of some consideration. “I called him Pops because, like a father, he taught us how to take what comes and then come back,” Parker explained after Stargell had won the Most Valuable Player award in the National League playoffs. “He showed us how to strike out and walk away calmly, lay the bat down gently, then get up the next time and get a home run. From him we learned not to get too high on the good days or too low on the bad days, because there’s plenty of both in this game.”

The 1979 World Series against the American League Champion Baltimore Orioles brought the Pirates a full measure of good days and bad days, but the last and best day belonged to Willie Stargell. In a dramatic seventh game, Stargell hit the home run that won the world championship for Pittsburgh and with it MVP honors for himself for the second time in as many weeks. At 38, the Pirates’ captain batted .400, drove in seven runs and pounded three home runs, adding four doubles to set a World Series record for extra-base hits. Perhaps more crucial, the imposing but soft-spoken first baseman helped to shore up his teammates’ morale when, after slogging through some of the most miserable World Series weather in history, they fell behind Manager Earl Weaver’s efficient Oriole machine, three games to one. “All we need is three one-day winning streaks,” Stargell calmly pronounced. Just as calmly, the Pirates reeled off three straight victories and became only the fourth team in the Series’ 76-year history to surmount such a daunting deficit.

That anyone survived the first three games of this mostly cold and rainy Series was mildly remarkable. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, long famous for sitting coatless through a heavy frost when prime-time television commitments are at stake, proved that he was equally up to the challenge in a mid-autumn monsoon. Rain fell before or during each of the first three games, and temperatures were in the numbing 30s and low 40s, but Kuhn came sans coat and umbrella one night. He saw to it that players kept up appearances as well, forbidding the wearing of woolen ski caps during batting practice and on the bench. “I don’t know about him,” one Pirate grumbled, “but my ears are cold.”

It was a bit more difficult, however, to pretend it was baseball season on the field. Players slipped and fell in the slop; frozen fingers committed eleven errors in the first three games. The vagaries of nature were compounded by the fact that for television reasons, five of the Series’ seven games did not begin until 8:30 p.m., and a sixth was scheduled for late Sunday afternoon to avoid a ratings clash with pro football.

The consequences of such fealty to commerce were apparent from the first game. It was postponed by chilly rain, and a crew of teen-agers was pressed into mopping up Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium with towels. Despite that effort, the Orioles and the Pirates committed three errors each. Pirate Second Baseman Phil Garner let in the winning runs in the first inning when he tossed a simple double-play throw clear into left field.

“My hands were numb, the ball was soaking, and I never really felt the ball,” Garner explained.

“I threw it the way you’d throw a bar of soap in the shower, and with just about as much success.”

Stargell’s first home run helped narrow the gap, but the Pirates never recovered from the two-error, five-run first inning. Orioles 5, Pirates 4.

Nearly half of the second game was played in a steady drizzle and, as the night wore on, as much time was spent scraping mud out of spikes as playing baseball. Pirate Reliever Kent Tekulve summed up: “It was like being on skis out there.” Not that anyone could tell Tekulve’s legs from his skis: at 6 ft. 4 in. and 160 lbs., he looks like a giant spider on the mound as he sweeps sidearm sinkerballs toward the plate. After warming himself by a bonfire his teammates had built in the bullpen, Tekulve retired three straight batters in the ninth inning to earn the first of his three World Series saves as the Pirates won, 3-2.

The Series then moved to Pittsburgh, and the weather came with it. A third-inning deluge forced more than an hour’s delay, and when the Series resumed the Orioles pounded out five quick runs to put the game out of reach. The O’s Weaver had created one of his patented shishke-bab lineups, plucking righthanded hitters from the bench to start nine of them against the Pirates’ top lefthander, John Candelaria. Orioles 8, Pirates 4.

Stargell led off Pittsburgh’s attack in the fourth game with his second home run, and the Pirates were coasting to a 6-3 win when the Orioles bench struck back. In the eighth inning Weaver sent up three pinchhitters, reaped four RBls and, when the dust settled, the Orioles had scored a total of six runs. Pittsburgh fans were stunned into silence, then desertion by Weaver’s musical lineup. “Too much strategy for me,” mumbled one fan on his way out. Baltimore 9, Pittsburgh 6.

For all their protestations of confidence, the Pirates were shaken after dropping behind in such a shattering fashion. In the locker room, more than a few players paused in their postgame rituals to listen to Stargell’s comments. During the season, the captain had passed out gold stars to adorn his teammates’ caps when their achievements warranted reward. Now, sipping from his bottle of vintage wine and nibbling at barbecued ribs, he dispensed something more important: “Me, disappointed? I’m playing in the World Series and I’m having fun. Losing one ball game doesn’t change that. We’ll deal with it the best we can, because we’re the proud Pittsburgh Pirates. We’re professionals. We don’t live in the past and we don’t let one ball game ruin our future, either. Tomorrow we’ll go out and have fun again, win or lose. The man doesn’t say ‘Work ball!’ you know. It’s ‘Play ball!’ Tomorrow, we’ll go out and play.”

How they played! Stargell’s sacrifice fly scored the tying run and with his teammates on a tear (Garner, two for four and headed for a .500 Series, Third Baseman Bill Madlock, four for four that day, .375 overall), the Pirates methodically ground out seven runs. Starter Jim Rooker gave up just one run on three hits during the first five innings, then Starter Bert Blyleven masqueraded as a reliever for four expert innings. Pirates 7, Orioles 1.

That launched the shutdown of Oriole hitters by Pittsburgh pitchers. Proud possessors of the most successful starting rotation in all of baseball, the Orioles suddenly found themselves outmanned on the mound by a ragtag collection of starting relievers, relieving starters and the ubiquitous Tekulve, who iced the last two Pi rate wins by facing 15 batters and giving up just one single. In the final three games, Baltimore scored only two runs, while Pittsburgh mowed down Baltimore’s best:

Mike Flanagan (23-9) was beaten 7-1 in the fifth game, three-time Cy Young Winner Jim Palmer lost 4-0 in the sixth, and Scott McGregor (13-6) was beaten in the final game 4-1. Over that span, Baltimore managed 17 hits, but seldom at the right time. The Orioles had a chance to salvage the Series in the last game when they loaded the bases in the eighth inning; not a run scored.

Through it all, there was Stargell. He knocked home four runs in the Pirates’ decisive three-game streak, and in the final contest hit a single, two doubles and the towering two-run homer that guaranteed the champagne. When it was over, the slugger who has hit 464 home runs in his 18-year major league career considered his moment and deemed another day happier still. “When I signed with the Pirates in 1959,” said Pops, the man who still plays ball for fun two decades later, “they gave me a $1,500 bonus and $175 a month. I was elated then.”

Now Stargell earns some $250,000 a year for his big bat and even bigger influence.

But Pirates Manager Chuck Tanner puts his value another way: “Having Willie Stargell on your ball club is like having a diamond ring on your finger.”