Remembering How the Pirates Became World Champs in 1960

Members of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates already have marked the dates on their calendars. It will be some time before plans are completed for the 1990 club. But there remains the distinct possibility that the two groups may unite to present Pittsburgh with the greatest week of baseball in city history.

Thirty years after the Bucs accounted for the most dramatic of World Series triumphs, the current edition is locked in a battle with the New York Mets for first place in the National League East. Because of the spring training lockout and delayed start of the regular season, the ’90 Series will not start until Oct. 16. If it is extended to the full seven games, the finale will be played Wednesday night, Oct. 24, in the city of the National League champion. Two days later, the ’60 Pirates are scheduled to appear at a weekend-long reunion and memorabilia show in Pittsburgh.

Now, that would be a week to remember in the Pennsylvania city. It also would fit in nicely with the theme of the Pittsburgh newspapers, which have been running daily comparisons between this team and the 1960 champions. Although the Pirates have won more recent World Series championships, in 1971 and 1979, there is an abiding affection for the older group, the one that transformed the image of Pittsburgh sports.

“We have been a kind of measuring stick,� Vern Law said. “I guess a lot of it is that this team wasn’t expected to win, and neither were we.� Certainly, those Pirates could not have been expected to beat the New York Yankees in a World Series, especially one in which they were outscored 55-27, but that’s exactly what happened. It is the only Series to end on a home run in the ninth inning of the seventh game.

Law was the starting pitcher for Pittsburgh in that seventh game, played at Forbes Field. He had won his two previous Series starts as well as 20 decisions during the regular season, an achievement for which he received the Cy Young Award. Now 60, he’s still pitching at home in Provo, Utah, throwing batting practice to youngsters and playing in old-timers’ games.

“I haven’t got enough sense not to pitch,� he said, smiling, during a recent appearance at a card show in New York. If anything, his work load has increased in recent years. At the Equitable game in Pittsburgh this summer, he said, so many of his former teammates were “under doctors’ care that I played third base for two innings and pitched one.�

He is not a man who lives for the past. One son, Vance, completed a decade as a major league infielder in 1989. And he thinks that at least one grandson, Garrett, may be big-league material. Still, developments in Pittsburgh this summer and the huge anniversary celebration and show at Robert Morris College from Oct. 26-28, have rekindled memories.

Of a team whose first baseman, Dick Stuart (a.k.a. Dr. Strangeglove), occasionally would retire for the night at about the time Law was rising for breakfast. Of a team whose young right fielder, Roberto Clemente, was so proud, he would not wear his ’60 World Series ring because he had finished behind teammate Dick Groat in Most Valuable Player balloting. Of a team with a left-handed pitcher, Harvey Haddix, whose luck was so bad, he once pitched 12 perfect innings against the Milwaukee Braves, only to lose the game in the 13th. Of a team with a right-handed pitcher, Roy Face, whose luck was so good, he posted the astounding record of 18-1 entirely in relief in 1959.

In that prechampionship year, the Pirates had finished in fourth place, only two games above .500. The season after their championship, they would sink to sixth. But the mix was just right in 1960, thanks to the midseason acquisitions of Vinegar Bend Mizell and Clem Labine and the assertive presence of third baseman Don Hoak, who had accompanied Haddix and catcher Smoky Burgess from Cincinnati in a remarkably beneficial trade the previous season.

“We had a lot of different personalities,� Law said. “Hoak was the straw boss. He just would not quit. On paper, we were not as good as the Yankees, but we had 25 guys who would scrap.�

Deacon Law, a Mormon minister, was the father figure on that team, a veteran of 10 years in the Pirate rotation. He had been signed out of high school in Meridian, Idaho, largely through the efforts of Bing Crosby, then a vice president of the ballclub, after being spotted by Sen. Herman Welker, an old Crosby classmate. Law arrived in Pittsburgh in 1950, a time when the Pirates were lodged in the basement and the atmosphere was thick with steel-mill residue.

“There was so much silt in the air,� he said, “that if you wore a shirt with a white collar, it would be gray by the time you got to the corner.� The team also was gray, even with Ralph Kiner driving home runs at a league-leading pace. Honus Wagner, then a Pittsburgh icon, served as an honorary coach. “He’d sit in the dugout until the sixth or seventh inning,� Law said, “then go up to the clubhouse and have an Iron City (beer).� On his walk home, the man never had to buy a drink.

It wasn’t until Danny Murtaugh became manager late in the 1957 season that the Pirates demonstrated the ability to climb out of the second division. “I give credit to Murtaugh for bringing along Bill Mazeroski as a hitter,� Law said. “Before (Murtaugh), he’d be taken out of a game in the late innings for a pinch hitter. Danny told him, ‘I don’t want you looking over your shoulder. You’re in there for nine innings.�’

And Thursday, Oct. 13, it was Mazeroski who led off the ninth inning of a tied game marked by improbable twists and turns and a bad-hop single off the throat of Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek. Mazeroski drove a 1-0 pitch from Ralph Terry over the left-field wall for one of the magic moments in baseball history. A section of that wall has been preserved at the club entrance to the present park.

Since the Bucs’ last two championships have been won on the road, there has been nothing to equal that euphoria in the 20 years since the opening of Three Rivers Stadium. But then, the 1990 season still awaits a conclusion.