Pittsburgh Pirates history has produced many notable pitching performances, so much so that this must be presented in two parts. Now that the reader has digested Part 1, we continue with the much-anticipated, eagerly awaited Part 2.
Pirates History Includes Tales of Great Pitching
5. Law, with a Little Help from His Friend
July 19, 1955, Pirates 4, Milwaukee Braves 3 at Forbes Field, Pittsburgh (GSc* 118). If there was ever a game to illustrate why wins and losses are a poor measure of a pitcher’s worth, this is the one. Pirates right-hander Vern Law started the game and gave up a first-inning solo home run to the Braves’ Eddie Mathews. The Pirates got two runs for Law in the bottom of the third inning, but a fourth-inning error by Pirates second baseman Johnny O’Brien, who had lined into a triple play in the second, let in an unearned run to tie the game at 2-2. The Pirates continued to squander scoring opportunities. Meanwhile, Law kept going . . . and going . . . and going.
Law pitched 18 innings, giving up the two runs on nine hits and two walks, and striking out 12. The Braves used six pitchers over that stretch. With the game still tied at 2-2, Law was spent and finally gave way to a pinch hitter. As Law made his way to the runway leading to the Pirates clubhouse having completed 14 straight shutout innings, what remained of the Tuesday night crowd of 7,953 gave him a standing ovation.
A National League rule prohibited the start of an inning after 12:50 AM. The 19th inning started just barely before that time. Fellow right-hander Bob Friend relieved Law and surrendered an RBI single to Braves right fielder Chuck Tanner. Finally, in the bottom of the 19th, the Pirates figured out how to score runs. They won the game on RBI hits by Dale Long and Frank Thomas. It was over at 12:59 AM Wednesday, four hours and 44 minutes after it started. Friend was credited with the win. For Law, no decision.
If You Missed Part 1 (However Unforgiveable That May Be)
*The Game Score (GSc) was devised by influential statistician Bill James as a way to evaluate a single performance by a starting pitcher. It’s determined as follows: 50 + number of outs recorded + (2 x each inning completed after the fourth) + number of strikeouts – (2 x hits allowed) – (4 x earned runs allowed) – (2 x unearned runs allowed) – number of walks.
4. “Greatest Game in Many Years”
September 20, 1907, Pirates 2, Brooklyn Superbas 1 at Exposition Park (GSc 99). The headline in The Gazette Times gushed, “Greatest Game in Many Years” in capital letters, amusing in that baseball was still in its relative infancy. It’s like when a small child says, “I never saw anything like that in my whole life!” The occasion was the first no-hitter by a Pirates pitcher. Pitching for the Pirates was right-hander Nick Maddox, 20, in only his third major league game. Brooklyn’s run was unearned thanks to consecutive throwing errors by Maddox and shortstop Honus Wagner. Otherwise, Maddox surrendered just three walks.
If Gazette Times “professional sporting” reporter John H. Gruber was over the top in his effusiveness, we have to take his word as an eyewitness:
Not even a semblance of a hit was made by the Brooklyns. Now, this is saying much, as there are always some people who will split a hair, but no hair-splitting could be done yesterday, because not a ghost of a hit was visible, as ghosts go in song and legend. The only chance of a hit was when [Emil] Batch, the last man up, sent a slow one to Wagner . . .
We’ll let Wagner take it from there, as he explained to Pat Livingston of The Pittsburgh Press on May 6, 1951, on the occasion of Cliff Chambers’ no-hitter, the second in Pirates history. “[Batch] hit a high bounce over the pitcher’s head. The ball seemed to hang in the air. When it finally came down, I let fly to first base without even looking for the bag. The throw just beat the runner.”
3. Briles Comes Through
October 14, 1971, Pirates 4, Baltimore Orioles 0, Game 5 of World Series at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh (GSc 83). The 1971 World Series was tied at 2-2. In those situations, in all sports, the team that wins Game 5 goes on to win the series 82.8 percent of the time. For this crucial Thursday afternoon game, Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh sent right-hander Nelson Briles to the mound to oppose the Orioles’ left-hander Dave McNally. McNally was 21-5 with a 2.89 ERA and 1.097 WHIP during the regular season. He was one of four 20-game winners on the Baltimore staff. On the other hand, Briles, an offseason trade addition, was 8-4 with a 3.04 ERA and 1.221 WHIP. His 37 appearances included only 14 starts. To say that Pirates pitching prevailed on this day would be a gross understatement.
The Pirates had four runs by the fifth inning and McNally was finished. Briles tossed a complete game, two-hit shutout against a powerful lineup that included Frank Robinson and Boog Powell. In addition to the two hits, he allowed two walks and struck out two. The 51,377 in attendance and the national television audience saw Briles’s patented bellyflop off the mound when he wanted to put something extra on his fastball. The Series moved on to Baltimore with the Pirates ahead, 3-2, which brings us to our next top pitching performance.
2. “Without Blass, We Might Be Popping the Corks”
October 17, 1971, Pirates 2, Orioles 1, Game 7 of the World Series at Memorial Stadium, Baltimore (GSc 78). Game 7 was a rematch of the Game 3 pitchers, the Pirates’ Steve Blass and the Orioles’ Mike Cuellar. Blass had tossed a complete game 3-hitter to win Game 3, 5-1. Now he was on the road in a pressure cooker of a situation, in front of 47,291 fans and millions watching on NBC, where, according to Vince Leonard of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Curt Gowdy droned on drearily as if he had a nickel bet on the Orioles.”
Rule 8.01
Blass also had to deal with Baltimore manager Earl Weaver and his attempt at psychological warfare. In his book, A Pirate For Life, Blass admitted nervousness at the start of the game. He walked the first man up for the Orioles, Don Buford. After Davey Johnson failed to bunt Buford up, Blass got ahead of Powell, 0-2, before Weaver leaped from the dugout, shouting “Eight-oh-one!” He was citing Rule 8.01, which required pitchers to pitch from the pitching rubber. Blass was pitching from the side of the rubber. After a three-minute delay during which the umpire Nestor Chylak assured Weaver that what Blass was doing was legal, Blass threw a ball to Powell, prompting Weaver to come charging out of the dugout again. Blass wrote, “I’ve always said in interviews that the delay caused by Weaver’s ranting really helped me relax.”
Blass relaxed enough to toss a complete game, giving up four hits and two walks while striking out five. In a Series overshadowed by a verbal feud between superstars Roberto Clemente and Robinson, it was Pirates pitching that won the 1971 World Series despite their reputation as a team that tried to out-slug its opponents. Blass is seen leaping in the air while catcher Manny Sanguillén celebrates with outstretched arms in the iconic photo that ran on the front page of the Post-Gazette underneath a headline that read “We’re the Champs” in capital letters and large font usually reserved for declarations of war and political assassinations.
Clemente, who hit .414/.452/.759, 2 HR, and 4 RBI while astounding observers with his arm from right field, was named the Series Most Valuable Player. After acknowledging Clemente’s greatness, Weaver told the postgame media scrum, “Without Blass, we might be popping the corks.”
1. “Why Don’t We Add Old Harvey to that List?”
May 26, 1959, Braves 1, Pirates 0 at County Stadium, Milwaukee (GSc 107). Unlike our earlier two-parter on the top 10 home runs in Pirates history, true baseball disciples surely knew which game would be number one in this series. Something about Tuesday evenings between the Pirates and Braves brought about marathon games. On this night, in perhaps the greatest pitching performance in baseball history, Harvey Haddix, a five-foot-nine Pirates left-hander, pitched 12 perfect innings. His mound opponent, Braves right-hander Lew Burdette, who also started against Law on July 19, 1955, didn’t allow a run despite giving up 12 hits.
The 13th inning proved unlucky for Haddix. The Braves’ Felix Mantilla led off by reaching on a throwing error by third baseman Don Hoak. Mathews bunted him to second base. Then Haddix intentionally walked Henry Aaron. The next batter, Joe Adcock, smoked a ball into the right-center field stands for an apparent home run. In his excitement, however, Adcock passed Aaron on the bases and was called out. Aaron continued on and touched home plate after Mantilla. The umpires declared the final score 2-0. The next day, NL president Warren Giles declared the score 1-0, saying that when a home run is nullified, only the winning run counts. In any event, Haddix not only lost the game but his shot at immortality. Despite throwing more perfect innings in one start than any pitcher in baseball history, he’s not credited with a perfect game.
Afterward, Haddix told Lester J. Biederman of the Press, “No, I wasn’t sure I had a perfect game. When you go that long, it’s hard to remember the baserunners. I guess I made a mistake to Adcock.” He continued, “I was tired. I wanted a low pitch and came in high with a slider. He really walloped it.”
Photo Credit: © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
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