20th Century In American Sports

"Since the Mets surprised them, these excellents have played six playoff games and won them all; have played five World Series games and won four of them; have run off and hid from their division during the regular seasons. But they haven't beaten any great clubs. What they have beaten is expansion. They have maintained a balance, a strength, at a time when most teams have been watered down. That is your Baltimore dynasty. Now comes Pittsburgh. Like the Mets of '69, it has its skinny kid, ; it's brash young hard thrower, ; it's homer-hitter on first base, and if they put it all together and knock off the dynasty, I won't be surprised. Every once in a while a team, a fighter, a horse, comes along with no business to win, but does. I have seen Willie Mays try to sacrifice, just the other day, a slap-in-the-face reminder that things change, and the great grow old, and there always is room at the top for someone new, someone with ability, who is willing to work at it."

"Well, I'm sort of glad to see Pittsburgh win because that Clemente is so great."

"It all began with Clemente hustling to first. He knows only one way to play this game."

"From a personal standpoint, I have known Clemente since he came up to the Pirates 17 years ago and the thing he did that impressed me most in the Series against the Orioles wasn't that he hit .414 or got off those excellent throws, but that he got up and chased the ball when he kicked it into distant left centerfield after falling down trying for a backhanded shoestringer on 's triple in the first game. "Swoboda would've had it!" said a newspaperman I know. Seriously, though, what impressed me so much about Clemente's get-up-and-go-after-it sequence is that this was so typical of his performance. He'd do the same thing in the second game of a series with San Diego as he was doing now in the second game of a series with Baltimore."

"And then, too, there was the shared experience, already permanently fixed in memory, of Roberto Clemente playing a kind of baseball that none of us had ever seen before—throwing and running and hitting at something close to the level of absolute perfection, playing to win but also playing the game almost as if it were a form of punishment for everyone else on the field."

"The best damn ballplayer in the World Series – maybe in the whole world – is Roberto Clemente and, as far as I’m concerned, they can give him the automobile right now. Maybe some guys hit the ball farther, and some throw it harder, and one or two run faster, although I doubt that, but nobody puts it all together like Roberto. [...] In Game 3, Clemente hit a ground ball to the right side first time up. It was stamped DP. The Orioles got one. In the seventh, Clemente led off with a bouncer back to the box. Mike Cuellar knocked it down, picked it up, was aghast to see the batter streaking down the line, hurried his throw, high, and Clemente was safe. The next batter walked on four pitches, the next batter hit the ball out of the park. Mike Cuellar’s composure was shattered. The game was over. [...] Roberto Clemente is a 37-year-old roadrunner. He has spent 18 summers of those years playing baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He has batted over .300 thirteen times, and for the last three seasons, in his decrepitude, he has hit .345, .352, .341. But everybody has numbers. Don’t mind the numbers. Just watch how Roberto Clemente runs 90 feet the next time he hits the ball back to the pitcher and ask yourself if you work at your job that way. Every time I see Roberto Clemente play ball, I think of the times I’ve heard about how ‘they’ dog it, and I want to vomit."

"After we lost the second game in Baltimore, Clemente came into the clubhouse and he starts screamin’ and said that we’re gonna go back to Pittsburgh and we’re gonna kick their butts three games in a row. And we went back to Pittsburgh and we did exactly that."

"It all boils down to Blass, to pitching being 90 percent of the game. Blass couldn't have been better. He didn't get stronger late in the game, but he sure didn't get much weaker."

"I'm not selling Clemente short. He couldn't have done more than he did. But, great as Clemente was—and he was great without a question—Clemente didn't do it to us. It all boils down to Steve Blass."

"I say Roberto Clemente won that game for Pittsburgh. Simply by being Roberto Clemente and running out a ground ball the way he always has since the day he began playing ball 30 years ago. I had only one thought watching Clemente run down to first base. I wondered what Alex Johnson was thinking while watching the whole thing on TV."

"Oh, my God. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Really."

"For years we sent the World Series runners-up to Japan as a consolation prize. The baths, the geishas and the sake restored the losers' morale. We weren't concerned about the morale of the Japanese, who were struggling in those days, and glad to get any kind of major league product. It's different now that the Japanese are a power, and make better radio and TV sets than we do. They want the best in baseball, too. We can get away with sending the second string, Spiro, to visit the dictators in Greece, but Japan is a vibrant democracy that won't settle for No. 2. If Nixon allows the Orioles to make the trip, you can expect student riots, accompanied by chants ("We want Clemente san!") and banners ("Boog — Stay Home With Rest of Yankees — We Got Enough Sumo Wrestlers"). Don't think the President isn't aware of this. If there's one thing he's sharp on, it's sports. Why do you suppose he sent Secretary of State Rogers to the seventh game? To lend moral and official support to the Orioles, who were supposed to be our best team and thus had been given State Department approval for the tour. Unfortunately it was the all over again — the wrong side won, and it was another defeat for the State Department, too."

"He's been popping off about ballparks and he's played in a bleeping coal hole over there at all his career. Clemente's such a great outfielder, it shouldn't matter to him. He should be able to play on the moon. Sure, it's tough to see the ball in Baltimore. But I'm not going to cry about it, I'll just play my game. We're going back there to play, so maybe he can buy a ticket for the stands if he doesn't like the outfield. And if he isn't sure where he lought to play, tell him to watch me. He says he plays in close. I see him playing on the warning track."

"During the Series, after arriving in Baltimore, Roberto practiced for hours, studying how the ball caromed off the right field fence at different angles and locations. His determination was of such a magnitude that one could be excused for believing he’d gone crazy. Crazy like a fox is more like it, as the World Series would ultimately demonstrate; time after time, Roberto, having left nothing to chance, would appear in precisely the right spot to field each carom. For me, Roberto Clemente has to be the greatest right fielder of all time."

"I want everybody in the world to know that this is the way I play all the time. All season, every season. I gave everything I had to this game."

"In case you didn't notice, and you probably didn't because TV directors were very careful, there were thousands of empty seats at the World Series. On Saturday, with the Pirates leading 3–2, in games, there were 7,963 empty seats in Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. And on Sunday, with the Series deadlocked, 4,856 stayed home and many who did show came with transistor radios so they could follow their favorite pro football teams."

"Leppert’s only regret is that Clemente didn’t have the chance to truly excel in the field. Other than his eye-popping throw to the plate in the sixth game, Clemente was required to field no more than ordinary chances. "Brooks Robinson had that great Series with the glove in 1970, but you’ve got to be lucky to field like he did. By that, I mean you’ve got to get the tough chances, and if Roberto had had some in this Series, he really would have shown them something.”"

"I've already had a colonoscopy by Blass."

"I never really pitched against him until the World Series. The scouting report said you can go up and in with him, but don’t go there twice. You can pitch him low and away, but don’t stay out there. So what does that leave? Throw it down the middle and hope he hits it at someone. Clemente beat us. The reason they won was Steve Blass’s two games and Clemente. He ran the bases as well as you could run them, made great plays and great throws. And he hit the home run to right field against me, the triple to left-center – he had 12 hits."

"They got on his back, and he carried the team. He said, "I’m not going to let my team lose.""

"The park didn't have any foul poles. You had the foul line on the field and then there was a fence with a yellow line on it and then about an 18-inch gap and a wall with a yellow line on it and that was it. In the second game there, the first night game ever in the World Series, of the National League was behind the plate. I was working the right-field line. In the middle of the game, Roberto Clemente hits this wicked line drive down the right field line. It went into the stands right in the area where there was no foul pole. When you have to make a call like that, it's a killer-diller. I called it foul. Everybody told me afterward if there had been a foul pole, it would have been a home run. And the next year, they put up a foul pole."

"Roberto Clemente was on second and Wilver Stargell on first with none out. The Pirates were two games down in the Series and their knuckles were getting white in their cling to the precipice when Bob Robertson came up. Now, bear in mind, Bob Robertson had hit three home runs in one game in the playoffs. Behind him in the Pirate order was the banjo section. In this situation, naturally, the manager orders bunt. Managers never call for cards, never fade you. Managers order you to give yourself up in this situation. Managers like to blow retreat. Bob Robertson missed the bunt sign. Which was understandable; he'd never seen one. They wouldn't be in the World Series if they gave him the bunt sign during the season. So, he hit the ball out of the park. Pittsburgh had got a foot in the door in this World Series. Wilver Stargell greeted Robertson at home plate. "Nice bunt," he said laconically."

"[T]he Bucs drafted Clemente for $4,000. The Dodgers lost a superstar, $6,000 and God knows how many pennants. Tomorrow night at Leone's, Roberto Clemente will be handed the keys to the Sports Mag car, for having won the World Series for Pittsburgh. At age 37, he can hit the ball back to the box and beat the car to first base."

"Coming through the 4-0-4, Olympic summer in Atlanta. So, let's go!"

"Bill Mazeroski, home-run-hitting hero of the Pirates' World Series victory, has started reaping the benefits of his long hit—and at advanced prices, too. The West Virginia second baseman posed a problem last night to the celebrity panel of "I've Got a Secret". And next month, he will be a mystery guest on another guessing show (and he's keeping the name of the program his secret for the time being). Before the second pitch of the ninth inning of the seventh World Series game, Mazeroski could have demanded a couple of hundred dollars for a television appearance. But, according to his agent, Pittsburgher Frank Scott, Mazeroski will receive $1,000 plus expenses for his mystery-guest stint (plus, no doubt, whatever figures come up on the flip cards). "I guess I'd have to say Mazeroski is the most in demand," said Scott, a Pittsburgher who started his sports career as a student at Pitt during the Jock Sutherland era. Scott, based in New York, has at least five other Pirates in his stable, in addition to many Yankees. Among other assignments for the World Series hero is a tobacco chew endorsement for a television commercial."

"I was too busy screaming my head off like everybody else [to complete the scorecard to include Mazeroski's walk-off home run]. That thunderclap ... let out all that pent-up emotion and frustration. This is such a great sports town, and we've had some great triumphs -- the Immaculate Reception, the Steelers dynasty, the Penguins and their three Stanley Cups. But for those of us who were there on Oct. 13, 1960, that can never be topped. You just stood a little bit taller. You could look people in the eye and say, "Yeah, I'm a Pirates fan." It was truly a life-shaping experience. And for me, relief from a very, very difficult time in my personal life."

"Drama is where you find it during the World Series. The time: Wednesday afternoon. The locale: First floor, box 71 at Forbes Field. The occupants: Ralph Kiner (with Nancy Chaffee Kiner) and Henry (Hank) Greenberg, two of the greatest sluggers in Pirate history. The one year the two of them played together, in 1947, Kiner, on the way up, hit 51 home runs; Greenberg, on the way down, slammed out 25. They have remained close friends ever since. Having spent all of his lifetime, barring the season of '47, in the American League and presently the vice president of the Chicago White Sox, Greenberg's riding with the Yankees. You don't have to be told where Kiner's sympathies are; the general manager of the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League is still a Pirate through and through."

"I was shooting for some small publications and my goal was to sell a picture to SI. But I knew that to compete I needed camera with a motor drive. So I talked my father into loaning me the money for a Nikon F. It cost $450 and we bought it on time, though my father didn't believe in buying things on time. I took the camera to Pittsburgh. On that day—the first day I used it—I got two good pictures, a shot of Yogi Berra getting picked off second and one of Mickey Mantle waving to the crowd. I sold both to SI, one for $300, the other for $150. I remember because the total was exactly $450—which I used to pay back my father."

"Well, a little while ago, when we mentioned that this one, in typical fashion, was going right to the wire, little did we know… Art Ditmar throws—here's a swing and a high fly ball going deep to left, this may do it!… Back to the wall goes Yogi Berra, it is…over the fence, home run, the Pirates win!… (long pause for crowd noise)… Ladies and gentlemen, Mazeroski has hit a one-nothing pitch over the left field fence at Forbes Field to win the 1960 World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates by a score of ten-nothing!… Once again, that final score… The Pittsburgh Pirates, the 1960 world champions, defeat the New York Yankees. The Pirates ten, and the Yankees nine!"

"As we reached the street, conversation suddenly stopped. A crowd spotted Clemente and the deluge began. Before we had gone 10 steps Roberto was surrounded by humanity. They patted him on the back and kept up a steady chant of endearments. Clewmente smiled and kept walking. Finally, after what seemed like hours, we reached the car. By now Clemente was all smiles and he seemed to radiate happiness. In the car he said aloud, "These are the best fans anywhere. They make all of this worthwhile. They are the reason I'm glad we won the World Series. They are the ones who deserve this championship." And, as the auto pulled slowly away from the curb and Clemente sat back and relaxed, it was obvious that here was a player who enjoyed his victory celebration a lot better on the streets of Pittsburgh than in the clubhouse he shares with his teammates."

"That split-second, extraordinarily heads-up base-running play Mickey Mantle performed in the top of the ninth of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, it turns out, was senseless. And as Manhattan’s Marc Salis and Walter “Wally From The Bronx” Kellermann last week pointed out — separately and in duplicate detail — Mantle’s base-running could have ended the game and the Series in Pittsburgh’s favor, at that moment — before Bill Mazeroski ever got a chance to homer in the bottom of the ninth to give the Pirates’ a 10-9 win. With one out in the ninth, the Bucs led, 9-8, Mantle on first, pinch runner Gil McDougald on third. Yogi Berra hit a grounder to first baseman Rocky Nelson, who stepped on first for the second out. Mantle, realizing he had no chance to make it to second, dived back into first base, avoiding Nelson’s tag, which would have been the third out and likely would have ended the game, because it’s highly unlikely McDougald could have scored before that tag. But because McDougald scored to tie the game, Mantle always has been given credit for a fabulous decision. But had Mantle simply run to second he would have removed all risk of ending the game by being tagged by Nelson before McDougald scored. Nelson, in no position to throw home after stepping on first, had removed the force at second, thus Mantle would have had to have been tagged out at second or after a run down, allowing McDougald to easily score. The “spectacular” and legendary part of the play — Mantle diving back into first and eluding Nelson’s tag — was unnecessary, senseless. Had Nelson made that tag Mantle would have made one of the worst base-running errors in history."

"The big guy's been dead a dozen years, but it's funny how his name keeps bobbing up at World Series time. When Mickey hit his home runs it was first "three behind Ruth," then "two behind Ruth." And when Yogi Berra bounced one foul atop the right-field roof the memory was of Ruth smacking one fair in this fashion in his fading days as a National Leaguer."

"A couple of gentlemen who are old hands at crises sat in Yankee Stadium this balmy afternoon and watched the Pirates precipitate a most acute one for themselves. Mr. Nehru and Mr. Herbert Hoover arrived a trifle late, and both left a short time before Gino Cimoli struck out on a pitch that almost untied one of his shoe laces. It closed down a game that was utterly devoid of suspense and deserves mention only because of the heroics performed by certain members of the Casey Stengel troupe. Now the Pirates had better win tomorrow or be ready for the guillotine. The Yanks have them, two to one, and if they make it three there could be no return to Forbes Field before next April."

"Mantle safe at first base, on one of the weirdest plays, but we'll go back and tell you what happened. Berra ripped a line drive down the first base line. Stuart (or, rather, Nelson), the first baseman, fielded the ball on one hop and tagged up. That made Berra the second out of the inning. Then he tried to tag Mantle, going back to the bag, and he missed him. And while so doing, the tying run scored."

""There was some action in the bullpen at the time, and I made that mistake," said broadcaster Thompson, 79, recalling how he started to describe Art Ditmar throwing in the Yankees’ bullpen just as Ralph Terry delivered the final pitch."

"You know I'm a Pirate fan, Win. That's why I'm betting against them." According to the former professional baseball player turned actor, he has never won a bet. "I figure, therefore, the best thing I can possibly do to help the Bucs is to bet against them."

"Forget about the final score. If that ball had gone through, the score would have been tied, Bob Friend would have stayed in, and it would have been a different ball game. The Yankees wouldn't have scored any sixteen runs off of Bob, you can bet on that. I thought he was pretty sharp, as far as he went."

"So I just walked to the plate, tryin' to hit the ball hard somewhere. I was always a high fastball hitter, and the first pitch that went by was probably a little too high. The second pitch he got down a little bit, and I hit it. And I knew when I hit it that Yogi Berra was in left field, that he wasn't gonna catch it. I knew I hit it good enough, hard enough... 'Cause it was 410 feet out there, and you probably had to hit it about 425 to get it over the big fence out there. So I knew he wasn't gonna catch it, and I was runnin' my butt off. And if he had misplayed it off the wall, I wanted to be on third base for a triple; there's a lot of ways to score from third base than there are from second. But by the time I was going into second, the roar of the crowd and the umpire down the left field line, give it his stuff... Then I hit second base, and I don't believe I touched the ground the rest of the way."

"I guess the Western Union telegram boys will be busy carrying me telegrams until game time today. In New York, after we'd been shellacked by the Yanks, I got about 100 telegrams. About 75 of them told me what a lousy club we were and that we had no business playing in a World Series. When we won the next two games, the telegrams stopped pouring in. The only thing I can conclude from this is that people who own stock in Western Union ought to be rooting for the Yanks to pin our ears back again today. But if it comes down to that, my advice to them consists of one word: Sell."

"There was so much going on after the game, so many people outside. We had a hard time getting to our car. Everybody wanted to buy you a drink. They were patting you on the back. We finally made it to our car, and we were wore out. We got in the car and took off for somewhere quiet. We went up into Squirrel Hill and sat on a Schenley Park bench and there wasn't a soul up there. Nobody. Except for a few squirrels running around. We sat there for about an hour and just relaxed. I wasn't thinking about the home run. It was, "We beat them. We beat the Yankees." The only thing I could think of after I hit second base was, "We beat them, we beat the Yankees, the great Yankees.""

"It hasn't been said very often, but I think it was one of the greatest games ever played in a World Series, especially a Game 7."

"Everybody said the same thing, and Maz would be the first one to admit it. We all said, "Get off the wall! Get off the wall!" Maz was running as hard as he could run to get that extra base."

"With lineup they have, they should have won pennant in August."

"I get people coming up to me and talking about that home run all of the time. But you know, for once I'd like someone to say, "You were a damn good defensive second baseman. You were one of the best I ever saw." To tell you the truth, that's what I'm most proud of, that I could turn the double play as well as anyone who ever played the game. But no one remembers that. No one cares. It's kind of funny, isn't it? Thirty years later and people are still talking bout it. Who would have ever figured?"

"I was almost at second base when it finally went over. I was running so hard, just trying to make sure I'd get to third. Then it took moment or two to realize what happened. It was gone. You know, all I could think about was, "We beat the Yankeesǃ We beat themǃ We beat the damn Yankeesǃ""

"Fans will see two opposite types in managing in Danny Murtaugh and Casey Stengel. Murtaugh goes with his regulars as far as possible. He might pinch-hit for them late in a game but very, very seldom. Danny figures if a man is good enough to play regularly, he's good enough to hit. And don't think this doesn't build up the confidence of a player. Murtaugh plays good, sound baseball according to the book. From what I've heard of Stengel, he may pinch-hit as early as the second inning. Casey also shifts players frequently but his methods have worked. Who can argue with success?"

"When he called me back, I wanted to die. I was ready to crawl all the way home. At first I thought he wanted to tell me to pop it to right or how many pitches to take, but when I saw Dale...I never felt so bad in my life."

"When I walked up to the plate, all I thought about was getting on base. But deep in my mind, I just knew we were going to lose. I thought, "Well, you can't feel too bad taking the Yankees into the seventh game of the World Series and losing in extra innings.""

"I don't know what to think, what to say. I'm still flabbergasted. Maybe I'm not the best hitter in the world, but I didn't think I was that bad. When Casey called me back, I thought it was to tell me something, maybe to ask me to try to hit to right or to give me a hint on what kind of pitcher Vernon Law is. But he never said another word to me. All he did was to tell Dale Long to grab a bat. I just don’t know and I just can’t figure it out."

"We were all buddies. We used to play with them in spring training all the time. Virdon was a Yankee to begin with. I knew him when he first broke in with us. I liked . They had , and you had to like Dr. Strangeglove. And they had Friend and Face. They were good fellows. Face was tough. They call it a today, but it's a , and nobody threw it better than Face. He was tough for everybody to hit."