On being a Pirates fan in the 70s...This will be a short series I will post over the next couple weeks…one post for each year of the 70s decade. In the summer of 1971, I was a six year-old boy coming back to the U.S. after two years in West Germany, where my father was stationed with the U.S. Army. My obsession had been with cars, but changed to sports once we got back to the United States. As I lived near Albany, NY, baseball passions were divided between the Mets, Red Sox and Yankees, so without an overwhelming favorite, I chose to be a front-runner and back the Pittsburgh Pirates since I watched them win the World Series. Little did I know what a decade it would be to be a Pirates fan. Triumph, tragedy, and a cast of characters marked a decade that could stack up to any decade for any team for colorful and crazy events. My interest in the Pirates lay as much in one player, Willie Stargell, as it did in their being World Series champs that year. Here was a mountain of a man, yet kind of countenance, swinging two bats, a sledgehammer, or some other heavy object in the on-deck circle. He was in his phenomenal prime in 1971, and for a while appeared on target to challenge the HR record, but tailed off to finish with 48, a big number at the time. The Pirates had won an incredible World Series over the Yankees in 1960, but faced a down period thereafter, before slowly become a very good team again in the late ‘60s. They won the division in 1970 with a still good, but not great, 89-win team. They were crushed in the 1970 divisional series by a dominant Reds team full of future Hall of Famers and other very good players in their prime. A few moves/developments in the off-season paved the way for a better year in ’72. Gone as a starter was 1960 World Series champ hero Bill Mazeroski, replaced by young Davey Cash. CF Matty Alou had a down year in 1970 (they still gave him 718 plate appearances!) and he was replaced by young slugger Al Oliver. Very good bench players each emerged or were traded for – Rennie Stennett, Milt May, Gene Clines, and veteran Vic Davalillo. On the pitching side, aging Bob Veale was no longer a starter and youth emerged – Bruce Kison, Bob Moose, Nelson Briles. The Pirates had an excellent front office in the’70s with Joe Brown and Harding Peterson – they seemed to find nuggets every year to help the team. A down year in the NL West provided a weak Division Series opponent in the San Francisco Giants, a team with some legendary players, but most of them aging badly (McCovey, Mays, Marichal). After a 3-1 win in that series, the Pirates faced a 101-win Orioles team with a potent lineup and a legendary starting rotation with four 20-game winners. As they would so often do in the decade, the Pirates came from behind, a 2-0 game deficit in this case. My hero, Willie, didn’t hit a lick in the Series, but Roberto Clemente played the hero, batting .414, and young slugging first baseman Bob Robertson had a big series, too. My memories of the series are very hazy, but it was a great start to a wonderful decade of being a Pirates fan!
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 19:43:39 +0000
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