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Pittsburgh Pirate Bill Mazeroski's game-ending home run at Forbes Field during the seventh game of the 1960 World Series against the Yankees.
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The Next Page: The 1960 Pirates Easter miracle

James G. Klingensmith/Post-Gazette

The Next Page: The 1960 Pirates Easter miracle

For most of the 1950s, Pirates fans watched the worst team in the National League.

From 1950 to 1957, the Pirates finished in last place five times. In 1951, 1956 and 1957, the three years they didn’t finish in last place, they ended up next to last

In 1958, the Pirates finally gave their fans something to cheer about, when, led by manager Danny Murtaugh and sparked by career years from Pittsburgh native Frank Thomas and pitcher Bob Friend, they battled the defending NL and World Series champion Milwaukee Braves for the pennant before finishing the season in second place. It was the Pirates’ first winning season since 1948.

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In the off-season the Pirates made a controversial trade when they dealt Thomas to the Cincinnati Reds for two starters, catcher Smoky Burgess and third baseman Don Hoak, and starting pitcher Harvey Haddix. Fans were unhappy with the loss of the popular Thomas, but hoped that the new acquisitions would give Pittsburgh its first National League pennant since 1927. The 1959 season had its highlights, including Haddix’s 12-inning perfect no-hitter, but the team failed to match its success of 1958 and finished in fourth place.

Disappointed Pirates fans didn’t know what to expect going into the 1960 season. The Pirates had made a few moves in the off-season to strengthen their bench but started the season with basically the same team that had barely played .500 baseball in 1959. They opened on the road on April 12 with a loss to the Braves and split the first two games of a four-game series at Forbes Field with the Reds before playing a doubleheader on Easter Sunday.

The doubleheader was the first of 16 that the Pirates played in 1960, including nine at Forbes Field.

A few of my South Side buddies and I were among the 16,196 Pirates fans who attended the Easter Sunday doubleheader. We cheered as the Pirates took the lead in the first game on Roberto Clemente’s two-run homer in the bottom of the first inning. In the bottom of the third, the Pirates scored two more runs off Reds starter Joe Nuxhall on a Dick Groat RBI single and Dick Stuart’s sacrifice fly. The Pirates scored one more run late in the game on triples by Clemente and Stuart on their way to a 5-0 victory behind the four-hit pitching of Bob Friend.

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We watched the first game after paying a dollar for a spot on a wooden bench in the left field bleachers. In between games, we decided to sneak into the better seats, something that was fairly easy at Forbes Field. There was an usher guarding the entrance to the general admission area under the stands, but, if you waited until he was distracted, you could run past him and disappear into the crowds milling around refreshment stands and restrooms.

From our general admission seats, we had a closer view in the second game, but, unfortunately, the Reds provided all the action. Reversing the Pirates’ lead in the first game, they were ahead 5-0 going into the bottom of the ninth. By that time most of the fans had left the ballpark, making it easy for our band of bleacher escapees to sneak into the reserved seats. By the bottom of the ninth, we’d made it all the way down to the box seats just behind the Pirates’ dugout on the first-base side.

With Bill Henry pitching for the Reds, Clemente bounced out for the first out of the inning, but Burgess, Bill Virdon and Bill Mazeroski singled to give the Pirates their first run of the game. With pitcher Joe Gibbon due up, Murtaugh sent catcher Hal Smith into the game as a pinch hitter. In a foreshadowing of the 1960 World Series, Smith, who had been acquired in the off-season from the Kansas City A’s, lined a three-run homer deep over the left-center field wall. It was Smith’s first home run as a Pirate.

With the Reds’ lead cut to one run, Cincinnati manager Fred Hutchinson brought in rookie Ted Wieand to face Hoak. Wieand retired Hoak on a ground out, but Groat, who would go on to win the National League MVP award, singled.

With the sparse crowd on its feet, Bob Skinner, down to his last strike, lofted a deep fly ball to right field that hit the bar at the top of the high screen that had been erected on top of the 10-foot right field wall in 1932 to prevent cheap home runs. After hitting the bar, the ball bounced high into the air and fell into the stands to give the Pirates a miraculous come-from-behind 6-5 victory. As Skinner rounded the bases, my buddies and I leaped onto the field and joined the crowd waiting at home plate to mob Skinner as he scored the winning run.

‘Unbelievable’

Writing in the Post-Gazette, Jack Hernon described the scene at home plate as “unbelievable. ... There must have been a thousand kids and grownups there trying to pat Skinner on the back.” Hernon added, “Rousing finishes have come to be expected at Forbes Field, but nothing like this.”

In Monday’s Pittsburgh Press, Les Biederman’s coverage of the game included Skinner’s reaction to his game-winning home run: “All I did was hit the ball, and when it went into the seats, I knew the game was over. ... I put my head down and ran and when I looked up all I saw was kids. They seemed to come from all directions and converged at home plate.”

The newspaper photo of the mob scene at home plate shows me just a few feet to the left of Skinner as he reaches home plate and shakes hands with Clemente. I was easy to spot in the photo: the skinny kid with a crew cut and long nose who’s wearing a dark short-sleeved shirt, exposing my crooked left elbow, the result of shattering the elbow in a high school football game

The Pirates’ Easter miracle became the catalyst for a season of late-inning comeback victories. In an article in the Sept. 17 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, published just a week before the Pirates clinched the pennant, Myron Cope wrote that the Pirates were especially dangerous because of their knack for late-inning rallies.

“Twenty-two of their first sixty victories this season were achieved by rallies that took place in the seventh inning or later.” Cope noted that “Frankie Gustine, a former Pirate infielder who owns a popular tavern a block from Forbes Field, complains, ‘The fans used to start coming into my place in the eighth inning. Now they wait until the last man is out.’”

A foreshadowing

The Pirates’ Easter Sunday miracle became the team’s trademark, but it also was a foreshadowing of the dramatic comeback victory in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series.

In the bottom of the eighth, with the Pirates trailing 7-6, Hal Smith duplicated his feat on Easter Sunday by hitting a three-run homer over the left-center field wall to give the Pirates a 9-7 lead. After the Yankees tied the game in the top of the ninth, it was Mazeroski, not Skinner, who was mobbed by Pirates fans when he reached home plate after hitting the most famous home run in baseball history.

I wish I could say that I was among the fans waiting at home plate for Mazeroski. But I couldn’t get a ticket and had to watch the game in the television section on the 10th floor at Gimbels Downtown department store, where I was an unhappily employed stock boy.

After nearly breaking my neck racing down 10 flights of escalators, I emerged from Gimbels into a snowstorm of toilet paper streamers, typing paper, IBM cards, the contents of waste cans, and even phone books. Workers pouring out of their offices were soon joined by thousands of celebrants flowing across the bridges leading into Downtown. Hard-nosed Pitsburghers, who normally wouldn’t give you the time of day, danced in the streets and hugged each other.

These days, Pittsburgh fans like to think of themselves as the Steeler Nation, but nearly 60 years ago, for one glorious late afternoon in early October, one swing of a baseball bat and the sight of a baseball soaring over the 406 mark at Forbes Field, transformed Pittsburgh sports fans into the Pirates Nation.

The pandemic reduced the 2020 baseball season to 60 games and in the process eliminated the games scheduled between the Pirates and the Yankees, and the commemoration of the 1960 World Series. But the pandemic can’t erase the memory for Pittsburgh fans of Mazeroski circling the bases after winning the 1960 World Series with his dramatic home run. It was the final miracle in a season of baseball miracles.

 

Richard “Pete” Peterson is a native of Pittsburgh and a retired English professor at Southern Illinois University is the author of “Growing Up With Clemente and Pops:The Willie Stargell Story” Email: peteball2@yahoo.com.

First Published: September 1, 2020, 7:28 p.m.

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Pittsburgh Pirate Bill Mazeroski's game-ending home run at Forbes Field during the seventh game of the 1960 World Series against the Yankees.  (James G. Klingensmith/Post-Gazette)
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James G. Klingensmith/Post-Gazette
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