Hairs vs. Squares Read online

  By 1970 Pittsburgh was enjoying a renaissance. The territory that had once served as a remote outpost for George Washington and was later the first Gateway to the West had become a steel-and-glass manufacturing monster, home to U.S. Steel and Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Three Rivers Stadium and the U.S. Steel Tower, the final building projects of a Pittsburgh urban renewal program called Renaissance I, were completed in 1970.

  “It was a great time to be in Pittsburgh,” Oliver recalled. “One thing about Pittsburgh people, they never forget you. I was in Germany and I heard someone call, ‘Scoop!’ [It was Oliver’s nickname for his defensive abilities at first base]. I go back to Pittsburgh today and it’s like I never left.”

  Just as the Steel City was forced to reinvent itself in the 1970s due to the collapse of the steel industry, Pittsburgh’s professional sports teams reinvented themselves as well. In 1970 the Pirates ended a ten-year postseason drought. In 1972 the Steelers made the playoffs for the first time in team history and stunned Oakland with Franco Harris’s “Immaculate Reception.”

  Turning out teams as hard and unyielding as the coal and steel that emanated from its mines and mills, Pittsburgh saw the Pirates dominate the Eastern Division throughout the decade and win two World Series. The Steelers, coached by Chuck Noll and boasting a balanced offense and its famous Steel Curtain defense, swept to four Super Bowl titles in the ’70s.

  When the Pirates and Steelers won world championships in 1979—a rare MLB-NFL double claimed by the Yankees and Giants in 1927, ’38, and ’56; Tigers and Lions in 1935; Mets and Jets in 1969; Orioles and Colts in 1970; Mets and Giants in 1986; and Red Sox and Patriots in 2004—Pittsburgh had gone from being “Hell with the lid off” to the “City of Champions.”

  The man who by 1979 would be called “Pops” by his teammates and was the patriarch of the Pirates’ “We Are Family” World Series winners championed causes in and outside Pittsburgh. Stargell did charitable work for sickle-cell anemia, visited the state penitentiary and spoke with convicts, rapped with kids on the street, and met with junkies. He flew to Vietnam during the war and talked to wounded servicemen. He sat with a soldier who had burns over 97 percent of his body and watched the man die; he visited a triple amputee.

  Pressure playing the game of baseball? Stargell scoffed at the notion. He kept things in perspective by reminding everyone that the umpire’s words to start every game were “Play ball!” not “Work Ball.”

  “Willie was definitely a leader on the club,” recalled starting pitcher Bruce Kison. “He wasn’t afraid to voice his opinion, and he did what he thought was right. And he was a visible leader. He wouldn’t necessarily say, ‘Get on my shoulders,’ but that’s what he meant.”

  By 1972 the soft-spoken giant had learned to deal with the emotional and physical battering life can deliver. He had been beaned in Grand Forks and with the Pirates had overcome neck spasms, debilitating headaches, and double vision incurred when he had run into the scoreboard at Forbes Field. Doctors told him another blow to the head could be fatal. He tore a thigh muscle while legging out a double, taped the injured leg, and played the next day in Houston, where he got involved in a collision at first base that tore a muscle from his rib cage. He underwent knee surgery following the 1971 season.

  Stargell soldiered on. With the Pirates fighting the Mets, Cubs, and Cardinals for first place in the East in ’72, he hit .320 in July and .344 in August and collected 18 homers and 56 RBIs over those pivotal months. No one man carries the Pirates in hitting, he said at the time. There wasn’t pressure on any one Pittsburgh hitter because they had so many good hitters.

  Four Pirates regulars (Clemente, Richie Hebner, Vic Davalillo, and Oliver) hit .300 or better in 1972; Sanguillen was at .298 and Stargell five points behind. Gene Clines’s .334 paced Pittsburgh’s super subs, which included Stennett, Milt May, 1971 postseason hero Bob Robertson, 1960 October legend Bill Mazeroski, Richie Zisk, Gene Clines, Jackie Hernandez, and Jose Pagan.

  In olden days pirates rattled their swords, but Pittsburgh’s buccaneers were lifting heavy lumber. With so much firepower in a lineup known as the Pittsburgh “Lumber Company,” to go along with a dependable defense and deep pitching staff, many Pirates, including Kison, believed the ’72 club better than the ’71 World Series champs. “Guys had more experience,” Kison recalled.

  The Bucs’ all-around strength took pressure off the club’s individuals and put pressure on rival pitchers. The enemy hurlers in the East were a fearsome group. Tom Seaver was in New York, Bob Gibson in St. Louis, Ferguson Jenkins in Chicago, and Steve Carlton in Philadelphia. Pittsburgh’s pitching staff didn’t have a singular superstar, but Ellis, Kison, Blass, Bob Moose, Nelson Briles, Dave Giusti, and company strong-armed the competition.

  And what competition it was. As a boy Kison had collected baseball trading cards of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and others. “These were people who impacted my youth,” he recalled. Now he was playing against them. “Holy crap,” he remembered with a laugh, “now I’m facing Mays and Aaron.”

  The defending world champions opened the season in Shea Stadium on NBC-TV’s Game of the Week. Seaver, who the season before had set a National League record for strikeouts by a right-hander with 289, fanned Stennett to start the game. He struck out the side, getting Clemente and Stargell swinging, and the Mets—wearing a mourning band on their left arm in memory of Gil Hodges—went on to beat Ellis and the Bucs 4–0, setting a tone for both clubs in the early stages of the race.

  “If Seaver got you to chase his high fastball, you couldn’t touch him,” Oliver recalled. “His fastball rose. You had to get him when his pitches were low [in the strike zone].”

  LEAVE IT TO SEAVER was a sign held aloft in those heady days early in the season by Queens resident Karl Ehrhardt, better known to fans as the “Sign Man.” A commercial artist, Ehrhardt was a fixture from 1964 to 1981 at Big Shea, the Flushing Meadows ballpark distinguishable by the multicolored blue and orange panels on its façade. In his field-level box seat behind the third base dugout the Sign Man would hold aloft one of the sixty block-lettered, 20-by-26-inch black cardboard placards he brought to dozens of home games every season. In his home he had a collection of some twelve hundred signs, each carrying white or orange upper-cased characters, and he would “crystal ball” what might happen on game day by reading newspapers to find out which players were streaking and which were slumping.

  Like Hilda Chester, the cowbell clanger who was a fixture at Ebbets Field during the days of Brooklyn’s “Boys of Summer,” Ehrhardt loved Dem Bums. As a Mets fan, he was a part of the happening that Big Shea became. When left-fielder Cleon Jones gloved the final out of the World Series on October 16, 1969, Sign Man responded with THERE ARE NO WORDS. It may have been the lone time Ehrhardt didn’t have the appropriate verbiage. “I just called them the way I saw them,” he told the New York Times in 2006. He greeted great plays with placards asking, “BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?” Colorfully clad in a black derby rimmed with a blue-and-orange band, he was a favorite not only of fans, but also of TV cameras, which zoomed in on his signs:

  AMAZIN!

  MET POWER!

  TOOTHLESS CUBS JUST A LOTTA LIP

  With Seaver winning seven of his first eight decisions to set the stage for a 21-win season; with young left-hander Jon Matlack starting 6-0 en route to 15 victories and National League Rookie of the Year honors; and with energetic relief ace Frank Edwin “Tug” McGraw saving games the starters didn’t finish, new manager Yogi Berra had his Mets in first place in July. The off-season acquisition of red-headed slugger Rusty Staub from Montreal for power-hitting prospect Ken Singleton, pepper-pot shortstop Tim Foli, and slick-fielding first baseman Mike Jorgensen added one of the league’s best left-handed bats to the Mets’ offense. “Le Grand Orange” batted .298 in his first month as a Met and .336 in May, when he rapped 5 homers and drove in 28 runs to help fuel a fast start that saw New York go a major league-best 24-7 and open a lead of six and a half games.
/>   Staub was ably assisted by the remaining Miracle workers of ’69. On May 7 Tommie Agee’s single in the bottom of the ninth tied San Diego, and his homer in the tenth won it as the Mets rallied from a six-run deficit. New York had the National League “Mets-merized” but the “Amazin’ Mets” truly became “A-Mays-in’” on May 11. The news that the Mets were bringing Mays back to New York sent shock waves through the sports world.

  Mets owner Joan Payson had coveted Mays for more than a decade, but every overture to pry him loose from San Francisco had been rebuffed by Giants boss Horace Stoneham. In the spring of ’72 the Mets started to sense a fissure in San Francisco’s stonewalling. On May 5 the forty-year-old Mays went 0 for 4 in the Giants’ 3–2 loss in Philadelphia. His average dipped to .167, the lowest in San Francisco’s batting order. Jack Lang of the Long Island Press contacted Mays by phone in Philadelphia and asked Willie if he had heard anything about a possible trade to the Mets. Mays replied that he hadn’t heard, but that if the Giants wanted to trade him, they could.

  The next day was Mays’s forty-first birthday, and stories of a possible deal were everywhere. Stoneham and the Mets’ board chairman, M. Donald Grant, acknowledged the possibility of such a move. A report circulated that trade talks between the two teams had intensified when the Mets were in San Francisco for a three-game set May 1–3. On Wednesday, May 10, two days before San Francisco was to begin a three-game weekend series in New York, it was reported that Stoneham’s demands for multiple players in return for Mays had prevented the trade from happening.

  “MAYS DEAL OFF” was the headline on a United Press International story. Grant told reporters Stoneham wanted players, not money, for Mays. The Mets’ chairman of the board consulted with Berra and his general manager, Bob Scheffing, and then told Stoneham it was “improbable the Mets could provide the personnel he needs.”

  Mired in last place in the West, San Francisco had reportedly asked for versatile utility player Ted Martinez and a pitcher, either Matlack or right-hander Jim McAndrews, in exchange for their aging superstar. Since Martinez and Matlack had helped fuel the most impressive start in franchise history and since the Mets knew Mays’s days as a player were dwindling, they thought the Giants’ request out of line and out of the question. Both sides agreed to leave the door open for negotiations, however, and both stated that a deal would not be consummated unless Mays agreed to finish his playing days as a Met.

  Grant and Stoneham went so far as to invite Mays to the trading table to clear up any concerns Willie had. Mays, for his part, always had affection for New York. He had broken into the big leagues with New York in 1951 and had played there until the Giants moved west for the 1958 season. At the time of the trade talks Mays said he would like to finish his playing career in San Francisco but had no objections to being dealt to the Mets.

  Finally on Thursday, May 11, Mays officially became a Met. Lang was credited in the New York media for spurring the trade, and even though it had been rumored for days, the news had a “wow” factor to it. Mays was one of the game’s legends, a giant in reputation if no longer a Giant in uniform. New York Times sportswriter Joseph Durso told readers the “$165,000-a-year folk-hero” was traded “after one of the most complex series of negotiations in baseball history.”

  The deal called for Mays to join the Mets in exchange for young minor league pitcher Charlie Williams and an undisclosed amount of cash that was later reported to be $50,000. From a headlines standpoint it was the biggest trade in sports in 1972. The strangest deal, however, would occur just over two months later, when the NFL’s Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams swapped owners, Carroll Rosenbloom going west and Robert Irsay heading east. Colts fans would come to rue the day the deal was made. In the four years before Irsay took command of the Colts, Baltimore had gone to two Super Bowls and won one. Twelve years later Irsay shepherded the beloved team out of town under the cover of darkness to Indianapolis.

  Bright lights greeted Mays’s meeting with the media at the Mets headquarters at the Mayfair House. Grant stood to the right of Mays. Stoneham, blinking behind dark-rimmed glasses, was on Willie’s left side. Berra and Scheffing were also present, and because it was Mays who was being traded, commissioner Bowie Kuhn was there.

  “It’s a wonderful feeling being here,” Mays said. “I’m very thankful I can still play at the age of 41 and play in New York. If used in the right way, I can do a very good job.”

  When a reporter asked Mays what he meant by the “right way,” the intellectual sharks in the audience took note. It was common knowledge that in San Francisco Mays had written his name into the lineup when he wanted to. Prior to his trade to the Mets, Mays and Berra met, and the manager made it clear who was boss. Berra would make out the lineup card, he would play Mays in the outfield at times and at first base at times, and the decisions would be Yogi’s.

  There would be plenty of decision making for Berra to do since New York already had Eddie Kranepool, an original Metropolitan, at first base and their own Shea Hey Kid, Agee, in center field. All Agee was doing in the month of May was hitting .340. He was flanked on both sides by a trio of similarly hot bats—Staub in right and the tandem of Cleon Jones and John Milner, a.k.a. “the Hammer,” in left. Milner and Matlack were both twenty-two years old and the latest products of a rich farm system operated by Whitey Herzog.

  At his press conference, Mays said he was looking forward to contributing to what the Mets believed would be another A-Mays-in’ season. “I can still swing the bat, I can still run,” he told reporters in his pealing voice. “Teamwork is very important to me.”

  May 11 was a bittersweet day for Gotham’s sports fans. At the same time they welcomed their prodigal son home to New York, their beloved Rangers bowed to rival Boston in Game Six of the Stanley Cup finals. Despite the continuous cheers of Rangers fans, who packed Madison Square Garden (MSG), the Broadway Blue Shirts couldn’t hold off Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Gerry Cheevers, and the Big Bad Bruins in a 3–0 final.

  It was a heady spring for New York’s pro sports teams. As Ricky Nelson reminisced of a “Garden Party,” there was a Garden party going on in Manhattan’s MSG. While the Rangers rode their famous GAG (Goal-a-Game) line of Vic Hadfield, Jean Ratelle, and Rod Gilbert and the goal tending of Ed Giacomin to a Stanley Cup showdown with Boston, the Knicks of Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Willis Reed, Phil Jackson et al. responded to chants of “Dee-fense!” inside MSG as the NBA playoffs heated up. The Knicks would meet Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, and the rest of the record-setting Los Angeles Lakers in the finals.

  The deal for Mays added to the sports fever in the city and marked the Mets’ third big trade in the past half-year. The official story line was that the Giants wanted to do right by Mays by sending him to New York to bring his career full circle. The truth was more complex. Mays was at the end of his Hall of Fame career, and his best years were behind him. He was also thirty years older than the franchise to which he had been traded and was viewed by many as the most expensive substitute in major league history. It was written at the time that Mays was being paid $165,000 to sit on the bench, and as Sports Illustrated’s William Leggett noted, those were wages even Supreme Court bench sitters didn’t get.

  The Giants had young outfielders they were anxious to work into the starting lineup, and Mays was benched at times in favor of a youth movement. San Francisco was also unwilling to guarantee Mays a high-paying coaching position when his playing career ended. Mays asked Stoneham for a ten-year retainer at $75,000 per year to work for the Giants in any capacity. Stoneham balked. The attendance-challenged Giants couldn’t afford it. San Francisco had won the West in ’71, but in the course of winning the battle it was losing the war. Attendance at Candlestick Park in ’71 was 1,106,043, some 800,000 less than the club drew on the road and close to a million less than the 2,064,594 the Dodgers drew in Chavez Ravine. When San Francisco dropped eleven of thirteen at Candlestick early
in ’72 and lost slugger Willie McCovey for three months to an injury, the Giants’ boss decided it was time to trade Mays and build for the future. “The Mets are the only club that could take care of him,” Stoneham said. “Don and Mrs. Payson are as much in love with Willie as I am.”

  Berra drove to Shea Stadium following the press conference, walked into the clubhouse where his team had learned about the trade from radio broadcasts, and sought out equipment manager Nick Torman. “I guess you’d better get No. 24 off Beauchamp,” Berra told Torman.

  Jim Beauchamp, a utility outfielder–first baseman who had worn Willie’s number with the Mets, was given number 5 instead.

  The deal for Mays paid immediate dividends for the Mets when Willie made his debut in a Met uniform on Sunday, May 14. On a gray, rain-swept Mother’s Day afternoon, with the crowd full of women wearing the straw bonnets management had given away, Mays played first base and batted leadoff against Giants fireballer “Sudden” Sam McDowell. Amid a thunderous ovation from Mets fans, Willie walked in his first at-bat and scored on Staub’s grand slam.

  San Francisco tied the game with four runs off Ray Sadecki in the fifth, and Mays led off the bottom of the inning against reliever Don Carrithers. Willie worked the count to 3-2 and Lindsey Nelson provided the play-by-play: “Payoff pitch to Mays. . . . It’s way back in left field, could be. . . . It’s going, going and it is a home run! A home run for Willie Mays! Willie Mays gets a great ovation from the crowd and in the dugout from the Mets as he belted a 3-2 pitch over the left field wall.”

  Shea Stadium shook as the aging Say Hey Kid circled the bases. Every Met stood to greet Mays after he crossed home plate and returned to the dugout. One of the foremost among them was Kranepool, the man Mays had replaced at first base. Mays, the longtime Giant, had turned Giant killer. His dramatic homer proved to be the game winner. “It just seemed like the stage was set and I had to do something,” Mays told reporters.