June 3, 1961: Pirates’ Bobby Shantz shut down Phillies for first win as NL starter

Twelve-year American League veteran Bobby Shantz made his National League debut in 1961, after a pair of transactions – an expansion-draft selection and a trade – brought him to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Opening the season in the bullpen, the 35-year-old left-hander soon was making spot starts to patch up the defending World Series’ champions’ rotation. Shantz recorded his first victory as an NL starter on June 3, holding the Philadelphia Phillies to four hits in seven innings and contributing with his bat and glove to a 5-1 win at Forbes Field.

Shantz, a native of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, 40 miles from Philadelphia, arrived in the majors with the then-Philadelphia Athletics in 1949 and remained with the franchise when it relocated to Kansas City in 1955. A 13-player deal delivered him to the New York Yankees in February 1957.1 Through 1960, Shantz had made 358 regular-season appearances – all in AL games. He won the AL Most Valuable Player Award in 1952 and represented the league three times as an All-Star. When baseball implemented the Gold Glove Award to celebrate defensive excellence, the 5-foot-6 Shantz was recognized as the majors’ top-fielding pitcher in 1957 and the AL’s winner in the next three seasons.

But a relief appearance in Game Seven of the 1960 World Series between the Yankees and Pirates hinted at his future. With the Yankees trailing 4-0 in the third inning of the do-or-die game at Forbes Field, Shantz came out of the bullpen and needed just 45 pitches to hold Pittsburgh scoreless for the next five innings while New York rallied for a three-run lead. In the eighth, however, Shantz’s brilliant performance ended soon after Bill Virdon’s apparent double-play grounder bounced off the hard infield and struck shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat.2 The Pirates eventually won the game and World Series on Bill Mazeroski’s ninth-inning homer off Ralph Terry.

Soon Shantz was on the move. The Washington Senators selected him in the December 14 expansion draft,3 then traded him to Pittsburgh two days later. “His acquisition will give us the best bullpen in baseball,” Pirates general manager Joe L. Brown said of Shantz, a reliever in all but four of his 75 total appearances in 1959 and 1960.4

Shantz made his first eight outings with Pittsburgh in relief. He picked up his first NL win with a four-inning bullpen stint against the Cincinnati Reds on May 12.5 He started in Milwaukee on May 23, when scheduled starter Joe Gibbon reported tightness in his arm.6 Shantz held the Braves to a run on three hits in seven innings but lost, 1-0, to Lew Burdette.

Three more relief appearances followed before Shantz’s second start, in the middle game of a three-game weekend series with the Phillies. The Pittsburgh Press reported that 1960 NL Cy Young Award winner Vern Law was suffering from a stiff neck.7 Philadelphia was last in the NL at 13-28, but John Buzhardt had blanked the Pirates on nine hits in Friday night’s series opener.8 At 22-19, Pittsburgh was three games behind the first-place Reds.9

Along with the paid crowd of 11,153, Forbes Field’s Saturday afternoon gathering included 4,717 fire-prevention essay winners, 1,156 choirboys, and 576 nuns.10 A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photo depicted two of the nuns – Sister Mary Dulcianne and Sister Mary Judith of Adena, Ohio – holding bats gifted to them by Pirates’ third baseman Don Hoak.11

Shantz began his day by hitting Tony Taylor with a two-strike pitch.12 Lee Walls sacrificed Taylor to second, but Shantz struck out Ken Walters and Pancho Herrera – both looking – to strand Taylor.

Taking the mound the day before his 23rd birthday, Phillies right-hander Art Mahaffey had thrown eight complete games in nine starts, including a 4-1 decision over the Pirates on May 19, his third win in three lifetime appearances against Pittsburgh.13 He entered with a 6-3 season record and a 2.07 ERA.

But Mahaffey struggled from the outset at Forbes Field. As he said after the game, “I knew when I warmed up I didn’t have it, and it would be one of those days. I was just waiting for the bomb to go off, and it did.”14

“His curve was flat,” 35-year-old Phillies manager Gene Mauch added. “It wasn’t snapping.”15

Mahaffey threw a curve with two outs in the first and Roberto Clemente hit it over the fence in left-center.16 Clemente’s seventh homer of the season gave the Pirates a 1-0 lead.

Shantz kept the Phillies off the scoreboard in the second and third innings, allowing only catcher Cal Neeman’s two-out single in the second. Headed for his fifth consecutive Gold Glove in 1961, Shantz closed out the Phillies’ third by handling back-to-back comebackers from Taylor and Walls.

He batted for the first time in the bottom of the third, following Gino Cimoli’s leadoff single. Shantz, a right-handed hitter, attempted to bunt the first pitch but missed.17 On Mahaffey’s second offering, Shantz squared to bunt, pulled back his bat as Walls charged from third, and slapped a single to left, pushing Cimoli to second.18

Virdon bunted up Cimoli and Shantz, and Dick Groat drove in Cimoli and sent Shantz to third with a single. Mahaffey retired Clemente on a popup, but Dick Stuart’s two-out single scored Shantz for a 3-0 Pirates’ advantage.

Walters and Herrera both struck out again to begin the Phillies’ fourth. Herrera continued to debate home-plate umpire Tony Venzon’s call after returning to the dugout and received what turned out to be the only ejection of his three-season big-league career.19 The next batter, Don Demeter, broke up Shantz’s shutout with a home run, his second of the season, over the left-field wall.20

The Pirates struck back in the bottom of the inning. Catcher Smoky Burgess led off with a single, his first of three hits. When Demeter – who had moved from left to right in a Philadelphia lineup shuffle after Herrera’s ejection – overran Mazeroski’s hit-and-run hit to right, Burgess scored on the double, sliding into Neeman at the plate.21

Besides Shantz, two other members of the 1961 Pirates received Gold Gloves: right fielder Clemente and second baseman Mazeroski.22 Their defensive prowess kept the Phillies off the scoreboard in the fifth and sixth. Pinch-hitting for Neeman, who had injured his ankle on Burgess’s slide,23 Jim Woods led off the fifth with a single to right, but Clemente threw him out trying to stretch it into a double. In the sixth, Mazeroski negated Taylor’s leadoff walk by turning Walls’ grounder into a 4-6-3 double play.

Shantz, who singled in the fourth for a two-hit game, pitched around former Pirate Bobby Del Greco’s two-out single for a scoreless seventh. At this point, however, Shantz reported tightness in his shoulder. He told manager Danny Murtaugh he wanted to stay in the game,24 but Murtaugh summoned fireman Elroy Face, who put up another zero in the eighth.

The afternoon’s final fireworks happened in the bottom of the eighth. With Jack Baldschun pitching, Clemente grounded to shortstop Bobby Malkmus. First-base umpire Ed Sudol called Clemente out on a close play at first, then ejected him for tossing his helmet in disgust at the call. Back in the dugout, Clemente continued to protest by throwing his helmet 25 feet in the air.25

An out later, Hoak – who had left the previous night’s game after injuring his shin sliding into home plate26 – homered over the brick wall in left field.27 “Dr. Joseph Finegold, Pirate team physician, is amazed at Hoak’s’ recuperative powers,” noted the Pittsburgh Press.28

The solo shot made it 5-1, and Face retired the Phillies in the ninth to close out Shantz’s first win as an NL starting pitcher.

“I guess I’m getting old,” Shantz said after the game. “[His shoulder] stiffened up on me. I threw a lot of curveballs and changeups, not many fastballs. The few I did throw seemed to sink pretty well.”29

On June 17, with Law again struggling with injuries, Shantz made another Saturday afternoon spot start and pitched his first complete game since August 1959 in a 9-3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals.30 He had a rain-shortened seven-inning shutout of the San Francisco Giants in the second game of a July 2 doubleheader.31 A July Pittsburgh Post-Gazette list of the season’s bright spots hailed “[t]he pitching of the stalwart Bobby Shantz, without whom the club would be deep in the second division.”32

But after the Braves knocked out Shantz in the first inning on July 22, he returned to full-time bullpen duties. He finished with a 6-3 record and a 3.32 ERA in 43 appearances, including six starts. The Pirates came in sixth in the NL at 75-79.33

Shantz then changed clubs in an expansion draft for the second year in a row. The Houston Colt .45s, gearing up for their debut season, selected him in October 1961.34 He spent the rest of his career in the NL, getting traded to the Cardinals in 1962 and Chicago Cubs in 1964, then wrapping up with the Phillies in ’64.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Bobby Shantz, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT196106030.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1961/B06030PIT1961.htm

Notes

1 Stan Isaacs, “Little Bob’s No MVP Anymore, but He’s Still Most Valuable Fella,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), February 20, 1957: 13e.

2 Shantz’s total pitch count for his 18-batter appearance was 56.

3 Morris Siegel, “Here Are the New Nats – Or Are They?” Washington Daily News, December 15, 1960: 59.

4 “Pirates Cheer Shantz Trade with Senators: Nats Get Stevens, Bright, Daniels for Lefty Reliever,” Pittsburgh Press, December 17, 1960: 6.

5 Jack Hernon, “Bucs Unload HR-Bombs to Snap Reds’ 9-Game Streak, 8-5: Nelson and Stuart Hit for Circuit with Two on Base,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 13, 1961: 8.

6 Lester J. Biederman, “Shantz Brilliant Even in Defeat: Bobby’s 3-Hit Job Wasted as Burdette Shuts Out Pirates,” Pittsburgh Press, May 24, 1961: 53; Jack Hernon, “Roamin’ Around,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 31, 1961: 17.

7 Lester J. Biederman, “Pirates Heading in Right Direction Again,” Pittsburgh Press, June 2, 1961: 32.

8 Allen Lewis, “Buzhardt Pitches Phillies to 6-0 Victory: Defensive Gems Thwart Pirates Despite 9 Hits,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 3, 1961: 17.

9 The Reds (26-17) were percentage points ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers (28-19).

10 Jack Hernon, “Shantz Picks Up Bucs; Beats Phils, 5-1: Southpaw Gets Help from Face,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 4, 1961: 4,1.

11 “Club ’Em, Don,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 4, 1961: 4,2.

12 Allen Lewis, “Bucs Trip Phils as Shantz, Face Hurl a Four-Hitter,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 4, 1961: Sports, 2.

13 Lester J. Biederman, “Mahaffey Rough on Pirates: Phils’ Young Ace Rations Five Hits, Beats Friend, 4-1,” Pittsburgh Press, May 20, 1961: 6.

14 Lester J. Biederman, “Bragan’s Sizeup: Dodgers Best Bet to Dethrone Pirates,” Pittsburgh Press, June 5, 1961: 30.

15 Lewis, “Bucs Trip Phils as Shantz, Face Hurl a Four-Hitter.”

16 Lewis, “Bucs Trip Phils as Shantz, Face Hurl a Four-Hitter.”

17 Hernon, “Shantz Picks Up Bucs.”

18 Hernon, “Shantz Picks Up Bucs”; Lester J. Biederman, “Pirates Hit Back, Top Phils, 5-1: Bob Clemente, Hoak Homer; Shantz Wins,” Pittsburgh Press, June 4, 1961: 4,1.

19 Lewis, “Bucs Trip Phils as Shantz, Face Hurl a Four-Hitter.”

20 Biederman, “Pirates Hit Back, Top Phils, 5-1.”

21 Lewis, “Bucs Trip Phils as Shantz, Face Hurl a Four-Hitter”; Hernon, “Shantz Picks Up Bucs”; Biederman, “Pirates Hit Back, Top Phils, 5-1.”

22 It was Clemente’s first of 12 consecutive Gold Gloves. Mazeroski was awarded his third of eight.

23 Lewis, “Bucs Trip Phils as Shantz, Face Hurl a Four-Hitter.”

24 Hernon, “Shantz Picks Up Bucs.”

25 Biederman, “Pirates Hit Back, Top Phils, 5-1.”

26 Jack Hernon, “Lowly Phillies Hand Pirates 6-0 Shutout: Tail-Enders Rout Bob Friend Early,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 3, 1961: 9.

27 Hernon, “Shantz Picks Up Bucs.”

28 Lester J. Biederman, “Braves’ Hurlin’ Lew Usually Leads Team in Practical Jokes,” Pittsburgh Press, June 4, 1961: 4,3.

29 Lewis, “Bucs Trip Phils as Shantz, Face Hurl a Four-Hitter.”

30 Lester J. Biederman, “Pirates Breeze Past Cards, 9-3: Stuart Blasts 3-Run Homer; Shantz Wins,” Pittsburgh Press, June 18, 1961: 6,1.

31 Jack Hernon, “Bucs Sweep Giants, 7-6, 9-0, Before 36,093: Four-Run Eighth Brings First Win,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 3, 1961: 14.

32 Al Abrams, “Spotlights on Sports,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 10, 1961: 18.

33 The Phillies were last in the eight-team NL at 47-107.

34 Jack Hernon, “Bucs Lose Six Players in Draft: Smith, Shantz, Christopher Top List of Pirates,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 11, 1961: 1.