April 6, 1979: Expos edge Pirates in 10-inning season opener

On a blustery afternoon at Three Rivers Stadium, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Montreal Expos launched the 1979 season toward its down-to-the-wire destiny. Foreshadowing the tightly contested division race ahead – if not its ultimate outcome – Montreal’s Steve Rogers frustrated Pirates batters and baserunners and dueled Bert Blyleven to a draw, and the Expos spun a 10th-inning hit-by-pitch and two of Pittsburgh’s five errors into the decisive run in a 3-2 Opening Day win.

Both the Pirates and Expos aspired to break the Philadelphia Phillies’ three-season National League East Division stranglehold in 1979. Pittsburgh had finished second from 1976 through 1978, annually chipping away at double-digit deficits before running out of steam or time.1

Several prominent Pirates – including first baseman Willie Stargell and right fielder Dave Parker – had been fixtures since Pittsburgh’s 1970-75 run of five division titles in six seasons.2 High-profile trades in hopes of unseating the Phillies had added veterans like Blyleven and third baseman Phil Garner to a largely homegrown core.3

The Expos, still without a winning season since their 1969 debut, were trending upward under manager Dick Williams, improving from 55 wins in 1976 to 76 in ’78.4 Williams’s Opening Day lineup included six players aged 25 or younger: center fielder Andre Dawson, second baseman Rodney Scott, left fielder Warren Cromartie, right fielder Ellis Valentine, catcher Gary Carter, and third baseman Larry Parrish. A national poll of editors and writers pegged the Pirates as runners-up to the Phillies once again, with the Expos third.5

It was a wintry 31 degrees with brilliant sunshine when Blyleven, celebrating his 28th birthday, delivered the season’s first pitch. Thirty-five MPH wind gusts nipped at the often-disorderly6 crowd of 36,141 and stirred hot-dog wrappers and popcorn boxes into what a reporter labeled “miniature funnel clouds of swirling trash.”7

Major-league umpires were on strike; three local umpires manned the bases, and Dave Pallone, a minor-league arbiter since 1971, called balls and strikes.8 Pittsburgh’s new mascot, the Pirate Parrot, danced to disco music during inning breaks.9 A double play kept Montreal scoreless in the first.

Rogers was having a career-best season in 1978 when an elbow injury sidelined him in September.10 Dr. Frank Jobe removed bone chips later that month, and Rogers’ smooth rehabilitation ensured his fourth consecutive Opening Day start.11

Working in the cold for the first time since surgery, the 29-year-old right-hander faced an early challenge. Leadoff hitter Frank Taveras blooped a single, stole second, and took third on center fielder Omar Moreno’s sacrifice.

Three pitches in, the Pirates had a swift runner 90 feet from home – and their most formidable hitters up in Parker, the NL’s 1978 MVP and reigning two-time batting champion, freshly signed to a landmark five-year contract and pictured on the covers of that week’s Sports Illustrated and Sporting News,12 and Stargell, whose 28-homer season in 1978 earned him NL Comeback Player of the Year honors.13

But Rogers caught Parker looking at a two-strike pitch, then fanned Stargell. Rogers’ first-inning command and repertoire so impressed Pallone that the umpire’s 1990 autobiography cited them as illustrating the difference between the majors and the minors.14

Both starters reigned in the early innings. Rogers retired seven in a row after Taveras’s hit. Sharp defense from Moreno, battling the wind to haul in three fly balls in the second, and Garner, knocking down Dawson’s grounder and throwing across the diamond for the final out of the third, backed Blyleven.

The Pirates had an opportunity in the fourth when Moreno, whose 71 steals had topped the majors in 1978, led off with a single. Rogers peppered the Panamanian with pickoffs; his sixth throw over trapped Moreno for an out, and Pittsburgh again failed to score.

Montreal struck in the fifth. Carter drove Blyleven’s fourth pitch of the inning over the left-field wall for a 1-0 lead.

Parrish followed by fouling off four full-count pitches, then singling. He took second when second baseman Rennie Stennett snared Chris Speier’s grounder near the right-field foul line and threw off-balance to Blyleven for the out at first. Stennett denied Rogers an RBI with a leaping catch of the pitcher’s liner.

But Dawson lined a fastball to left for a single. Bill Robinson’s throw sailed too high for the cutoff man and too short to catch Parrish at the plate.15 Montreal’s lead was 2-0.

The Pirates answered in the bottom of the inning. With one out, catcher Ed Ott hit a changeup over the wall in right center, cutting the deficit to 2-1.16

Pittsburgh’s defense, outstanding so far, began to fray in the sixth. Cromartie led off with a bouncer behind second and beat Taveras’s throw to first; it was scored an error on the Pirates shortstop.

Valentine hit a fly ball to right. Parker slipped on the turf and fell, then got up and caught the ball – only to drop it onto the warning track.

As the play continued, however, Montreal returned the favor with some misadventure of its own. Dashing toward second, Valentine saw Cromartie had stopped there. He attempted to return to first but was tagged out in a rundown.

Garner’s backhand stop of Tony Pérez’s grounder and Carter’s strikeout left Cromartie on second and kept it a one-run game.

When Taveras led off the bottom of the sixth with a two-strike single and Moreno sacrificed him to second, the Pirates, as in the first, had Parker and Stargell coming up with a runner in scoring position and one out.

But Rogers again quashed the threat, striking out Parker – who drew boos from the crowd17  – and getting Stargell to foul out.

Ott’s single with two outs in the seventh gave the Pirates another chance. Manager Chuck Tanner sent in Matt Alexander to run for Ott.

With Alexander – predominantly a pinch-runner during his nine-season major-league career – taking a big lead, the Expos pitched out, and Carter threw to first after another ball. Before delivering the next pitch, Rogers picked off Alexander for the third out.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” Rogers said of his two pickoffs.18 “Alexander was a bit over-anxious. Moreno was trying to time me, and I timed him.”

Offseason trade acquisition Enrique Romo took over for Blyleven after seven innings and 102 pitches.19 Romo walked two Expos in the eighth, but Garner continued his strong game at third, fielding Pérez’s bouncer, stepping on the bag, and throwing to first for the double play.

Rogers, who had thrown 80 pitches in seven innings, opened the eighth with two strikes to Garner, then yielded a line-drive double to right-center.

“That ball was supposed to be inside and on his shoetops,” Rogers said.20 “It was up too high. It was a bad pitch.”

Mike Easler, batting for Romo, pushed Garner to third with a groundout. Tanner went to his bench again, and veteran John Milner pinch-hit for Taveras. Milner hit a high chopper to Scott, who took the out at first while Garner held third.

Pittsburgh was on the verge of squandering another opportunity, but Moreno hit a high bouncer up the middle and beat Speier’s throw to first for a single, as Garner scored the tying run.

Tanner’s pinch-hitting surge necessitated more moves in the ninth. With Taveras out and Dale Berra’s range limited by a hamstring injury, Garner shifted to short, and Berra came in at third.21

Carter tested the new alignment by grounding Kent Tekulve’s second pitch to Garner, who bobbled the ball for an error. But Tekulve picked up Garner, fanning Parrish and Speier and getting pinch-hitter Tony Solaita to fly out.

Elias Sosa, signed after a strong season with the Oakland A’s, was Montreal’s new pitcher,22 and Stargell led off the ninth with a line-drive single to center. He continued toward second when the ball bounced off Dawson’s glove – but it caromed directly to the rocket-armed Valentine, whose throw to Speier beat the 39-year-old Stargell by 10 feet.

“When I rounded first base, I thought I had made it,” Stargell said. “Then I saw a cannon coming from right field.”23

The Pirates went scoreless, and the game moved to extra innings. Tekulve hit Dawson in the back with a pitch to start the 10th. One out later, Tekulve’s pickoff throw, obscured by the setting sun,24 got past Stargell and rolled down the first-base line; Dawson moved to second on the error.

Pittsburgh’s pitching and defense – and a Montreal baserunning mistake – had overcome the earlier fielding lapses. The Pirates edged closer to wriggling free when Stargell turned Cromartie’s bouncer into an out at first, while Dawson went to third.

Valentine then hit a chopper to the left side of the infield.

“I was just trying to make contact and hope someone falls down,” he said.25

Cutting in front of Garner, Berra bobbled the ball and had no play. Dawson scored the go-ahead run on Pittsburgh’s fifth error of the game.

Sosa closed out the 10th to secure Montreal’s win. “There was no game-winning hit,” announced the official scorer.26

The clubs split two more one-run games in the next two days.27 They reconvened in Pittsburgh during the season’s final week in September. By then, Montreal was long since assured of a winning season, and both clubs were well ahead of everyone else for the best records in the NL.

The Expos led the division by a half-game entering the high-stakes series, but the Pirates won three of four and never trailed again.28 Pittsburgh clinched the NL East on the season’s final day, then beat the Cincinnati Reds for the NL pennant and Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.29

Acknowledgments

 This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks Gary Belleville and Kurt Blumenau for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

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. He also reviewed game coverage from the Montreal Gazette, Montreal Star, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Pittsburgh Press newspapers, and a recording of the KDKA-AM Pittsburgh broadcast posted on YouTube by the Classic Baseball On The Radio account.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT197904060.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1979/B04060PIT1979.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMM6z4gN6oY

Notes

1 In 1976 the Pirates turned a 15½-game deficit on August 24 into a three-game spread on September 17 but finished nine games back. Between July 3 and August 5 in 1977, Pittsburgh cut a 10-game margin to a single game; the Phillies wound up winning by five games. The 1978 Pirates had trailed Philadelphia by 11½ games on August 12 but surged to within a half-game by September 5. The Phillies clinched the division title by winning at Three Rivers Stadium on September 30, the next-to-last day of the season.

2 Their 1971 club also won the NL pennant and defeated the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

3 Charley Feeney, “Garner ‘Prize Catch’ in 9-Player Buc Deal,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 17, 1977: 14; John Clayton, “Exit Oliver; Enter Blyleven, Milner,” Pittsburgh Press, December 9, 1977: B-10.

4 Prior to 1979, Montreal had won a franchise-high 79 games twice, finishing 79-83 in 1973 and 79-82 in 1974.

5 “Scripps-Howard Forecast,” Pittsburgh Press, April 5, 1979: D-10.

6 “Several times fans jumped onto the field to beg the ballgirls for baseballs, one tough fight broke out, a man dressed as a gorilla ran on the field, kids set off firecrackers in the upper deck and a fan in center field almost hit Moreno with a bottle,” the Pittsburgh Press reported. Dan Donovan, “Expos Leave Punchless Pirates Out in Cold,” Pittsburgh Press, April 7, 1979: C-1.

7 The reporter, Pohla Smith of United Press International, was, along with B.J. Phillips of Time, Laura Collins of the Valley (Pennsylvania) News Dispatch, and Kayleen Cubbal of the New Castle (Pennsylvania) News, one of four women covering the game for various publications after a federal court ruled the New York Yankees could not bar women reporters from the locker room. Pohla Smith (United Press International), “Expos Take Advantage of Buc Errors, Win Opener,” Latrobe (Pennsylvania) Bulletin, April 7, 1979: 10; Vince Leonard, “Windy Opener at Three Rivers: Bucs Lose to Expos; Great Day for Cold Weather Buffs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 7, 1979: 1; Marino Parascezno, “The Wind Was a Chilling Factor,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 7, 1979: 10.

8 Vito Stellino, “Fans Show Cold Umps Warm Feelings,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 7, 1979: 10. Pallone continued as an NL umpire after the strike was settled in May; he umpired 150 games in 1979 and remained with the NL until 1988. One of the three local umpires, first-base umpire Joe Schratz, had umpired two NL games in 1976; the other two, second-base umpire Ron Hutson and third-base umpire Joe Mrvos, served as major-league umpires during the 1979 strike only. 

9 Jed Weinberger, “Three Rivers Becomes Fun Place, Not Funeral,” Indiana (Pennsylvania) Gazette, April 7, 1979: 7.

10 Ian MacDonald, “Season Ends for Rogers, Dues Under Knife,” Montreal Gazette, September 2, 1978: 41.

11 Mike Boone, “Rogers Hits Early Start to Get His Arm Into Shape,” Montreal Star, February 14, 1979: C3.

12 Charley Feeney, “MVP Parker Ready to Sign Pact: Long-Term Contract in Hands of Pirates’ Owner,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 16, 1978: 24; Charley Feeney, “Parker Signs 5-Year Contract; Now Highest Paid?,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 27, 1979: 1. “Pittsburgh paid me $850,000 a year for five years with deferred payments, making me, all perks and bonuses considered, the first million-dollar-a-year athlete in professional sports,” Parker noted in his autobiography. Dave Parker and David Jordan, Cobra: A Life of Baseball and Brotherhood (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021), 252.

13 “Stargell Wins Comeback,” Pittsburgh Press, November 2, 1978: D-1.

14 Dave Pallone with Alan Steinberg, Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball (New York: Viking: 1990), 103.

15 Phil Musick, “Tanner Forgives Pirates’ Five Errors As Human,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 7, 1979: 9.

16 Rogers indicated afterward that Ott’s home run was on his only changeup of the game. Mike Boone, “Expos Made Opener Extra ‘Special,’” Montreal Star, April 7, 1979: F1.

17 Charley Feeney, “Bucs Drop Opener to Montreal in 10, 3-2: Parker Draws Boos in a Hitless Performance,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 7, 1979: 9.

18 Boone, “Expos Made Opener Extra ‘Special.’”

19 Pitch-count figures based on author’s review of the game’s radio broadcast. “Blyleven threw over 100 pitches,” Tanner said after the game. “It was cold and not the time to force things. It’s too early in the season for that.” Donovan, “Expos Leave Punchless Pirates Out in Cold.”

20 Ian MacDonald, “Steve Rogers Trusses Up Pirates,” Montreal Gazette, April 7, 1979: 91.

21 Musick, “Tanner Forgives Pirates’ Five Errors As Human.”

22 Rogers threw an estimated 96 pitches in eight innings.

23 Feeney, “Bucs Drop Opener to Montreal in 10, 3-2.”

24 Donovan, “Expos Leave Punchless Pirates Out in Cold.”

25 Boone, “Expos Made Opener Extra ‘Special.’”

26 Musick, “Tanner Forgives Pirates’ Five Errors As Human.”

27 Dan Donovan, “Pirates Nip Expos in Ninth, 7-6,” Pittsburgh Press, April 8, 1979: H-1; Mike Boone, “Bullpen Gets Job Done As Expos Take Series,” Montreal Star, April 9, 1979: D2.

28 Dan Donovan, “Miracle Expos Make Bucs Believers in Split,” Pittsburgh Press, September 25, 1979: C-1; Dan Donovan, “Pirates Land a Big One to Take East Lead,” Pittsburgh Press, September 26, 1979: F-1; Dan Donovan, “Pirate Stampede Crushes Expos, 10-1,” Pittsburgh Press, September 27, 1979: C-1.

29 Dan Donovan, “NL East Title Only the Beginning for Bucs,” Pittsburgh Press, October 1, 1979: B-3; Dan Donovan, “Series-Bound Pirates Sweep Reds,” Pittsburgh Press, October 6, 1979: A-4; Dan Donovan, “Whew, It’s Over! Bucs Are Champs,” Pittsburgh Press, October 18, 1979: C-1.