July 14, 1969: Private First Class Bill Stoneman shuts out Pirates at Jarry Park

At 6:30 A.M. on July 14, 1969, Bill Stoneman was a private first class in the Vermont National Guard, fulfilling military obligations to his country at Camp Johnson in Colchester, just north of Burlington.

At 4 P.M., with the day’s duties complete, Stoneman got into his car and headed to another job in another nation – as that night’s starting pitcher for the Montréal Expos, playing the Pittsburgh Pirates at Montréal’s Jarry Park.1

At about 10:20 P.M.,2 Stoneman could look back on a tiring but history-making day of work. He shut out the Pirates on eight hits, 2-0, becoming the first Expos pitcher to throw a shutout at home.3

For the Pirates, there was little heroic or rewarding about the day. They played under an interim manager, as their full-time skipper was hospitalized. They lost their starting catcher to injury – and then, in an ambulance mishap, their trainer got hurt too. They stranded nine runners and hit into three double plays.

The 20,054 fans who went to Jarry Park that Monday night might not have expected a game to remember. The first-year Expos entered with the worst record in the major leagues, 27-61, already 28 games behind the first-place Chicago Cubs in the newly created National League East Division. The Expos had a 2-8 record against Pittsburgh thus far in 1969 and had been swept in four games at Forbes Field from July 8 through 10.

Stoneman became an instant Montréal hero by pitching a no-hitter against Philadelphia on April 17, but had struggled since then. He entered the game with a 4-12 record and a 5.73 ERA – highest in the NL among qualifying pitchers. He was tied with Cincinnati’s Tony Cloninger for most losses and led the loop in home runs surrendered and runs, earned runs, and walks given up.

Manager Gene Mauch briefly exiled Stoneman to the bullpen, and he’d pitched three innings July 8 against Pittsburgh. The relief outing went well,4 except for a two-run homer by former Montréal Royal5 Roberto Clemente, who hit .324 lifetime against Expos pitching.6

To further complicate Stoneman’s up-and-down season, he was one of numerous players during the Vietnam War who squeezed in stateside military service alongside their baseball careers.7 Stoneman had begun his service with the Arizona National Guard.8 He and two other 1969 Expos pitchers, Dan McGinn and Mike Wegener, made arrangements to serve with the Vermont National Guard in the Burlington area, about two hours from Montréal. Officials praised all three for their strong attendance records and commitment to duty, and noted that they did not seek special treatment.9

On a few occasions, the pitchers-turned-privates were ferried to military obligations via Expos owner Charles Bronfman’s private jet.10 On July 14 Stoneman had to do the driving to Montréal himself, with McGinn riding shotgun.11 Fortunately, he’d been given a new Renault car by the team earlier in the season as a reward for his no-hitter.12

The Pirates entered the day with a 43-46 record, fourth in the NL East, 12½ games out. Since June 23, they had been swept in series by the Cubs, Phillies, and Mets, and had dropped three games of a four-game series to the St. Louis Cardinals.13 During the first game of the Pirates’ doubleheader split with the Cardinals on July 13, manager Larry Shepard was taken to a St. Louis hospital with chest pains. He remained there the following day, with coach Bill Virdon delegated as interim manager.14

Pirates lefty Bob Veale wasn’t getting cuffed around as badly as Stoneman but was suffering similarly frustrating results, with a 4-10 record and a 4.32 ERA. He’d won only one game apiece in May and June and had not won in July, taking losses in three of his previous four starts. Veale had made two starts against the Expos in 1969. On April 26 he went 7⅔ innings, yielding three runs and earning a win; on July 10 he pitched seven innings of four-hit, one-run ball in a game Pittsburgh won in 11 innings.

Each team repeatedly moved runners into scoring position but couldn’t get them across the plate. Montreal wasted a one-out double by Rusty Staub in the first. In the second inning, Clemente reached third base with two out following two singles and a double-play grounder, but Freddie Patek grounded out to end the threat.

In the third, Pittsburgh’s Matty Alou doubled with one out and took third on a groundout by Richie Hebner. It might have been a run-scoring single if not for a diving play by second baseman Remy Hermoso, who threw out Hebner from his knees.15 Alou was stranded on Willie Stargell’s grounder to first.

The Expos wasted the best opportunity yet in the bottom half. Light-hitting Bobby Wine hit a leadoff double that Alou and Clemente lost in the lights, then took third on a rare throwing error by Clemente.16 With a runner 90 feet from home and no outs, Veale struck out Stoneman, got Hermoso to ground out, and got Staub to fly out to center, where Alou made a diving catch of his own.17

Clemente’s wild throw set off a comedy of errors. Pirates catcher Jerry May dove into an iron barrier outside the Montreal dugout trying to stop the throw. He injured his left thigh and was carried off the field, replaced by Manny Sanguillén.18

May and Pirates trainer Tony Bartirome19 left for Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where the Expos’ team doctor was waiting, but the ambulance took them to another hospital by mistake. While traveling from the wrong hospital to the correct one, the ambulance was hit by a car, and Bartirome suffered a leg injury and a cut on his cheek that required four stitches. May was not further injured.20

Back at the ballpark, the stranded-runner blues continued for both teams in the fourth and fifth innings, as doubles by Clemente, Patek, and Montreal’s José Herrera went for naught. Hermoso – who made another outstanding play on a fifth-inning liner21 – reached second base in the sixth inning on a leadoff single and Staub’s sacrifice. Veale intentionally walked former Pirate Bob Bailey and got Coco Laboy to ground into an inning-ending third-to-first double play.

Hermoso was making only his second appearance of the season, having been called up in haste from Triple-A Vancouver after both of Montréal’s second basemen suffered injuries the previous day against the Mets. Gary Sutherland fouled a pitch into his own face, breaking his nose, while substitute Kevin Collins suffered a bruised finger on the basepaths when a double-play relay by New York’s Al Weis hit him on the hand.22

Pittsburgh’s Carl Taylor reached second in the seventh inning on a hit-by-pitch and a grounder back to the mound, but Sanguillén and Veale stranded him there. Ron Brand and Wine, the Expos’ seventh- and eighth-place hitters, hit consecutive two-out singles in the bottom half. Stoneman, who followed them to the plate, didn’t help himself much with the bat in 1969, hitting just .055 with 4 hits and 55 strikeouts in 73 at-bats. Veale fanned him to end the frame.

Stoneman retired the first two Pirates in the eighth, then pitched himself into the still-scoreless game’s biggest jam yet. Stargell drew a walk, Clemente singled him to second, and Taylor drew another walk to fill the bases. With a chance to break the game open, second baseman Gene Alley grounded to Laboy at third, who threw to second for the force play that ended the inning.

Veale, similarly, got two outs in the bottom of the eighth before running into trouble. Bailey and Laboy hit back-to-back singles. Then a batter finally came through with runners in scoring position, as Herrera singled in Bailey for a 1-0 Montréal lead. Shortstop Patek had moved closer to second to hold Bailey on the bag; Herrera banged his hit through the hole Patek left empty.23

Veale walked Adolfo Phillips to load the bases again, then was lifted in favor of righty Bob Moose. Brand greeted Moose with another single, scoring Laboy and reloading the bases. Wine’s strikeout sent Montréal into the ninth with a 2-0 advantage.

Stoneman got Sanguillén to fly out to Staub in right. José Pagán, pinch-hitting for Patek, singled, and rookie Al Oliver hit for Moose. Oliver hit .303 over the course of an 18-season major-league career24 but was hitting just .241 entering the game. Oliver grounded to Hermoso at second, who started a 4-6-3 double play to wrap up Stoneman’s shutout in 2 hours and 18 minutes.

“I’m exhausted,” Stoneman told reporters afterward, slumped in a chair. “I must have thrown 120 pitches.”25

The game snapped both pitchers out of their funks. Veale went 9-3 the rest of the way, closing the season with 13 wins and a 3.23 ERA. Montréal’s Mauch announced plans to start Stoneman every fifth day, instead of every four,26 and Stoneman’s performance improved. Starting July 14, he went 7-7 and cut his ERA down to 4.39. His 11 wins made him the only Montréal pitcher to reach double digits.

Stoneman pitched five seasons in Montréal, winning 17 games in 1971, making the 1972 All-Star team, and pitching a second no-hitter on October 2, 1972 – the first major-league no-no thrown in Canada. A reporter seeking Stoneman’s perspective a few days later found him in a familiar setting: the barracks at Camp Johnson.27

Acknowledgments

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

Sources

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team and season data and the box scores for this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON196907140.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B07140MON1969.htm

Notes

1 Information about Stoneman’s military service in the first two paragraphs of this article is based on “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up …,” Montreal Star, July 23, 1969: 24.

2 The game was an 8 P.M. start, according to advertisements in Montréal newspapers on game day. It took 2 hours and 18 minutes to play.

3 Stoneman was also the first Expos pitcher to throw a shutout. On April 17, in just the franchise’s ninth game, he pitched a no-hitter against the Phillies in Philadelphia, winning 7-0. Stoneman, Mike Wegener, and Gary Waslewski pitched additional shutouts for the Expos on the road before Stoneman finally accomplished the feat at home. As of the end of the 2022 season, Waslewski’s one-hit shutout of Philadelphia on July 6 still ranked as the shortest nine-inning game in Expos/Nationals history, at 1 hour and 36 minutes.

4 Stoneman’s first two innings were scoreless, and he allowed one baserunner on a double by José Martínez. In his third and final inning, he gave up a single to Carl Taylor and, an out later, a homer to Clemente. He retired Richie Hebner and Jerry May to close out the inning and was pinch-hit for in the next inning.

5 In his only minor-league action, Clemente hit .257 in 87 games with the Triple-A Montréal Royals in 1954. He was a Brooklyn Dodgers farmhand at the time; the Pirates selected him from Brooklyn in the Rule 5 draft in November 1954, and he spent the rest of his career in Pittsburgh.

6 This figure reflects both Clemente’s Hall of Fame talent and the fact that the Expos were a struggling, early-stage expansion team when he competed against them. From 1969 through 1972, Montréal teams finished a combined 116 games out of first place, never finishing higher than fifth place in a six-team division.

7 An Associated Press story published in newspapers across the United States in June 1970 reported that about 100 of the 600 players on major-league rosters would spend time in the military during the season. An accompanying list of players with military obligations included such notables as Thurman Munson, Roy White, Tony Conigliaro, Rod Carew, Joe Rudi, Tommy John, Joe Morgan, and Don Sutton. “Military Obligations Could Affect Flag Races,” Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, June 7, 1970: C7.

8 King, “Bill Stoneman,” SABR Biography Project.

9 “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up …”

10 Ted Blackman, “Wegener Beats Mets 11-4 Then Jets to Join Army,” Montreal Gazette, July 12, 1969: 39; Dick Bacon, “Remember When: McGinn’s 1st Week High Point of Career,” Montreal Gazette, April 15, 1986: D6.

11 “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up …”

12 Stoneman received the Renault automobile in a ceremony at Jarry Park on April 20, 1969, three days after his no-hitter. Norm King, “Bill Stoneman,” SABR Biography Project, accessed November 16, 2022.

13 This stretch of time also included two wins in a three-game series against the Mets, as well as the previously mentioned four-game sweep of the Expos.

14 Bill Christine, “Bucs Leave Ailing Shepard Behind,” Pittsburgh Press, July 14, 1969: 30. Virdon’s lengthy big-league managing career included permanent stints as manager of both the Pirates and the Expos.

15 Charley Feeney, “Expos Ride 2-Out Surge Past Limping Bucs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 15, 1969: 14; Ted Blackman, “Stoneman Blanks Bucs,” Montreal Gazette, July 15, 1969: 13. Angel Remigio Hermoso was commonly called by his first name in game stories during his playing career, but is most commonly referred to in the twenty-first century as Remy Hermoso.

16 Clemente, famed for his powerful and accurate arm, was a 12-time Gold Glove winner. He won every season from 1961 through his final campaign in 1972.

17 Feeney.

18 Feeney.

19 Bartirome had played a single season, 1952, as the Pirates’ starting first baseman before becoming an athletic trainer.

20 Bill Christine, “Beat-Up Bucs Poor Insurance Risk,” Pittsburgh Press, July 15, 1969: 38.

21 Feeney, “Expos Ride 2-Out Surge Past Limping Bucs.”

22 “Met Series Tough on Second Basemen,” Montreal Star, July 14, 1969: 23. The Mets had traded Collins to Montréal about a month earlier, on June 15, in the deal that brought Donn Clendenon to the eventual World Series champions.

23 Feeney, “Expos Ride 2-Out Surge Past Limping Bucs.” Bailey, not known for his speed, stole just three bases in 1969 while being caught three times. His career high for stolen bases was 13, set in 1971; he was caught seven times that season.

24 Oliver played for the Expos in 1982 and 1983 – the latter season with Bill Virdon as manager. He made the NL All-Star team both seasons. In 1982 he led the league in hits (204), doubles (43), RBIs (109), and batting average (.331). In 1983 he again led the NL in doubles (38) while hitting .300.

25 Dan Rosenburg, “Banishment to Expos’ Bullpen Proves Cure for Stoneman’s Pitching,” Montreal Star, July 15, 1969: 37.

26 Blackman, “Stoneman Blanks Bucs.”

27 Tom Sivret, “Stoneman: Camp Johnson’s Famous Guardsman,” Burlington (Vermont) Free Press, October 6, 1972: 26.