July 16, 1969: Willie Stargell’s 495-foot blast triggers Pirates’ comeback, christens ‘La Piscine de Willie’

On the morning of July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bringing the United States one step closer to putting a human being on the moon.

That evening in Montreal, Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates nearly hit a baseball into orbit. The ball sailed over the scoreboard in right field and out of Jarry Park before bouncing on the deck of an outdoor swimming pool and achieving splashdown.1 The tape-measure blast made an indelible mark on baseball fans in Montreal. French-speaking residents eventually began referring to the municipal pool as “La Piscine de Willie” (Willie’s Pool).2

Stargell had come into the game with an impressive .350 batting average, which was second best in the National League behind teammate Matty Alou.3 Other hot hitters in the Pittsburgh lineup included 25-year-old catcher Manny Sanguillén (batting .340), who was in his first full season in the major leagues,4 and the incomparable Roberto Clemente (.335). The 34-year-old superstar and former Montreal Royal was showing no signs of slowing down in his 15th big-league season.

The Pirates and their high-powered offense had roared out of the starting gate in 1969, winning 12 of their first 17 games. But they had gone 32-42 since that point, falling to fourth place in the NL Eastern Division, 12½ games behind the division-leading Chicago Cubs.5

Interim manager Bill Virdon, sitting in for an ailing Larry Shepard, tapped 27-year-old Steve Blass to start for the Pirates.6 Blass had a 4.86 ERA, a far cry from his breakout season the year before when he won 18 games and finished fifth in the league with a 2.12 ERA.

Blass was opposed by Montreal’s 22-year-old rookie hurler Mike Wegener (4-7, 4.50 ERA).7 Eight days earlier the two right-handers had squared off in Pittsburgh, with the Pirates knocking Wegener out of the game in the third inning en route to a lopsided 8-1 victory.8

Even though the Expos, in their first season of existence, had the worst record in the major leagues (28-62), they had been playing better baseball since they snapped a grinding 20-game losing streak on June 8.9 Montreal started the day a distant 28½ games out of first place.

It seemed that no amount of losing would dampen the festive Jarry Park atmosphere in the team’s inaugural season. Another 24,214 enthusiastic fans came out to see the Expos and Pirates on a Wednesday night—roughly three times the crowd that paid to see the Montreal Alouettes play a Canadian Football League exhibition game across town.10 The Expos drew 1.2 million fans in 1969, which was easily the highest attendance of the four expansion teams and a striking 58 percent more than the Pirates drew at Forbes Field.11            

Neither starting pitcher performed particularly well in this game. Blass gave up three homers in four-plus innings: a solo blast by Rusty Staub in the first and back-to-back round-trippers in the fourth by former Pirate Bob Bailey (a two-run shot) and Coco Laboy.

Blass was given the hook after giving up an unearned run with nobody out in the fifth on two singles, a stolen base, and a throwing error by Sanguillén.

Wegener surrendered an RBI single to Alou in the second and two innings later he gave up an unearned run on two singles and a passed ball by Ron Brand. Expos manager Gene Mauch, feeling that Wegener lacked sharpness, removed him for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the fourth.12

In the seventh, Staub’s RBI single off reliever Joe Gibbon gave Montreal a 6-2 lead.

Lefty reliever Dan McGinn returned to the mound in the eighth after keeping the Pirates off the scoresheet in the previous three innings. This was his 42nd appearance of the season, the third most in the National League.13

Alou led off the inning with a single and a stolen base. One out later, the dangerous Stargell came to the plate. Surprisingly, the modestly talented McGinn had owned the 29-year-old slugger up to that point in his young career,14 thanks to a sharp slider that was particularly tough on left-handed batters.15 In their eight previous meetings, Stargell was 1-for-8 with five strikeouts and a single.

The Pittsburgh left fielder won the battle this time. He crushed a McGinn offering roughly 495 feet, becoming the first player to record a splash hit at Jarry Park.16 A fully clothed youngster jumped into the pool to retrieve the milestone baseball.17

With two out, 21-year-old rookie Richie Hebner singled and advanced to second when left fielder Mack Jones misplayed the ball. The error proved costly, as Sanguillén followed with an RBI single, cutting Montreal’s lead to 6-5.

Pittsburgh completed the comeback in the top of the ninth. Pinch-hitter Ron Davis led off with a bunt single. One out later, Alou recorded his third single of the game, advancing the potential tying run to third base.18 After 4⅓ innings on the hill, Mauch pulled McGinn and handed the ball to Dick Radatz, whose contract had been purchased from the Detroit Tigers one month earlier.19

Radatz got the second out of the inning on a called third strike to first baseman Carl Taylor.20 He almost ended the game by doing the same to Stargell, but home-plate umpire Paul Pryor called ball four on a borderline 3-and-2 pitch.21 The walk loaded the bases for Clemente.

The Great One singled through the middle, scoring Davis and Alou, and the Pirates grabbed the lead, 7-6.

After Radatz fell behind 3-and-0 on Hebner, he was replaced on the mound by former Pirate great Elroy Face.22 Hebner singled cleanly off the 41-year-old reliever and Stargell crossed the plate with a valuable insurance run.

Virdon brought in righty Chuck Hartenstein to pitch the bottom of the ninth. He had already faced the Expos four times in the season, tossing 8⅓ scoreless innings and collecting a win and three saves.

Adolfo Phillips ended Hartenstein’s scoreless streak against Montreal with a solo homer to lead off the inning, but it was all the scoring the Expos could muster. Pittsburgh held on for a scrappy 8-7 victory. The Pirates’ powerful offense racked up 17 hits in the game: 16 singles and Stargell’s majestic home run.

One Montreal sportswriter chided Expos fans for remaining positive as their team blew a four-run lead.23 “When since the days of [Marquis] de Sade, have so many gotten so much joy after being beaten?” he asked cheekily.24

The come-from-behind victory may have been the turning point in Pittsburgh’s season. From that point on, the Pirates played .614 baseball, finishing in third place with 88 wins.25 Their solid second half was a sign of things to come. Pittsburgh was the most dominant team in the NL East during the 1970s, winning six division titles and two World Series championships.

Stargell hit another baseball into the Jarry Park pool on May 31, 1972, a coup de circuit off right-hander Ernie McAnally.26 On Pittsburgh’s next trip to Montreal, Stargell had near misses in back-to-back games in early August.27 On August 5 he hit a game-winning three-run homer off Bill Stoneman that would have ended up in the water had a youngster not caught the ball on one bounce.28 By that point, kids near the pool had learned to don gloves when Stargell came to bat.

But he wasn’t the only slugger to hit a home run into the swimming pool behind Jarry Park. On June 12, 1971, Montreal’s Ron Fairly slammed a pitch off Bill Singer of the Los Angeles Dodgers that ricocheted off the scoreboard into the water, and on May 5, 1976, 38-year-old Willie McCovey of the San Diego Padres victimized Steve Rogers for a splash hit.29

When the Expos moved into Olympic Stadium in 1977, Stargell had hit more home runs at Jarry Park (17) than any other visiting player.30 He hit another 5 round-trippers in 77 at-bats at the Big O, and one of those five was legendary. On May 20, 1978, Stargell hit a mammoth 535-foot homer into the second tier of seats in right field off Wayne Twitchell.31 The Expos replaced the red seat that the ball hit with a gold one, and the spot became a revered Montreal landmark. As of 2023, Stargell was still the only player to hit a ball into one of the upper decks at cavernous Olympic Stadium,32 and it may have been the longest home run ever hit there.33

Stargell wrapped up his 21-year Hall of Fame career in 1982, and he was honored by the Expos during his last visit to Montreal.34 His good friend and former teammate Al Oliver, hosted a pregame ceremony for Stargell on September 24.35 Despite being a thorn in the side of the Expos—especially during the tight 1979 pennant race—Montreal fans stood and graciously saluted “Pops.”36 He was presented with a Parc Jarry lifebuoy and the gold seat from his 1978 moon shot.37

“I want to thank each and every one of you for the warmth you have extended me and the guys I have played with,” Stargell told the Olympic Stadium crowd. “Merci!”38

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to using the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Unless otherwise noted, all play-by-play information for this game was taken from the article “Bucs Give Expos a Bath on ‘Ball Night’” on page 27 of the July 17, 1969, edition of the Montreal Gazette.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MON/MON196907160.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B07160MON1969.htm

Notes

1 The ball bounced into the middle of the pool. Ted Blackman, “Bucs Give Expos a Bath on ‘Ball Night,’” Montreal Gazette, July 17, 1969: 27; Bill Christine, “Pirates Win Despite Rash of Goof-Ups,” Pittsburgh Press, July 17, 1969: 35.

2 Rory Costello, “Jarry Park (Montreal),” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/park/jarry-park-montreal/, accessed February 21, 2023.

3 Alou was also hitting .350, but his average was slightly higher than Stargell’s. A few days after this game, Stargell went into the All-Star break with a .347 average, which made him uneasy. “I was almost ashamed of my batting average,” he wrote in his autobiography. “It wasn’t my job to hit for average. It was my job to hit the long ball and drive in runs.” Stargell finished the 1969 season batting .307 with 29 homers and 92 RBIs. Willie Stargell and Tom Bird, Willie Stargell: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984), 129.

4 Other Pirates in their first full big-league season included Richie Hebner, Al Oliver, Freddie Patek, and Dock Ellis. Sanguillén was called up by the Pirates in late July 1967 as a replacement for injured catcher Jerry May. Although May missed only three weeks of action, Sanguillén remained on the Pittsburgh roster for the remainder of the season. He batted .271 in 96 at-bats with Pittsburgh. He spent the 1968 season with the Columbus (Ohio) Jets of the International League. “Bucs Lose May for Three Weeks,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 22, 1967: 10.

5 The New York Mets were in second place, five games behind Chicago. The Cubs remained in first place until September 10 when they were overtaken by the Mets. Many felt the turning point of the Cubs’ season came on September 9 at Shea Stadium when a black cat ran in front of the Chicago dugout.

6 Shepard skipped the trip to Montreal because of a heart issue. Virdon also stepped in as Pittsburgh manager for roughly two weeks in 1971 when Danny Murtaugh was ill. Between 1972 and 1984, he managed the Pirates (1972-73), New York Yankees (1974-75), Houston Astros (1975-82), and Expos (1983-84). Blackman, “Bucs Give Expos a Bath on ‘Ball Night’”; Andy Sturgill, “Danny Murtaugh,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/danny-murtaugh/, accessed February 23, 2023.

7 Almost exactly one year later, Wegener became best known as the pitcher who surrendered the 3,000th hit of Willie Mays’ career.

8 Blass tossed a complete-game three-hitter against the Expos on July 8. He walked four batters and gave up one earned run. Wegener gave up five runs (three earned) on seven hits in two-plus innings.

9 Montreal had gone 17-25 (.405) since losing its 20th consecutive game. The Expos fell three games short of tying the major-league record for the most consecutive losses in the twentieth century, held by Gene Mauch’s 1961 Philadelphia Phillies.

10 Expos attendance was boosted that night by a promotion giving a free baseball to each child. Marv Moss, “Esks Shade Als 20-18,” Montreal Gazette, July 17, 1969: 27; Blackman, “Bucs Give Expos a Bath on ‘Ball Night.’”

11 Pittsburgh played its first game in Three Rivers Stadium on July 16, 1970, exactly one year later. The Expos still drew more fans in 1970 than the Pirates did. Montreal also had higher attendance than Pittsburgh for 11 straight years (1977-87) after the Expos moved into Olympic Stadium.

12 Wegener had given up only two runs (one earned) on six singles and no walks. Mauch attributed his lack of sharpness to not having picked up a ball since his previous start, on July 11 in New York. He had left the team to perform his duties with the Army Reserve. Blackman, “Bucs Give Expos a Bath on ‘Ball Night.’”

13 McGinn had already ensured that he would be remembered by Expos fans for decades. In Montreal’s inaugural game, he pitched in relief and hit the first home run in Expos history. It turned out to be the only home run he hit in the major leagues. He also picked up the win—the first of his big-league career − in Montreal’s inaugural home opener.

14 “Head to Head: Willie Stargell vs. Dan McGinn,” StatHead.com, https://stathead.com/tiny/QLTAT, accessed February 21, 2023.

15 John Robertson, “Expos’ Mauch Looked Like Tarzan—After Missing a Vine,” Montreal Star, July 17, 1969: 21.

16 Jonah Keri, Up, Up & Away: The Kid, The Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, Le Grand Orange, Youppi!, The Crazy Business of Baseball, & the Ill-fated but Unforgettable Montreal Expos (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2014), 53.

17 Blackman, “Bucs Give Expos a Bath on ‘Ball Night.’”

18 Alou led the major leagues in at-bats (698), plate appearances (746), hits (231), and doubles (41) in 1969. His 698 at-bats set a new record for the National and American Leagues, although that mark was broken in 1975 by Dave Cash of the Philadelphia Phillies. As of the start of the 2023 season, the record was held by Jimmy Rollins (716 at-bats with the Phillies in 2007). 

19 The Expos released Radatz on August 26 after he went 0-4 with a 5.71 ERA and 3 saves in 22 relief appearances. It marked the end of his seven-year career in the major leagues. He finished with a 52-43 record, a 3.13 ERA, and 120 saves.

20 Taylor was playing first base for an injured Al Oliver. Bill Christine, “Bucs Leave Ailing Shepard Behind,” Pittsburgh Press, July 14, 1969: 30.

21 Pryor was in his ninth season of umpiring in the National League. During his 21-year big-league career, he worked the World Series in 1967, 1973, and 1980. He also umpired in three All-Star Games (1963, 1971, and 1978).

22 Face had been released by the Detroit Tigers near the end of spring training in 1969. He signed with the Expos in late April. Face was released by Montreal after posting a 5.79 ERA in seven relief appearances in August. It was the end of a 16-season major-league career for the six-time All-Star.

23 Expos fans continued to celebrate losing teams until they got their first taste of a pennant race in 1973. From that point on they became one of the most critical and demanding fan bases in the National League.

24 Robertson, “Expos’ Mauch Looked Like Tarzan—After Missing a Vine.”

25 The Pirates ended up 12 games behind the first-place Mets. The Expos finished with a record of 52-110, tying them with their expansion cousins, the San Diego Padres, for the worst record in baseball.

26 “Coup de circuit” is the French term for a home run. Charley Feeney, “McAnally Rises, Topples Bucs by 3-2,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 1, 1972: 18.

27 Stargell’s near-misses were home runs against Bill Stoneman on August 5 and Mike Torrez in the eighth inning of the first game of an August 6 doubleheader. The second near-miss had plenty of distance to reach the pool, but the direction was a bit off. Bob Smizik, “Stargell Blasts 3-Run Homer in Barrage,” Pittsburgh Press, August 6, 1972: D-1; John Robertson, “Stargell Leads Bucs’ Sweep with Three Homers, Six RBIs,” Montreal Star, August 7, 1972: B-1.

28 Smizik, “Stargell Blasts 3-Run Homer in Barrage.”

29 Dan McLean, “Alston’s Gang Glories in Expos’ Hang-Ups,” Montreal Gazette, June 14, 1971: 14; Phil Collier, “Padres’ 2 HRs Whip Expos, 6-4,” San Diego Union, May 6, 1976: 57.

30 Richie Hebner was next with 13 homers at Jarry Park. “Career Leaders at Parc Jarry,” Retrosheet.org, https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/M/PKTC_MON01.htm, accessed February 22, 2023.

31 Rory Costello, “Olympic Stadium (Montreal),” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/park/olympic-stadium-montreal/, accessed February 22, 2023.

32 Costello, “Olympic Stadium (Montreal).”

33 Darryl Strawberry hit a home run off the Olympic Stadium service ring on April 4, 1988. McGill University physicist Robert Moore estimated the blast at between 500 and 550 feet. The Expos arbitrarily split the difference and called it 525 feet. But it could have been longer than Stargell’s 1978 homer. Expos left fielder Henry Rodríguez duplicated Strawberry’s feat on June 15, 1997. It too was estimated at 525 feet. Gary Belleville, “April 4, 1988: Darryl Strawberry Blasts 525-Foot Homer Off Olympic Stadium Service Ring,” SABR Games Project, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/april-4-1988-darryl-strawberry-blasts-525-foot-homer-off-olympic-stadium-service-ring, accessed February 22, 2023.

34 Stargell finished his career hitting .282 with 475 homers and 1,540 RBIs. The final plate appearance of his career came against the Expos at Three Rivers Stadium on October 3, 1982. He hit a single against Steve Rogers.

35 Oliver won the batting title with Montreal that season with a .331 batting average. Tim Raines was the only other Montreal Expo to win a batting championship (.334 batting average in 1986).

36 Stargell had several pivotal hits against the Expos in 1979. Pittsburgh finished two games ahead of Montreal, with the Expos remaining in the pennant race until the final day of the season. One particularly important Stargell hit came on September 18 when he slammed a two-run, game-winning homer in the 11th inning at Olympic Stadium. The Pittsburgh win moved them two games ahead of Montreal. On September 25 at Three Rivers Stadium, Stargell hit two homers, knocked in three runs, and scored three in a 10-4 victory over Montreal. The win moved Pittsburgh into first place, a half-game ahead of the Expos. The Pirates didn’t relinquish the lead the rest of the way and they went on to win the World Series over the Baltimore Orioles in seven games. Stargell became the first player to win the regular-season, League Championship Series, and World Series MVPs in the same season.

37 “Fans Bid Stargell Goodbye,” Montreal Gazette, September 25, 1982: G-2.

38 “Fans Bid Stargell Goodbye.”