June 30, 1962: Clemente, Burgess lead Pirates to blowout win against Cardinals

The lean, lithe Roberto Clemente and the squat Smoky Burgess (“barely fit enough to play for the Moose Lodge softball team,”1 according to one critic) made for an odd, but certainly hard-hitting, duo. They batted fifth and sixth, respectively, in the Pittsburgh Pirates lineup for much of the 1962 season.

On June 30, the two led a 22-hit attack as the Pirates knocked off the St. Louis Cardinals, 17-7, at Busch Stadium. A crowd of 22,527 watched the often-sloppy action.

Both teams entered the game with a record of 43-32, in a third-place tie and 5½ games behind the league-leading San Francisco Giants. The Pirates were less than two years removed from their dramatic World Series championship in 1960 against the New York Yankees. The Cardinals hadn’t won a pennant since 1946.

St. Louis took the opener of the three-game series, 5-0. Curt Simmons threw a seven-hit shutout and beat Harvey Haddix. Vernon Law, a 6-foot-2-inch right-hander and an 11-year veteran, started on the mound for Pittsburgh in the second game. The Deacon – so-called because he earned that title in the Mormon church at the age of 12 – had a record of 5-3. Ray Washburn, a 6-foot-1 right-hander in his first full season, took the ball for St. Louis. He also had a record of 5-3. Both pitchers hailed from the Northwest, Law from Idaho and Washburn from Washington.

A fast-moving summer storm had turned the field into a soggy mess just a few hours earlier, and neither team took batting practice. Les Biederman noted in the Pittsburgh Press the next day that “despite the work of the ground crew, the infield was slippery in spots.”2 The game began 17 minutes late.

Thanks in part to the wet conditions, Pittsburgh grabbed an early lead with a three-run first inning. Washburn opened the frame by striking out Bill Virdon. Dick Groat grounded out and Bob Skinner walked. Dick Stuart beat out a hit after St. Louis first baseman Bill White “slipped”3 while trying to field the ball. Clemente’s single loaded the bases. Burgess’s double emptied them.

Pittsburgh scored five more times in the third inning. Once again, remnants of the afternoon storm did damage to the home club. Law began the rally with a one-out single. Cardinals second baseman Julian Javier “slipped” in an ill-fated attempt at fielding the ball.4 Virdon and Groat followed with base hits. Skinner’s single scored two runs. After Stuart popped out, Clemente slammed a three-run homer into the right-field stands.

Washburn’s day ended with that big hit and with an ugly pitching line. He gave up eight earned runs over 1⅔ innings, and his ERA ballooned from 3.82 to 4.76. The hometown St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted that Washburn’s start was both “short” and “mud-splattered.”5 Reliever Bobby Shantz, a veteran left-hander who stood 5-feet-6, ended the inning by getting Burgess to ground out.

St. Louis scored its first run with one out in the second. Stan Musial, playing in his 21st season and with one more campaign to go in a glorious career, began the frame by flying out to left field. The hard-hitting third baseman Ken Boyer followed that by slamming a Law pitch into the left-field seats.

Third baseman Don Hoak, nicknamed “Tiger,” led off the Pittsburgh third with an infield single. Bill Mazeroski then smashed a Shantz pitch for a two-run homer that gave the Pirates a 10-1 advantage. After Law reached on an error, Virdon popped out and Groat hit into a double play.

Boyer added two more RBIs in the St. Louis third. His base hit scored Javier and Fred Whitfield after both singled and Musial walked. Law ended the threat by striking out Carl Sawatski and Charlie James and getting Dal Maxvill to hit into a force play.

The Pirates took an 11-3 lead in the fourth inning. Shantz walked Skinner to start the frame. Stuart’s groundout advanced Skinner to second base. Clemente stepped to the plate and lined an RBI single to center field. Burgess then lofted a pitch to Curt Flood. The graceful center fielder caught the ball and fired to first base before Clemente, “feeling frisky” according to the Post-Dispatch, could get back safely.6

Law gave up just two singles over the next three frames. Shantz set down the Pirates in order in the fifth inning and wiggled out of two-out trouble in the sixth after Skinner doubled and Stuart singled to put runners on first and third. Clemente, though, with an opportunity to inflict more damage, flied out to center field.

Ed Bauta, a right-handed sinkerball pitcher from Cuba, took over pitching duties for St. Louis in the seventh inning. Burgess, the first batter, greeted him by hitting a homer to right field. Law added a two-out single before Virdon flied out to Flood.

St. Louis got to Law for two more runs in the seventh inning. Javier led off by doubling to left field and then left for pinch-runner. Julio Gotay. A Whitfield fly ball sent Gotay to third. Doug Clemens slammed a Law pitch over the fence to cut Pittsburgh’s lead to 12-5.

Pittsburgh put away the game by scoring five runs in the top of the eighth. Groat, the All-Star shortstop, began the inning with a single. He advanced to third on Skinner’s double. Stuart’s single scored one run and brought up Clemente, who lined a double for his fifth RBI of the game. (It was one of seven five-RBI games that Clemente had in his career. The others were on July 25, 1956; May 26, 1957; April 14, 1960; July 6, 1961; July 6, 1966; and August 7, 1966. He drove home a career-high seven runs on May 15, 1967, against the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field.)

Burgess followed by hitting a three-run homer to give him seven RBIs in the game. (The squat catcher had collected a career-high nine RBIs on July 29, 1955. He ripped three home runs that day. Burgess batted .295 lifetime and set a record at the time with 145 career pinch-hits. Joe Garagiola once said, “You could wake [Burgess] up at 3 A.M. on Christmas morning, with two inches of snow on the ground, throw him a curveball, and he’d hit a line drive.”7)

The Cardinals pushed across the game’s final two runs in the eighth inning. Law gave up a single to James and a double to Maxvill. Gene Oliver, pinch-hitting for Bauta, hit a run-scoring single that put Maxvill on third. The light-hitting shortstop scored on Flood’s groundout.

After Gotay flied out, Diomedes Olivo took over pitching duties for Pittsburgh. The 43-year-old left-hander from the Dominican Republic gave up a single to Whitfield but got Doug Clemens to ground out. Don Ferrarese, the Cardinals’ fourth pitcher on the day, tossed a scoreless ninth. St. Louis, in need of an epic rally, managed only a base hit off Olivo in the final frame.

The next day the Pirates beat the Cardinals 7-2. Al McBean, a second-year right-hander from the US Virgin Islands, scattered six hits in a complete-game effort. Hoak drove home three runs. Burgess added another two RBIs.

Clemente hit a single and scored a run but also struck out three times. He concluded one of the best months of his career. He drove home 27 runs in 30 games and batted .388 with a .416 on-base percentage. He slugged .578 and had a .994 OPS. Just a few weeks earlier, Clemente had complained to reporters about a “nervous stomach. I can hardly eat.… I don’t feel too strong and sometimes when I run, I get short of breath.”8 The reporter noted that Clemente’s ailments “could mean misery for opposing pitchers. For when the Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder complains of sickness, he’s usually a terror at the plate.”9

Clemente, so good in June, stayed hot in July. He batted .354 with an .889 OPS. The 27-year-old slumped in August (.239 batting average and just a .658 OPS) but put together a solid September (.311 batting average, .771 OPS). He batted .312 for the season, nearly 40 points below his 1961 mark.

The Pirates finished in fourth place at 93-68. The Cardinals ended up in sixth with a record of 84-78.

The Great One played another 10 seasons, won three more batting titles, and earned the Most Valuable Player Award in 1966. Clemente ended his career with exactly 3,000 hits and 12 Gold Gloves. He died in a plane crash on December 31, 1972, while on a mercy mission to help survivors of a devastating earthquake in Nicaragua. Writers voted him into the Hall of Fame in a 1973 special election. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn said Clemente “made the word ‘superstar’ seem inadequate. He had about him a touch of royalty.”10

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted B​aseba​ll-Re​feren​ce.​com.

h​ttps:​//www​.base​ball-​refer​ence.​com/b​oxes/​SLN/S​LN196​20630​0.​shtml

NOTES

1 Andy Sturgill, “Smoky Burgess” SABR BioProject: h​ttps:​//sab​r.org​/biop​roj/p​erson​/smok​y-bur​gess/.

2 Les Biederman, “Pirate Hit Explosion Stuns Cards,” Pittsburgh Press, July 1, 1962: 53.

3 Biederman.

4 Biederman.

5 Ed Wilks, “Pirates Rout Washburn in Slugging Attack on Cards,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 1, 1962: 30.

6 Wilks.

7 Andy Sturgill, “Smoky Burgess.” SABR BioProject.

8 Associated Press, “When Clemente’s Ailing, the Enemy Pitchers Suffer,” Bloomington (Illinois) Pantagraph, June 6, 1962: 12.

9 “When Clemente’s Ailing, the Enemy Pitchers Suffer.”

10 “Quotes About Roberto Clemente & Quotes by Roberto Clemente”: h​ttps:​//www​.base​ball-​alman​ac.co​m/quo​tes/r​obert​o_cle​mente​_quot​es.​shtml.