September 14, 1958: Mazeroski breaks team home run mark; Friend wins 21st as Pirates double their pleasure over Cubs

Seven games back with 10 to play, the Pittsburgh Pirates had little hope of catching the Milwaukee Braves in the race for the 1958 National League flag as they hosted the Chicago Cubs for a doubleheader on September 14. Pittsburgh nonetheless earned a sweep, capped off by ace Bob Friend reaching a victory level no Pirate hurler had equaled in more than a decade and defensive virtuoso Bill Mazeroski breaking a home-run record held by a defensively challenged star of Pittsburgh’s most recent pennant-winning teams in 1925 and 1927. 

In his first full year at the helm, manager Danny Murtaugh had turned the Pirates into legitimate contenders for the first time in a decade. The Buccos, as they were called in Pittsburgh, found themselves with a share of the league lead on May 5, courtesy of strong starts by slugger Frank Thomas (eight home runs), 23-year-old Roberto Clemente (hitting .338), Friend (4-0, with a 2.54 ERA), and, unexpectedly, Mazeroski. Despite missing nearly all of spring training while serving a six-month tour in the US Army Reserve at Fort Knox, Kentucky,1 Mazeroski had begun his third big-league season by connecting for hits in 12 of his first 13 games.

Blessed with a steady glove, wide range, and a rifle of an arm,2 Mazeroski had been solid but not exceptional at the plate until Pittsburgh batting coach and two-time American League batting champion George Sisler began teaching him “the finer points of batting” during the 1957 season.3 With Mazeroski hitting at a .300 clip through early June of 1958, former batting champion, MVP, and World Series-winning manager Lou Boudreau called him “ [c]ertainly … the best second baseman in the league.”4 A month later, Mazeroski became the youngest second baseman to that point to start in an All-Star Game.5

By mid-August, the prospect that Pittsburgh might overtake Milwaukee prompted Mazeroski to delay by a week his planned nuptials with Milene Nicholson, secretary to the Pirates chief of scouting.6 Their scheduled October ceremony, seemingly safe from conflict when first set, fell right in the middle of dates for the World Series.

On Mazeroski’s 22nd birthday, September 5, the Pirates kicked off a critical 12-game homestand. After Pittsburgh took three of four from the Braves, Mazeroski hit his 17th home run of the season and later scored the winning run in a September 9 win over the San Francisco Giants.7 He hit another round-tripper in a September 13 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers to tie George “Boots” Grantham for the most home runs in a season by a Pirates second baseman.

Carrying a nickname earned for his struggles fielding grounders, Grantham hit 18 home runs in 1930. A platooned first baseman for the 1925 World Series Champion Pirates, Grantham was the everyday second baseman for the Pittsburgh team smitten by the 1927 New York Yankees.

Despite a solid 7-2 record to start their lengthy homestand, the Pirates had gained just one game on the Braves when the Cubs arrived for their one-day visit. Though one step out of the cellar, the Cubs’ fate was not yet sealed. Under second-year manager Bob Scheffing, the Cubs had already topped their win total from the year before, with aspirations for more. Only five games separated them from the fourth-place Cincinnati Reds and the first division.

A crowd of 23,160 “die-hard addicts” were on hand at Forbes Field for the Sunday doubleheader with Chicago.8 Pittsburgh jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the opening game, but the Cubs scored four in the fifth to tie it on a three-run pinch home run by future Pirates manager Chuck Tanner.9 Ted Kluszewski’s pinch-hit sacrifice fly in the sixth put Pittsburgh up 5-4, with reliever Ron Blackburn earning a save when he retired pinch-hitter Cal Neeman with the count full on a “Mazeroski-Groat Special”: a game-ending 4-6-3 double play.10

In the second game, Murtaugh gave the ball to Friend, a sinker/curveball pitcher with a 20-13 record and a 3.83 ERA. The losing pitcher in the 1958 All-Star Game,11 he’d earned his 20th win in his last start, a 10-inning slog against the Giants that ended on Dick Stuart’s two-run walk-off homer. Lifetime 13-11 vs. Chicago, he’d absorbed a loss to the Cubs the last time he’d faced them, in the darkness-shortened second game of an August 20 doubleheader at Wrigley Field.

Opposite Friend was southpaw Taylor Phillips, 7-9 with a 4.64 ERA. A spot starter with the Braves in 1957, he was acquired by Chicago in the offseason. Phillips had lost his last three starts against Pittsburgh, surviving only 1⅔ innings the last time he’d faced them, on August 23.

The Cubs jumped out to a lead before Friend had retired a batter. He plunked rookie Tony Taylor to start the game, then gave up a run-scoring double to another rookie, Jim Marshall. Obtained from the Orioles a few weeks earlier, Marshall was making just his second major-league start in the outfield; his first was in the opener of the doubleheader.12 Friend limited the damage by retiring the next three batters.

Pittsburgh knotted the score in its half of the first on Bob Skinner’s triple after a two-out walk to Stuart. Chicago threatened in the second by drawing a pair of walks, but nothing came of it.

Leading off the second for Pittsburgh was Mazeroski, batting sixth. Eight-for-26 (.308) lifetime against Phillips, he’d hit a two-run home run off him that just cleared the left-center-field wall at Wrigley Field four weeks earlier.13 Phillips served up another gopher ball in this at-bat. Mazeroski parked it over the left-center-field wall to become the top home-run-hitting second baseman in franchise history.14

A Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph sportswriter noted that many in the press box missed Mazeroski’s record-setting swing, “distracted by a fetching blonde in a chemise who chose that moment to paddle up a nearby runway.”15

Dick Groat singled after Mazeroski’s home run and scored on a double by Hank Foiles, who was making his first start behind the plate in a week. Two outs later, Clemente hit a high hopper that Phillips threw into the Pirates dugout, allowing Foiles to score the Pirates’ third and final run of the inning.

Skinner led off the third with his 13th home run of the season, the 22nd allowed by Phillips, which tied him for the Cubs team lead. Two batters later, Phillips walked Mazeroski and was replaced by 22-year-old reliever John Buzhardt, making his third major-league appearance since being promoted from Triple-A Portland earlier in the month. Buzhardt needed to face only one batter, as Groat popped up into an inning-ending double play.16

As the Pirates built their lead, Friend was successfully navigating around lone singles in the third, fourth, and fifth innings, the first and last by Marshall.

In the Pirate fourth, Glen Hobbie succeeded Buzhardt, retiring the side in order in that inning and the next. In the sixth, Thomas led off with a double but went no farther as Hobbie got Friend on a popup for the third out.

The Cubs shaved a run off the Pittsburgh lead in the seventh. After singling with two out, Tony Taylor went to second when Stuart dropped Foiles’ pickoff throw for an error.17 Marshall’s fourth hit of the day, the first time in his brief career he’d had that many in a game, brought Taylor home.

A fourth Chicago pitcher, Dave Hillman, worked a scoreless seventh but was touched for a run in the eighth when Mazeroski doubled with one out and trotted home on Groat’s ninth triple of the year. Hillman walked Foiles next but escaped further damage when Groat was thrown out trying to score on a popup caught by the eldest of the three Taylors in the Cubs’ starting lineup, catcher Sammy Taylor. Third baseman Johnny Goryl made the tag at the plate.

Taylor and Goryl led off the ninth, but each beat a path back to the dugout, as Friend fanned them both.18 Bobby Thomson, who seven years earlier hit the “Shot Heard Around the World,” pinch-hit for Hillman and walked. The next batter, Tony Taylor, walked as well. Up to the plate came Marshall, with cleanup hitter Ernie Banks on deck, representing the tying run.

Exactly one year after he’d hit three home runs in a game against Pittsburgh, Banks had gone hitless against Friend in this one. Friend denied Banks the chance to add onto his league-leading 46 home runs and 123 RBIs by retiring Marshall on a game-ending grounder to first. The win gave Friend a league-leading 21 for the season, the most by a Pirate since Rip Sewell in 1944.

After the game, the Cubs’ Scheffing called Mazeroski the Pirates’ most valuable player, declaring, “Where would you be without his bat and without his glove?”19

The Pirates’ sweep, coupled with a Braves loss that day, pulled them within 5½ games, but it was a deficit they couldn’t overcome. Milwaukee clinched the pennant a week later to set up a World Series rematch with the New York Yankees.

Two years later, in the ninth inning of Game Seven of the 1960 World Series, Mazeroski hit another record-breaking home run at Forbes Field that ESPN would later call the “greatest home run of all time.”20

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Bob Hurte’s SABR biography of Bill Mazeroski and Clifton Parker’s SABR biography of Bob Friend. The Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Almanac.com websites also provided pertinent material, including the box score.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1958/B09142PIT1958.htm

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT195809142.shtml

Notes

1 This was Mazeroski’s first tour of a six-year commitment to the Reserve. Mazeroski also sat for the Pirates’ first two games of the regular season as he got himself game-ready. “Mazeroski, Pritchard Sign for 6-Month Army Hitches,” The Sporting News, July 24, 1957: 17; Les Biederman, “Buccos Better—at Least in Danny’s Book,” The Sporting News, April 16, 1958: 27.

2 Les Biederman, “Wide Range, Rifle Arm Give Buccos’ Mazeroski Chance to Reach Top,” The Sporting News, November 20, 1957: 14.

3 Les Biederman, “Mazeroski, Buccos’ Star at 21, Saluted as ‘Second Baseman of Future’ by Sisler,” The Sporting News, September 11, 1957: 17.

4 “Reidenbaugh Roundup,” The Sporting News, June 11, 1958: 14.

5 The youngest second baseman to start an All-Star Game before Mazeroski was Bobby Doerr, who was 23 years and 3 months old when he appeared for the American League in the 1941 All-Star Game. Mazeroski remained the youngest starting second baseman until the four-week-younger Rod Carew started at second base for the AL in 1967. After the 1957 All-Star debacle in which overachieving Cincinnati fans voted eight Reds position players in as All-Star starters, Commissioner Ford Frick decided to have players, managers, and coaches make selections for the 1958 game. Sportswriter Les Biederman suggested that this favored Mazeroski as his fellow professionals would “appreciate his talents more” than most fans. Les Biederman, “Mazeroski Dazzles ’Em as Bucco Glove Wizard,” The Sporting News, July 30, 1958: 10; John Fay, “In 1957, Reds’ Fans Stuffed All-Star Game Ballot Box,” Cincinnati Enquirer website, June 27, 2015, https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/2015-all-star-game/2015/06/27/cincinnati-reds-fans-filled-ballot-box-1957-all-star-game/28925739/.

6 Les Biederman, “Bold Buccos Aim for Best Spot in Sun in 20 Years,” The Sporting News, August 20, 1958: 14; Les Biederman, “Bucs in Swap Huddles with Cards, Bruins,” The Sporting News, October 16, 1957: 15.

7 The homer was his sixth of the season at Forbes Field vs. hitting none there in 1957.

8 Davis J. Walsh, “Pirates Keep Flag Chances ‘Alive,’” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, September 15, 1958: 14. “Final Edition,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, September 14, 1958: 1.

9 Jack Hernon, “Cubs Go Down, 5-4 and 6-2; Friend Gets His 21st Victory,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 15, 1958: 24.

10 Walsh, “Pirates Keep Flag Chances ‘Alive’”; Hernon, “Cubs Go Down, 5-4 and 6-2; Friend Gets His 21st Victory.”

11 Relieving for starter Warren Spahn in the third inning, Friend allowed a pair of runs, one unearned, on four singles and a pair of walks.

12 Marshall was the latest fill-in for regular right fielder Lee Walls, who broke a finger sliding head-first into second base on September 9, an injury that proved season-ending. Richard Dozer, “Banks Hits 45th Homer; Walls Injured,” Chicago Tribune, September 10, 1958: 61.

13 Lester J. Biederman, “Stuart Continuesto Plague Cubs,” Pittsburgh Press, August 20, 1958: 43.

14 Exactly 56 years passed before Mazeroski’s record was broken by Neil Walker, who hit 23 home runs while playing second base for Pittsburgh in 2014. Les Biederman, “Fans Still Hope for Miracle as Bucs Sweep,” Pittsburgh Press, September 15, 1958: 21; Jenn Menendez, “Big Plays Spark Win,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 15, 2014: E1.

15 George Kiseda, “A Cub’s Eye-View of Bob Friend,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, September 15, 1958: 14.

16 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Groat’s double play gave him 26 for the season, which it called a new Pirates record. “Cubs Go Down, 5-4 and 6-2; Friend Gets His 21st Victory.”

17 “Cubs Go Down, 5-4 and 6-2; Friend Gets His 21st Victory.”

18 Taylor’s out made him hitless in his last 15 at-bats, a streak that would reach 20 before he singled in his last game of the season.

19 Les Biederman, “Dick Groat Thanks Boudreau for Hints on Improving Play,” Pittsburgh Press, September 15, 1958: 22.

20 Mazeroski’s home run off the Yankees’ Ralph Terry was the first walk-off home run to crown a World Series champion. David Schoenfield & Jeff Merron, 100 Greatest Home Runs of All Time, ESPN Page 2 website, http://www.espn.com/page2/s/greatesthomerunslist.html, accessed February 18, 2023.