September 15, 1981: Luis Tiant baffles Cubs in only appearance at Wrigley Field

The idea of Luis Tiant pitching at Chicago’s Wrigley Field doesn’t seem unusual. Perhaps that’s because Tiant pitched some of the most memorable seasons of his long career at Fenway Park – like Wrigley, a cherished remnant of the “jewel box” era – as a member of the Boston Red Sox from 1971 through 1978.

But the colorful Cuban righty pitched only nine games in the National League during his 19 seasons in the majors, all with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1981. And he made only one career appearance at Wrigley, in a Tuesday afternoon game on September 15.1

A scant 5,254 fans attended this contest near the end of a strike-scarred season, and they saw “El Tiante” put on a show. He pitched his final major-league complete game, came within one out of a shutout, and even doubled in three runs as the Pirates romped over the host Chicago Cubs.

Chuck Tanner’s Pirates, just two seasons removed from a World Series title, had finished fourth in the NL East in the first half of the strike-split season. They were lagging in last place in the second half. Joey Amalfitano’s Cubs, on the other hand, had an outside shot at a second-half title in the NL East. They entered the day in third place with a 16-17 record, 3½ games behind first-place St. Louis. This marked a noteworthy turnaround from the first half, in which the Cubs had the worst record in the majors2 and finished 17½ games behind the first-place Philadelphia Phillies.

The Cubs had recently posted mixed results against the teams ahead of them: They swept St. Louis in three games on the road but lost two of three against Montreal at home. Pittsburgh, most recently, had won two of three at home against the Phillies. Over the full season, the Pirates won 10 of their 14 matchups against the Cubs, their most wins against any team in 1981.

While 1981 was something of a lost season for the Pirates, Tiant’s story provided a thread of color and interest. Cut loose in October 1980 by the New York Yankees, Tiant signed with the Pirates in February 1981. The four-time 20-game winner had relied on guile and craft for years, and Pittsburgh became the latest in a series of teams to bet that he still had something in the tank.3 His listed age was 40, though rumors circulated that he was several years older.4

In his first minor-league action since 1971, Tiant made 21 starts for the Pirates’ Triple-A team in Portland, Oregon, where he went 13-7 and threw a no-hitter.5 When pitcher Don Robinson hurt his hand in an early August auto accident and went on the injured list, Tiant received a ticket to Pittsburgh.6 He stayed there the rest of the season, entering the September 15 game with a 1-4 record and a 4.40 ERA.

The Cubs started a familiar face against him. Right-hander Mike Griffin had been a teammate of Tiant on the 1979 and 1980 Yankees and pitched two games there in June 1981 before a trade brought him to Chicago.7 He entered the game with a 2-2 record and a 3.08 ERA in 10 games with the Cubs. Griffin had pitched against Pittsburgh once before, working 2⅔ shutout innings of relief on August 15 in a game the Cubs won in 15 innings.

From a scoreboard-watcher’s point of view, the game ended on its first batter. Pirates center fielder Omar Moreno led off with his only home run of the year, and his first since June 21, 1980. The next three Pirates went down in order, but after Moreno’s drive to right, Pittsburgh never trailed.

Tiant went to work using the bewildering assortment of pitches and arm angles he had long relied on for success. After the game, he told reporters he threw fastballs, curveballs, screwballs, knuckleballs, and a hesitation pitch, using overhead, three-quarters, and side-arm deliveries.8 Bill Buckner nicked him for a single in the first but did not advance.

Pirates right fielder Dave Parker, nursing a thumb injury, had played only once since August 25.9 Back in the lineup, he repeated Moreno’s feat in the second inning, leading off with a solo home run to right-center to make the score 2-0, Pittsburgh. Johnny Ray, the following season’s NL Rookie of the Year,10 added a single to no avail. Parker also shook things up in the fourth inning by singling, stealing second, and moving to third on a fly by Mike Easler. Tony Peña stranded him there with a grounder to shortstop Iván de Jesús.

The game tilted decisively in the Pirates’ direction in the sixth inning. Bill Madlock, on his way to winning his third career NL batting title, singled to right field. Jason Thompson followed with a potential double-play grounder to de Jesús, who booted it; Thompson reached first base and Madlock third. Amalfitano later identified de Jesús’s bobble as the play that “really broke our backs.”11

Amalfitano summoned reliever Willie Hernández. Parker welcomed him with a single, scoring Madlock. One out later, Peña’s single scored Thompson for a 4-0 Pirates lead. Hernández walked Ray intentionally, loading the bases for Tiant.

El Tiante had collected a single in his previous start, on September 8. Before 1981, though, he hadn’t batted in a regular-season major-league game since a single plate appearance in 1976 and hadn’t collected a hit since the 1975 World Series.12

Tiant laced a double into the left-field corner, clearing the bases and running Pittsburgh’s lead to 7-0. After Moreno struck out, Rawly Eastwick – an antagonist of Tiant’s from the ’75 Series – took over to get the final out for Chicago.13

While Pittsburgh was piling on, Tiant was cruising. Between Buckner’s first-inning single and the end of the sixth, he retired 16 straight Cubs. Along the way, he won over the bare contingent of Cubs fans on hand. The Chicago Tribune reported, “The ageless Tiant’s enjoyment of his craft somehow came through to the audience while Cub batters waved in vain at his dipsy-doo delivery.”14

The Pirates collected their eighth and final run off Doug Capilla in the seventh inning. Lefty Capilla, in his sixth and final big-league season, walked more batters than he struck out in 1981, and Pittsburgh cashed in on his wildness.15 Madlock and Thompson led off with walks, and two strikeouts later, Peña’s single to right field scored Madlock.

Chicago finally touched Tiant for singles in the seventh and eighth, by de Jesús and Jody Davis, but entered the ninth with only three hits and an 8-0 deficit.

Aiming for his first shutout since July 8, 1979, Tiant opened the inning by giving pinch-hitter Scot Thompson his only walk of the day. De Jesús struck out and Buckner lined out, bringing Tiant one out away. But right fielder Leon Durham, who tied Buckner for the team lead in homers with 10 in 1981, spoiled the party by pounding a two-strike curveball into the right-field seats for a two-run homer. (“He wasn’t fooled,” Tiant said later.)16 Steve Henderson’s grounder to second ended the game in 2 hours and 54 minutes.

Tanner likened Tiant to “a surgeon” on the mound,17 but the loquacious Tiant focused his postgame remarks on what he still had to learn. Tiant told reporters he planned to pitch that winter to develop his knuckleball and forkball, in hopes of continuing his career. “I don’t know what I have to do to prove anything now, but I’m going to keep on pitching,” he said. “I think I can pitch four, maybe five more years.”18

The Pirates didn’t agree. They cut Tiant loose on October 5, four days after he took a loss against Montreal and closed the season with a 2-5 record and 3.92 ERA. Tiant pitched in Mexico for most of 1982, earning one last six-game look-see and two final wins with the California Angels in August and September.

The Cubs remained as close as three games back as late as September 24, but a season-ending slump saw them finish in fifth place, six games out, with a 23-28 record and one tie. Playoff-starved Cubs fans finally reached the postseason three years later, with contributions from 1981 holdovers Durham and Davis.

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin. The author thanks John Fredland for research assistance.

Sources and photo credit

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.

www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN198109150.shtml

www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1981/B09150CHN1981.htm

Photo of 1982 Topps card #160 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Lights were not installed at Wrigley Field until 1988.

2 15 wins and 37 losses, with two ties.

3 Tiant had previously pitched for the Cleveland Indians, Minnesota Twins, Red Sox, and Yankees, and subsequently pitched for the California Angels. He also spent the first month of the 1971 season in the Atlanta Braves’ minor-league system, but never appeared in a major-league game for the Braves.

4 Several news stories about the game, cited below, mentioned that Tiant was rumored to be several years older than listed, and quoted Tiant as making light of the rumors. His officially listed birthdate is November 23, 1940.

5 Associated Press, “Tiant Hurls No-Hitter,” Bennington (Vermont) Banner, April 20, 1981. According to this story, Tiant had thrown two previous no-hitters – one in the Venezuelan winter league in 1971, the other in the Carolina League in 1963. Longtime American League slugger Willie Horton also played with Portland in 1981 and 1982 but was never called up to Pittsburgh. Tiant and Horton’s manager in Portland in 1981 was Pete Ward, who had hit .294 against Tiant (15-for-51) as a major-league player.

6 Russ Franke, “Bevacqua Dropped, Going to Portland,” Pittsburgh Press, August 9, 1981: D2; “Tiant a Buc, Stargell Out,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 12, 1981: 13. Robinson was a passenger in teammate Jim Bibby’s van when it was broadsided by a taxicab, flipping on its roof. “Bibby’s Van Hit, Robinson Hurt,” Pittsburgh Press, August 7, 1981: B7.

7 Specifically, Griffin was the player to be named later in a trade with the following terms: Rick Reuschel to the Yankees; Doug Bird, $400,000 and a player to be named later to the Cubs.

8 Dan Donovan, “‘Surgeon’ Tiant Operates on Cubs,” Pittsburgh Press, September 16, 1981: D1.

9 Donovan.

10 Ray had been a Pirate for only about two weeks. On August 31, the Houston Astros traded him to the Pirates for Phil Garner. The Astros later sent Randy Niemann and minor-leaguer Kevin Houston to Pittsburgh to complete the trade. Ray never played in the majors with the Astros; before the trade, he’d been playing for the Astros’ Triple-A team in Tucson.

11 Bob Logan, “Cubs Learn There’s Life in Tiant’s Arm, Bat,” Chicago Tribune, September 16, 1981: 4: 3.

12 Tiant struck out against Pete Vuckovich of the Chicago White Sox in the eighth inning of a game on July 5, 1976. He received an at-bat following a lineup change in which designated hitter Rick Miller was shifted to left field, costing the Red Sox the use of the DH.

13 Eastwick had been a relief pitcher for the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, who defeated Tiant’s Red Sox in seven games. Eastwick and Tiant were each credited for two of their team’s wins in that Series, and Eastwick also picked up a save.

14 Logan, “Cubs Learn There’s Life in Tiant’s Arm, Bat.”

15 Capilla walked 34 batters and struck out 28 in 51 innings.

16 Logan, “Cubs Learn There’s Life in Tiant’s Arm, Bat.”

17 Charley Feeney, “Tiant Wins, Looks Ahead,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 16, 1981: 11. This was not the first time Tanner used that comparison. In August 1972, as manager of the Chicago White Sox, Tanner said of Tiant: “He is like a surgeon out there, some pitcher.” Clif Keane, “Tiant Nods, White Sox Fall,” Boston Globe, August 30, 1972: 29.

18 Feeney.