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Coming off a 1967 National League batting championship, his third in four years, Roberto Clemente struggled mightily at the plate for the first two months of the 1968 season. He was hampered by a nasty shoulder injury he suffered in the offseason at his home in Puerto Rico. As he climbed on a steel railing […]

After the Pirates lost the first two games of the 1971 World Series to the Orioles in Baltimore, the Series moved to Pittsburgh, and the Pirates rode a complete-game three-hitter by Steve Blass to their first victory. It may have been too much for the Steel City nine to expect Game Four starter Luke Walker […]

The contrast between the two teams could not have been starker. The mighty Pirates, one of the oldest franchises in baseball, were perched atop the NL East standings, while the last-place Expos were struggling to compete in what was only their second year of existence. A few weeks earlier, Pittsburgh had christened monolithic Three Rivers […]

Roberto Clemente stepped into the batter’s box in the fifth inning at Forbes Field. More than 13,000 hometown fans watched on September 2, 1966, as the Pittsburgh Pirates superstar took a few practice swings. Ferguson Jenkins, the Chicago Cubs’ 23-year-old right-hander, stood on the mound. Clemente slammed Jenkins’ first pitch into the right-field upper deck […]

A freak ankle injury sidelined Roberto Clemente for four games in May 1955, momentarily sidetracking his spectacular rookie-year emergence in Pittsburgh. The 20-year-old native of Puerto Rico returned on May 29 with five hits in the Pirates’ curfew-interrupted 11-5 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in the second game of a doubleheader — but lost his […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates surged into the National League’s crowded pennant race in August 1965 but faced stiffer resistance once the calendar flipped to September: twin aces Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale in a doubleheader with the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers at Forbes Field. In the twin bill’s opener, Koufax broke his own post-1900 NL season […]

It was the culmination of the 1971 baseball season. Game Seven of the World Series pitted the defending world champion Baltimore Orioles vs. the upstart Pittsburgh Pirates. For the Orioles, it was their third consecutive World Series appearance, losing to the New York “Miracle” Mets in 1969 and defeating the Cincinnati Reds in 1970. It […]

In the 1960s Pittsburgh Pirates trailblazer Roberto Clemente challenged Henry Aaron’s reign as the National League’s top right fielder. Their amicable rivalry seized the spotlight during a May 1967 Braves-Pirates series in Atlanta. At the end of a weekend in which Braves broadcaster Milo Hamilton jested about Clemente overtaking Aaron as the NL All-Star right […]

As the 1967 season entered its last day, the Pittsburgh Pirates had attained impressive team and individual batting statistics. They led all 16 big-league teams in batting average (.277), while pacing the National League in on-base-percentage (.324) and slugging percentage (.380). As an encore to his MVP season in 1966, Roberto Clemente registered the highest […]

On August 23, 1971, 24-year-old Al Oliver had one of the greatest games in his 18-year major-league career. The game got little media attention locally, partly due to a newspaper strike against the Pittsburgh Press and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that ran from mid-May until September.1In the second game of a twilight-night doubleheader at Atlanta Stadium, Oliver went 5-for-6 with two home runs, […]

The Pittsburgh Pirates looked forward to a late-May double-header with the Chicago Cubs as an opportunity to not only improve their 20-22 record and reach .500, but to also bring fans back to PNC Park. The 25-20 Cubs – who had lost their last two games and won only three of their previous eight – […]

On September 18, 1972, New York Mets rookie Jon Matlack took the mound against the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Nelson Briles for the second time. The two pitchers had first faced each other in the first game of a July 27 doubleheader at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium. Matlack won that game, 1-0, allowing four hits in 10 […]

The Philadelphia Phillies opened newly built Veterans Stadium for the 1971 season after occupying Connie Mack Stadium in downtown Philadelphia since 1938. (The A’s had first opened the park in 1909.) Through its first two months of game action, the new multipurpose facility in South Philadelphia was gaining a reputation as a hitters’ park. Describing […]

As the 1972 season entered its last week, Pittsburgh’s 38-year-old right fielder, Roberto Clemente, was tired. Coming off an MVP performance the year before in the Pirates’ World Series victory over Baltimore, Clemente had labored through arguably the most difficult of his 18 seasons with the Bucs. He had been bothered by a serious intestinal […]

The Pirates were in New York for their first series against the Mets in 1971. Pittsburgh had defeated New York six times the previous September to claim the National League East crown and keep the Mets from returning to the postseason. Both teams were vying along with the St. Louis Cardinals and Montreal Expos for […]

The New York Giants played their first game on May 1, 1883, and their last game on September 29, 1957. On August 19, 1957, Horace Stoneham, the Giants owner since 1936, announced that the team would move to San Francisco for the 1958 season. Why leave New York after 75 seasons? “Lack of attendance,” he […]

“There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.”1 The quote from Japanese writer Haruki Murakami had nothing to do with the August 13, 1960, baseball game between the eventual World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals. However, in retrospect, the game proved to be important for both the Pirates and […]

Max Macon, the new manager of the Montreal Royals, knew exactly what was expected of him.1 The Royals, a Brooklyn Dodgers Triple-A affiliate, were not unlike most minor-league teams in the 1950s: Turning a profit usually took precedence over player development.2 “The only orders I had were to win and draw big crowds,” Macon acknowledged.3 […]

Willie Stargell, left, hugs his Pittsburgh Pirates teammate Al Oliver, center, as Roberto Clemente looks on during the 1971 season. On September 1, 1971, the Pirates fielded an all-Black lineup of African-American and Latino players, a first in the history of Major League Baseball. (MLB.COM)   The 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates were a special team in […]

The weather at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia was cold and miserable with 40-mph winds for the Pirates-Phillies game on April 24, 1955. Unfortunately for the Pirates, the 1955 season had so far matched the weather. It was marred by rainouts and eight consecutive losses to start the season and the 14th consecutive loss going […]

Residents of Wampum, Pennsylvania, and neighboring towns cheered hometown hero Dick Allen at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field during his 1964 National League Rookie of the Year season with the Philadelphia Phillies, even honoring him in on-field ceremonies before three games against the host Pittsburgh Pirates. But Allen scuffled in Pittsburgh in ’64, batting .182 in nine […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Puerto Rico and Baseball: 60 Biographies” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Edwin Fernández.   Major-League Spring Training in Puerto Rico The 1936 Cincinnati Reds “The Cincinnati Reds put on the first major league baseball game in Puerto Rican history yesterday” was lead of an AP wire story on February […]

SABR Bibliography Committee Research Guide No. 1: Baseball Figures in Current Biography Editor’s note: This guide was first published by the SABR Bibliography Committee in 1986. To download the original in PDF form, click here. By Joseph Lawler June 1986 Current Biography is a reference service of the H. W. Wilson Company of New York, publishers […]

Roberto Clemente’s greatness transcended the diamond. On it, he was electrifying with his penchant for bad-ball hitting, his strong throwing arm from right field, and the way he played with a reckless but controlled abandon. Off it, he was a role model to the people of his homeland and elsewhere. Helping others represented the way […]