Thursday, April 26, 2018

4/26 TRS-PNC Park Era: False Alarm; Kiner Statue; Gift Debut; 5 Homers; Hack Day, Game Stories; HBD Francisco & S-Rod

  • 1972 - RHP Francisco Cordova was born in Cerro Azul, Mexico. He spent his five year MLB career (1996-2000) as a Pirate, first as a reliever who notched 12 saves in his rookie year before becoming starter. His slash was 42-47-12/3.96. He was part of one of the great Pirate moments on July 12th, 1997 at a sold out Three Rivers Stadium when he pitched nine innings of a combined 10-inning no-hitter, with Ricardo Rincón closing it out. The Pirates won the game on a three-run, pinch hit home run in the bottom of the 10th by Mark Smith. 
Ed Ott 1979 Hostess
  • 1978 - Ed Ott hit an 11th-inning home run at Shea Stadium to give the Bucs and Bert Blyleven, who pitched a complete game six-hitter, a 1-0 win. It took 35 years for another Pirate, Neil Walker, to homer for the only run in a Bucco extra inning victory. 
  • 1980 - The Pirates scored five times in the first inning and cruised to a 9-2 win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Pittsburgh pounded out 17 hits, led by three apiece from Mike Easler and Dave Parker. John Candelaria went the distance, allowing two runs on eight hits as the Pirates split a brief two game series with Chicago. 
  • 1985 - Utilityman Sean Rodriguez was born in Miami. In his career, S-Rod has played every position but pitcher and catcher. The Bucs traded for him during the 2014 off season and he played around the field for Pittsburgh. He was signed up again for 2016 after hitting .246 and playing six different spots in 2015. The super-sub had a super year, batting .270 w/18 HR and turned that into a nice FA deal with Atlanta. He missed much of the 2017 campaign due to a shoulder injury suffered in an off-season car accident and returned to the Bucs via the trade route in August. 
HBD S-Rod!
  • 1995 - 34,841 fans at TRS disrupted a delayed Opening Day by throwing whatever was handy (mainly giveaway day Bucco pennants) on the field to show their displeasure with the freshly resolved player’s strike and some shoddy play by the Bucs. The game was delayed for 17 minutes until the announcer told the unruly crowd that the contest was about to be forfeited. It might as well have been; Montreal won the game 6-2, chasing Jon Leiber in the fifth. The team was lucky they weren’t wrapped in Jolly Rogers and tossed overboard after one of the worse innings in their history. Going into that fateful frame, it was a 1-1 game between Pittsburgh and Montreal before the floodgates opened. There were two outs, Expos on the corners (the runner on first reached when his right side, shoulda-been inning-ending nubber was fielded but nobody covered the sack) and one run in when Roberto Kelly bled another soft roller, this one up the left side. 3B Jeff King flipped the ball into the outfield; RF Orlando Merced missed the mark on the throw home, and all three Montreal runners scored. Montreal added another run on a hit batter, single and wild pitch. Jason Christiansen added a throwing error to the pot before the Bucs got back into the dugout (and the ground crew picked up a field littered with pennants tossed by frustrated fans). So instead of being out of the inning, it ended up game, set and, match for Montreal, 6-2 winners. C Mark Parent told the Post Gazette’s Paul Meyer “That whole fifth inning was a fiasco. It was like Murphy’s Law.” 
  • 1995 - As the Pirates were bungling away at the North Shore, Mayor Tom Murphy and Vince Sarni, chairman of the Pittsburgh Associates, left the Duquesne Club and announced that they had reached a framework to sell the Pirates and keep the team in Pittsburgh with Chambers Development Company chairman John Rangos, saying that an agreement could be reached within a week. Wrong; the deal was never finalized and the PA held on to the team until selling it to the McClatchy group in 1996. 
Kiner Statue (photo Kenny Muz/Flickr)
  • 2008 - Alhambra, California, dedicated a bronze statue to honor of its native son Ralph Kiner for his "accomplishments and contributions to the game of professional baseball and sports broadcasting.” The former Pirates slugger, a member of the Hall of Fame, grew up in Alhambra and graduated from its high school in 1940 before moving on to Southern Cal and the Buccos. 
  • 2010 - The Brewers romped over the Bucs 17-3 for their 22nd straight win over Pittsburgh at Miller Park after they had already taken the opening series by 8-1, 8-0 and 20-0 tallies. The curse, dating back to 2007, was snapped the next day 7-3 by the Pirates, who also took the third game of the series for good measure. 
  • 2016 - Pittsburgh pounded five home runs in the thin air of Coors Field to claim a 9-4 win over the Colorado Rockies. Andrew McCutchen hit three long balls and chased home five runs. With his second career three-dinger match, Cutch joined Ralph Kiner (four), Willie Stargell (four) and Roberto Clemente (two) on the list of players who have multiple three-homer games as Pirates. Starling Marte and David Freese added to the fence busting party, propelling Gerrit Cole to victory. 
Gift's first hit (photo Pittsburgh Pirates)
  • 2017 - IF Gift Ngoepe made his first MLB appearance, going 1-for-2 (he singled in his first big league at-bat) with a walk and turning the game-ending DP as the Pirates hung on to beat the Cubs 6-5 at PNC Park. Ngoepe was the first African native (he’s from South Africa) to ever play in the majors, and it took the 27-year-old eight-plus minor league seasons to get the call. Pittsburgh jumped off to a 5-1 lead, started off by Josh Harrison’s lead-off homer in the first. Josh Bell later went long (both Joshes collected a pair of hits), but the Cubs kept chipping away. After an error on a potential inning-ending DP ball in the ninth left two Cubbies aboard, Tony Watson served up another grounder that did the trick to save Wade LeBlanc’s win. 
  • 2017 - Ellwood City’s Hack Wilson, who banged 56 home runs and drove in a major league record 191 runs in 1930, was recognized before the Cubs game at PNC Park. It was it the 117th anniversary of Wilson’s birth, who put up those big 1930 numbers as a Cubbie (he spent half his 12-year career in Chicago from 1926-31), the night’s opponents. It was a nice touch by the Ellwood City Area Historical Society to recognize a local boy that made good, even if the Cubs didn’t opt to participate in the celebration. Proving once again that karma is a beach, Chicago lost 6-5.

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