Bucco History 4/26

No luck at Expo Park, the Gunner makes his debut, Pirate fans get surly and Kiner finds out you can go home again...

• 1900 - The Bucs drew 11,000 to the newly expanded Exposition Park, its biggest baseball turnout to date, and there were a couple of thousand more trying to get in. The Pirates were fortified by the recent influx of Louisville players like Honus Wagner, but dropped a 12-11 slugfest to Cincinnati as the Reds lit up Rube Waddell and Jack Chesbro. The Bucs made a game of it by rallying for seven ninth-inning runs.
• 1905 - The Cubs beat Pittsburgh at Exposition Park, 2-1 as Chicago’s Jack McCarthy became the only major league OF’er to throw out three runners trying to score in one game. All three assists were on tag plays and resulted in double plays.
• 1948 - Legendary announcer Bob Prince broadcast his first Pirates game, joining another Pittsburgh favorite, Rosey Rosewell (“Open the window, Aunt Minnie”), on the air. "The Gunner" went on to describe Pirate action for 28 years.
• 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. Might as well have been; Montreal won the game 6-2.
• 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.