Kiki Traded, Forbes Field Sold, Tiger Goes, Wilbur Wood Shipped to Chicago...
- 1927 - Hall of Famer OF Kiki Cuyler was traded to the Chicago Cubs for journeymen Sparky Adams and Pete Scott. He had bumped heads with manager Donie Bush, and owner Barney Dreyfuss was looking to dump salary with the Waner brothers on the payroll, so it was bye-bye Kiki. Cuyler played twelve more seasons, hitting .300+ in six of them.
- 1958 - The sale of Forbes Field to University of Pittsburgh was approved; the Pirates were allowed to stay on for five years, until new Northside stadium was built. In reality, the Pirates stayed on not for five but for twelve years, until TRS opened in 1970. The stadium was a political hot potato for a decade, until ground was broken finally in 1968. However, the Bucs lost an open center field view of town when the Steelers vetoed that design in search of more seats; the Pirates made up for that lost scenery when PNC Park was built.
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| TRS - photo Zack Hample |
- 1962 - The Pirates traded 3B Don Hoak, 34, to the Philadelphia Phillies for IF Pancho Herrera and OF Ted Savage. It ended up a minor deal; The Tiger was at the end of his career while Herrera and Savage never established themselves in MLB.
- 1966 - The Bucs completed a deal that sent knuckleballer Wilbur Wood to the White Sox for Juan Pizarro. Under Hoyt Wilhelm's tutelage, Wood pitched twelve seasons for Chicago and won 168 games with three All-Star appearances. His career was cut short in 1976 when Ron LeFlore’s liner broke his kneecap; Wood missed that campaign and was generally ineffective afterward. Pizzaro pitched a season and some change in Pittsburgh before being sold to Boston in 1968; he would return in late 1974, ending his 18 year career as a Pirate.
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| Wilbur Wood photo from Hall of Fame Memorabilia |
- November 29, 1950 - 1B/OF Mike Easler was born in Cleveland. The Hit Man spend six (1977, 1979-83) of his 14 MLB seasons as a Pirate role player with a .302 BA. Fittingly enough, he spent his later years as a hitting coach for a handful of MLB squads.
4 comments:
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It is definitely one of MY favorites!!!!
Jeez, never knew that Wilbur Wood had been a Pirate. Did he come up in our system? He once started both games of a doubleheader for the White Sox and was in general one of the better knuckleballers who has ever pitched. What is it with the Pirates and knuckleballers? They got rid of Tim Wakefield, too, and he won 200 games in the big leagues, most of them for the Red Sox.
Will - Wood started with the Red Sox. As for the Pirates & knucklers, Wood took off when the Niekro brothers started working with him and Wakefield, who had terrible control issues in '93, was tutored by Hoyt Wilhelm. So I think prob high maintenance and no in-house expertise drove those two from the Pirates.
Umm, well, maybe they should have HIRED some in-house expertise, given how long some knuckleballers have been able to pitch, how effective most of them have been even well into their 40s, and how much their ability to pitch massive numbers of innings benefits the rest of the pitching staff.
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