8/16 Happenings: HBD Kid, Wee Willie, Rube, Bill, Tiny, Gene, Curt, Al, Nick & Rick; More...

• 1872 - SS Gene “The Kid” Steere was born in South Scituate, Rhode Island. An All-America at Brown University, where he got his nickname (he was on the small side and looked younger than his age), his major-league career consisted of 10 games with the Pirates in 1894, hitting .204. The Kid took the hint and went off to Hawaii at age 26, where Steere was a successful plantation owner and real estate developer who was deeply involved in baseball on the Islands. It had taken root there when Alexander Cartwright made it his home (he left NYC and the Knickerbockers to join the Gold Rush and kept going) and Steere continued to help organize the game. He returned stateside circa 1940 and died in San Francisco in 1942. 
• 1872 - 1B “Wee Willie” Clark was born in Pittsburgh. He played the final two years of his five-season big league career with the Bucs, hitting .293 from 1898-99. Though he played well, he was part of the backsplash when Barney Dreyfuss absorbed most of the Louisville team in 1900. Willie played a year for the minor league Milwaukee Brewers, then retired. He stayed local, dying at the age of 62 and was buried in Allegheny Cemetery. 

Rube Robinson (Wikipedia)

• 1887 - LHP John Henry “Hank”/“Rube” Robinson was born in Floyd, Arkansas. He spent the first three years (1911-13) of his career with Pittsburgh, going 26-17 with a 2.34 ERA with his time split between the pen and starting. After he retired, Robinson pitched 13 consecutive seasons with Little Rock from 1916-28. During his career he won 190 games and worked 3,000+ innings for the Travelers, earning him, along with his six-year big league career, a spot in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1962. 
• 1890 - RHP Bill Phillips of the Alleghenys (and Charleroi) became the first pro pitcher in history to allow two grand slams in the same inning when the Chicago Colts Tom Burns and Malachi Kittridge took him long in the fifth frame as the Windy City won 18-5 at Recreation Park. Phillips ended 1-9 with a 7.57 ERA in his rookie season, but went on to have a seven year career with a 70-76/4.09 line. 1908 - RHP Andrew Jackson “Andy” Bednar was born in Streator, Illinois. Andy pitched briefly for the Pirates in 1930-31, making five appearances with an 0-0/15.19 slash. That was his MLB career, but despite that, he was a fine pitcher in the minors , once winning 22 games for Tulsa. He never made it to 30 years old as he died in Texas in 1937 after a car crash while working the oil fields. 
• 1913 - RHP Ernest “Tiny” Bonham was born in Ione, California. He pitched the final three years (1947-49) of his career for the Pirates, with a record of 24-22 and a 2.11 ERA. Prior to that, Tiny tossed seven seasons for the Yankees with a 21 win season and two All Star berths. In one of baseball’s saddest endings, he went to the hospital in August of his last season for an appendectomy, was discovered to have cancer and died three weeks later. 

Tiny Bonham 1947 TCMA replica

• 1922 - OF Gene Woodling was born in Akron, Ohio. The outfielder spent 17 years in the league, and made one stop at Pittsburgh in 1947 as a 25-year-old, getting into 22 games and batting .266. He coached for the Orioles for four years after hangin’ ‘em up, but his major contribution following his playing days was as a major mover in bringing about a players pension fund. 
• 1929 - 2B Curt Roberts was born in Pineland, Texas. The first black ballplayer for Pittsburgh, he played from 1954-56, hitting .223 as a Pirate. He lost his starting job at second in 1955 to Johnny O’Brien and they both lost out to a kid from Ohio named Bill Mazeroski, who would claim the position in 1956 and keep it for the next dozen years. When his baseball career ended, he worked as a security guard for the University of California, Berkeley. He died at the age of 40 in Oakland, California when he was hit by a drunk driver while changing a flat tire on his car. 
• 1952 - LHP Al Holland was born in Roanoke, Virginia. Holland spent 10 years in the show, starting in 1977 with the Pirates (he would return in for a bit in 1985) and slash 1-3-4/3.54. He had some nice seasons closing for Philly, earning an All-Star berth and the NL Rolaids Reliever of the Year award. He took a hit when he admitted to coke use during the 1985 trials and that, along with a wrist injury, ended his career after the 1987 campaign. 

Al Holland 1985 Topps Traded

• 1953 - Coach Nick Leyva was born in Ontario, California. He’s the Bucs first base coach and worked at third before that, joining the staff in 2010 when Clint Hurdle was hired. Leyva is a former minor league player and manager who began coaching in 1978. He was the skipper of the Philadelphia Phillies from 1989 through early 1991. 
• 1964 - RHP Rick Reed was born in Huntington, West Virginia. He was drafted by the Bucs and played his first four seasons (1988-91) with them, going 4-7 with a 4.98 ERA while yo-yo’ing between the minors and the big leagues. He continued to bounce around the fringes of the league and spent all of 1966 in the bushes. Then the light went on at the age of 32; he won double digit games for six of the next seven seasons with the Mets & Twins and made a pair of All-Star teams. He was briefly the pitching coach at his old school, Marshall, but then opted for full-time retirement to raise his family. 
• 1975 - After being pulled from his last two starts without getting through the first inning and then refusing to pitch in relief, earning a one-day suspension, Dock Ellis called a clubhouse meeting in Cincinnati and had skipper Danny Murtaugh attend. Ellis then ripped into the Irishman and team management, earning himself an indefinite suspension and $2,000 fine. The suspension left the team short a player, but GM Joe Brown told Bob Smizik of the Pittsburgh Press that “We’re better off with 24 (players) than we were with 25.” The club, not too surprisingly, lost the game to the Reds 5-3. The suspension was lifted on August 30th when he apologized to Murtaugh, and Ellis was traded to the NY Yankees in December. Ellis became the UPI “Comeback Player of the Year” in 1976 with a 17-8 record, then refused to sign his 1977 contract, blasted George Steinbrenner, and was traded again. But bygones are bygones; he returned to the Pirates in 1979 and retired as a Bucco. 

Dock Ellis 1975 Topps

• 1982 - The Pirates purchased Richie Hebner from the Tigers, a homecoming for The Gravedigger who began his pro career in Pittsburgh and had a nine-year run with the Bucs. He hit .276 during the stretch run and 1983, then spent his final two campaigns with the Cubs. Richie’s Bucco average over 11 years was .277 with a 122 OPS+. 
• 1984 - A stamp featuring Roberto Clemente, the fourth in a series honoring American sports heroes, was unveiled in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the outfielder's home.