12/5: Big Poison & Sid Go; Romo, Westlake Arrive; Charlie Hustle; HBD Pink, Tony, Sammy, Snake, Frank & Bill

• 1868 - C Frank Bowerman was born in Romeo, Michigan. He spent a couple of his 15 pro seasons, 1898-99, in Pittsburgh, batting .265 while throwing out 49.5% of attempted base stealers and also playing 1B. But Bowerman had a hair trigger temper, once giving manager Fred Clarke a shiner during a brawl, and incidents like that led to a short stay in the Steel City. 
• 1871 - LHP Lewis “Snake” Wiltse was born in Bouckville, New York. He began his brief three-year stay in the show with Pittsburgh in 1901. Snake put up a line of 1-4, 4.26 and was released in July, signing with the Athletics. He also tossed for the Orioles and NY Highlanders before being sent down in May of 1903, then toiling in the minors through the 1910 campaign. Wiltse might have done better as a position player. His MLB line from the hill was 29- 31/4.59, but at the plate he compiled a .278 lifetime BA; Baltimore played him at first, in the OF and even at second base once. Snake got his nickname in the minors thx to his twisty delivery. Wiltse family tree roots: Snake’s brother was George “Hooks” Wiltse, who pitched for 12 big-league seasons. Hooks featured a killer curve but earned his moniker because he caught everything as a fielder, showing off great “hooks’ (hands). 

Pink Hawley (2012 image via Local Leben Magazine)

• 1872 - RHP Emerson “Pink” Hawley was born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. He tossed for Pittsburgh from 1895-97 with a slash line of 71-61 and a 3.76 ERA. He was a workhorse, appearing in 56 games in 1895 while throwing 444-⅓ innings, both league-leading numbers. Pink was a stand up guy, once turning down a bribe to throw a game. But he came from good stock. His ancestor was the noted essayist Major Joseph Hawley, who joined with Samuel Adams and James Otis, Jr., as a revolutionary leader during the Stamp Act/Boston Tea Party era. Pink is his given middle name; he was part of a set of twins, and his family, as the story goes, put a blue ribbon on his brother and a pink one on Emerson so they could tell them apart. Fact of the day: The ribbon color really didn’t mean much. Up until the baby boomers came along, baby’s clothes colors were either considered sex-neutral or if anything, the opposite of today, with pink for boys and blue for girls. 
• 1922 - OF Bill Rodgers was born in Harrisburg. Bill was a wartime special - he played for the Bucs from 1944-45, got into three games and went 2-for-5 with one run scored. Rodgers was drafted by the New York Yankees in 1946, but never again made it to the major leagues. 
• 1940 - Paul Waner was released by the Pirates. The Hall of Fame OF’er played 15 seasons in Pittsburgh, hitting .340 with 2,868 hits, 1,627 runs and 1,309 RBI. A party hearty type, Waner was famous for his ability to hit hung over. He gave up the bottle for a year in 1938 at management’s request, and only hit .280, the first time he failed to reach .300+. Needless to say, the teetotaler experiment ended after that campaign. Another bit of lore was that the Bucs discovered he was nearsighted late in his career and made him wear glasses. He gave those up when he found the large fuzzy object he had been swinging at all those years turned into a small spinning BB that was nearly impossible to hit when he had his peepers on. Paul and his younger brother Lloyd (Little Poison), one of baseball’s premier sibling duos, hold the career record for hits by brothers with 5,611. 

Wally Westlake (photo via Baseball Hall of Fame)

• 1946 - The Bucs sent Johnny Hutchings and $35,000 to Oakland of the PCL for OF Wally Westlake. Wally spent 1947-51 as the Bucs starting outfielder, hitting .281 with an All-Star nod, before being traded to St. Louis. He played through 1956, although he only had one strong season after he left the Pirates. 
• 1963 - SS Sam Khalifa was born in Fontana, California. Khalifa was a first round pick (#7 overall) from Arizona’s Sahuero HS, but in his three years MLB career, all as a Pirate (1985-87), he hit just .219. He’ll go down in the history books as the first player of Egyptian ancestry to play major league baseball. 
• 1966 - Coach Tony Beasley was born in Fredricksburg, Virginia. A minor league infielder who spent time with the Pirates, Beasley became a farm coach/manager in the Bucco organization after his playing days. Starting out as a player/coach and roving batting instructor, Beasley then managed in the Pirates system for the next five seasons, making the playoffs every year. Tony became the Pirates roving minor league infield instructor and was named third base coach in 2008 by John Russell; he was considered instrumental in the transition of Neil Walker into a second baseman. After JR left, Beasley spent four seasons in the Washington organization before getting the call from Jeff Banister to become the third base coach of the Texas Rangers. In 2016, he was diagnosed with cancer. After surgery and chemo, he was back in uniform at Arlington, albeit primarily as a quality control coach. 

• 1978 - 37-year-old Pete Rose signed a four-year, $3.2 million deal with the Phillies. He had been hotly pursued in free agency by several clubs including the Bucs, and owner Dan Galbreath had even invited Rose to his Ohio horse farms. The Pirates admitted that their cash offer was half that of the Phillies, but didn’t confirm if any other sweeteners, especially those rumored to involve equine ownership as bait for Charlie Hustle, had been part of the proposed deal. 
• 1978 - Pitchers Enrique Romo and Rick Jones along with shortstop Tom McMillan were sent to the Pirates by Seattle, which got pitchers Rafael Vasquez, Odell Jones and shortstop Mario Mendoza in return. Romo pitched four years for the Pirates (1979-82) pretty effectively, going 25-16-26/3.56 and was part of the 1979 World Series club. Romo only tossed six seasons total in the MLB, but with good reason - he started late. He pitched 11 seasons in Mexican baseball prior to making his major league debut for the Mariners in 1977 at the age of 29. McMillan and Jones both ended up minor league players. Jones tossed six more years, including a brief 1981 return to Pittsburgh, Mendoza played for four more seasons and Vasquez appeared in nine 1979 games for Seattle, which proved to be his MLB career. 

Sid Bream 1991 Fleer

• 1990 - The Atlanta Braves signed Bucco free agent 1B Sid Bream to a three year/$5.6M contract. The Pirates were have reported to offer three years/$4.5M, but aside from the financial gap, the FO was leery of Sid’s knees plus Bream wanted a no-trade clause. Manager Jim Leyland was a fan of his, and told the Pittsburgh Press that “I just feel terrible that he left. I think it was a mistake not signing him...I’m not looking at this like we lost Babe Ruth. But he stood for something,” referring to Bream’s All-American demeanor helping to restore the Pirates image after the drug scandals. The heir-apparent at first was bench bat Carmelo Martinez going into camp, but he lost the job to Orlando Merced.