1/30 Thru the 50s: Big Trade; Lights for FF; HBD Demon, Scat & Charlie

• 1872 - RHP Charlie Heard was born in Philadelphia. His big league time consisted of 12 games for the 1890 Alleghenys. Charlie was perfect in reverse in his six starts - he went 0-6, 8.39 (add in unearned runs and he gave up 65 tallies in 44 innings - over 13 runs per nine innings - and put on 109 runners via hits/walks), although he did go the distance for five of the outings. Charlie also got six games in the outfield, not doing much better with a .186 BA and committing four errors in 10 chances. We wouldn’t be too judgmental, though - he was just 18-years-old during the campaign, and the team around him was the baseball version of the Keystone Kops, losing 113 games after mass defections to the Players League Pittsburgh Burghers. 

Demon Campbell 1910 Tip Top

• 1888 - OF Vin “Demon” Campbell was born in St Louis. Vin joined the Bucs in 1910; he had been a two-sport star at Vanderbilt and was dubbed “Demon” for the way he smashed into football opponents (he was named All-Southern Conference with a guy named John Heisman for whom the college Heisman Trophy is named). Campbell hit .326 in 1910 and looked like a future star in the making. He then stunned the Bucs by retiring to join a brokerage firm. Vin rejoined the team in July - his sweetie and future wife was a Pittsburgh girl - and batted .312. Demon held out for a bigger contract and the Pirates traded him to the Braves for Mike “Turkey” Donlin. Vin played ball for three more seasons, then joined the in-laws to run a chain of tire stores in Pittsburgh and New York City after he retired. 
• 1940 - Club President Bill Benswanger announced that the Pirates would become the sixth NL team to install lights, putting up eight towers in Forbes Field designed by Westinghouse, fabricated by American Bridge and erected by Morganstern Electric for $125,000. The standards weighed 160 tons to support 864 floodlights which used 1.5M watts, and was claimed to provide enough light to illuminate the homes in a city of 25,000. The Pirates expected the lights to be up by June and in anticipation had seven night games backdated into their 1940 home schedule, one against each league rival. Construction ran smoothly and the first night game was played on June 4th with the Bucs thumping the Boston Bees 14-2. 

Let there be light...first FF night game (photo via MLB Cathedrals)

• 1947 - Pinch-runner Matt “The Scat” Alexander was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He spent the last four years of his career (1978-81) with the Pirates, and though he only got 27 at-bats during that time, he stole 30 bases (out of 37 tries) and scored 36 runs. During his nine year MLB career, he pinch-run 271 times in the 374 games he appeared in, which explains how he scored 111 runs and swiped 103 bases during that time while banging out just 36 hits. 
• 1959 - 3B Don Hoak, LHP Harvey Haddix and C Smoky Burgess went from the Reds to the Pirates in exchange for 3B Frank Thomas, OF Jim Pendleton, OF John Powers and RHP Whammy Douglas, providing three major pieces of the 1960 championship club. Slugger Thomas, the key figure in the deal, was the last to know - he was touring military bases in Germany when the deal was made, and the press had to get trade reaction quotes from his wife Dolores. The deal had been simmering since the December league meetings, evolving from the rumored opening offer by the Pirates of Thomas and RHP Curt Raydon for Hoak, Haddix, Burgess and RHP Tom Acker.