6/27 Birthdays: HBD Wendell, Daryle, AJ, Hank, Jackie, Minute Man, Roy, Elmo & Lee

• 1861 - C Jackie Hayes was born in Brooklyn. Hayes played in three leagues - the National League, the American Association and the Players League - and spent two of his seven big league campaigns with the Alleghenys from 1883-84. Primarily a catcher, Jackie also played three infield positions and the corner outfield for Pittsburgh, batting .253. He fit right in with the rowdy bunch on the team at that time, gaining some notoriety for a late-evening brawl in a Cincinnati saloon. Hayes’ story had a sad ending as he died at the age of 43, deaf and suffering from locomotor ataxia, a condition that prevented him from walking unaided. 

Wendell Smith (photo source: Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

• 1914 - Sportswriter Wendell Smith was born in Detroit, Michigan. After his graduation from West Virginia State in 1937, where he pitched and played basketball, Smith began his career with the Pittsburgh Courier, then perhaps the most influential black paper in the country. He covered the Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, and Pittsburgh Pirates until 1947, when he went to the Chicago Herald-American and later, the Sun-Times. He also became a WGN-TV sports anchor. He passed away of cancer in 1972, and was recognized posthumously for his baseball contributions. In 1993, he received the JG Taylor Spink Award for excellence in journalism, was inducted into The Baseball Hall of Fame a year later and in 2014, was the winner of the Associated Press’ Red Smith Award. Locally, he tried relentlessly to get MLB tryouts for black ballplayers with no success, although he is often credited with getting Jackie Robinson on Branch Rickey’s radar. 
• 1916 - P Cecil “Minute Man” Kaiser was born in New York. Per BR Bullpen, Kaiser got his start on the sandlots of West Virginia and debuted in 1945 with the Homestead Grays before heading south to play. Lured by a $700 per month paycheck, he returned to the Grays in 1947 and worked through the 1949 season for the club. He spent the majority of his time in the Latino leagues, getting a shot in the minors when he was 35; unfortunately, his arm was gone by then. He was a small guy in stature at 5’6” but with great control and a killer curve. He got his “Minute Man” moniker because it was said that’s how long it took for him to strikeout a batter. 
• 1921 - RHP Hank Behrman was born in Brooklyn. The righty tossed for four seasons and split 1947 between his hometown Dodgers and the Pirates. The Bucs got him as part of the Al Gionfriddo deal, and worked him for 10 outings (0-2/9.12) before selling him back to Brooklyn. He did have one strong year for da Bums in 1946 featuring a strong heater/curve combo, but as Rob Edelman of SABR wrote “His career was all promise and little delivery.” His last MLB campaign was in 1949 and his last pro game in 1953 when his arm went bad. He retired and became a teamster. 
• 1926 - C Roy Jarvis was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. A 17-year-old bonus baby when he played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jarvis then served in the Navy during WW2 and then returned to baseball with the Pirates which had claimed his rights in the 1944 Rule 5 draft. (Roy was the last Pirate to lose a full season to WW2 military duty. Pittsburgh sent 28 MLB players and 15 minor-leaguers to the service in WW2 per “Baseball in Wartime.”) He got a couple of cups of coffee with the Buccos in 1946-47, hitting .163 in 20 games and spent the rest of his career in the minors, retiring to become a salesman after the 1955 campaign. 

Elmo Paskett 1963 Topps

• 1938 - C Elmo Plaskett was born in Frederiksted, Virgin Islands. Elmo got in 17 games for the Bucs between 1962-63, hitting .200. He was a great hitter in the minors, winning a batting title and being named “Player of the Year” with Asheville of the Sally League but it didn’t carry over to the show. He played other positions beside catcher, but wasn’t much with the mitt and when he broke his leg in a winter league game in 1964, it spelled the end of his MLB days in the pre-DH era. He played in the minors through 1969, then retired to operate beisbol programs as a rec specialist for St. Croix, developing Midre Cummings for the Pirates. Plaskett, who died in 1998 at the age of 60, had a sunny, Manny Sanguillen-type personality, was dedicated to baseball throughout his life, and is still a hero in the Virgin Islands. The city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, inducted Elmo into the Museo Pancho Coímbre (Sporting Hall of Fame), and the Little League program on St. Croix is named after him, per SABR. 
• 1967 - LHP Lee Hancock was born in North Hollywood, California. He got into 24 games from 1995-96 for the Pirates, with no decisions and a 4.45 ERA, and that was the extent of his MLB days. Lee joined the Pirates in 1990 from the Mariners, swapped straight up for Scott Medvin, but spent most of his Bucco time on the farm at Buffalo and Calgary. The Cal-Poly alum finished his pro career in 1997. 
• 1975 - 1B Daryle Ward was born in Lynwood, California. He played from 2004-05 for the Bucs, with a slash of .256/27/120. Ward joined his father, Gary, to become the first father-son combination in major league history to hit for the cycle after he matched his dad’s feat in 2004 against the Cards. Ward was also the first player to hit one into the Allegheny from PNC Park while he was a member of the Astros, launching his shot off Kip Wells in 2002. 

AJ Schugel (photo Pittsburgh Pirates)

• 1989 - RHP AJ Schugel was born in Winter Haven, Florida. A waiver claim by the Bucs, he got into 36 games for Pittsburgh in 2016, going 2-2-1. 3.63 as a long man in the pen with a nice 1.038 WHIP. He started 2017 at AAA Indy with a brief Pittsburgh stop in June and more permanent residence in August, but has spent 2018 on the DL.