4/26 From 1980: Spanky POTW; Paul Picked; For Sale; Kiner Honor; Debuts, Strike Opener, Game Tales; HBD S-Rod

• 1985 - Utilityman Sean Rodriguez was born in Miami. In his career, S-Rod played every position but pitcher and catcher. The Bucs traded for him during the 2014 off season and he played around the field for Pittsburgh. He was signed up again for 2016 after hitting .246 and playing six different spots in 2015. The super-sub had a super year, batting .270 w/18 HR and turned that into a nice FA deal with Atlanta. He missed much of the 2017 campaign due to a shoulder injury suffered in an off-season car accident and returned to the Bucs via the trade route in August. He last played with Miami in 2020. He’s now a player development instructor for the Phils. 
• 1988 - C Mike LaValliere was named the NL Player of the Week. Spanky went 12-for-17 in five games, lifting his average to .404, tops in the Senior Circuit. The honor followed Barry Bonds’ PoW award the week before, and was the Buccos first back-to-back Player of the Week recognition since 1982 when 1B Jason Thompson was given the award on consecutive weeks in May. 

The fans weren't thrilled - Post Gazette 4/27/1995

• 1995 - 34,841 fans at TRS disrupted a delayed Opening Day by throwing whatever was handy (mainly giveaway Bucco pennants) on the field to show their displeasure with the player’s strike and some shoddy play by the Bucs. The game was delayed for 17 minutes until the announcer told the unruly crowd that the contest was about to be forfeited. It might as well have been; Montreal won the game, 6-2, chasing Jon Leiber in the fifth. The team was lucky they weren’t wrapped in Jolly Rogers and tossed overboard after one of the worse innings in their history. Going into that fateful frame, it was a 1-1 game between Pittsburgh and Montreal before the floodgates opened. There were two outs, Expos on the corners (the runner on first reached when his right side, shoulda-been inning-ending nubber was fielded but nobody covered the sack) and one run already in when Roberto Kelly bled another soft roller, this one up the left side. 3B Jeff King flipped the ball into the outfield; RF Orlando Merced missed the mark on the throw home, and all three Montreal runners scored. Montreal added another run on a hit batter, single and wild pitch. Jason Christiansen added a throwing error to the pot before the Bucs got back into the dugout (and the ground crew picked up a field littered with pennants). So instead of being out of the inning, it ended up game, set and match for Montreal. C Mark Parent told the Post Gazette’s Paul Meyer “That whole fifth inning was a fiasco. It was like Murphy’s Law.” 
• 1995 - As the Pirates were bungling away at the North Shore, Mayor Tom Murphy and Vince Sarni, chairman of the Pittsburgh Associates, left the Duquesne Club and announced that they had reached a framework to sell the Pirates and keep the team in Pittsburgh with Chambers Development Company chairman John Rangos, saying that an agreement could be reached within a week. They were premature; a contract was never finalized due to long-term financial questions and the PA held on to the team until selling it to the McClatchy group in 1996. 
• 2008 - Alhambra, California, dedicated a bronze statue to honor one of its native sons, Ralph Kiner, for his "accomplishments and contributions to the game of professional baseball and sports broadcasting.” The former Pirates slugger, a member of the Hall of Fame, grew up in Alhambra and graduated from its high school in 1940 before moving on to Southern Cal and the Buccos. 

Ralph Kiner statue - photo by Project Offbeat

• 2010 - The Brewers romped over the Bucs 17-3 for their 22nd straight win over Pittsburgh at Miller Park after they had already swept the season’s opening series. The curse, dating back to 2007, was snapped the next day, 7-3, by the Pirates, who also took the third game of the set for good measure.
• 2011 - The Pirates selected OF Xavier Paul off waivers from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Xavier proved useful off the bench, getting into 121 games, but the corner outfielder hit just .254 with little power (two homers) or patience (.293 OBP) at the plate. He was released after the campaign and played as a sub for three more MLB seasons with the Reds and D-Backs, followed by some bouncing around in the minors with side stops in Mexico and the indie leagues. 
• 2016 - Pittsburgh pounded five home runs in the thin air of Coors Field to claim a 9-4 win over the Colorado Rockies. Andrew McCutchen hit three long balls and chased home five runs. With his second career three-dinger match, Cutch joined Ralph Kiner (four), Willie Stargell (four) and Roberto Clemente (two) on the list of Pirates with multiple three-homer games. Starling Marte and David Freese (his first as a Pirate) added to the fence busting party, propelling Gerrit Cole to victory. 
• 2017 - IF Gift Ngoepe made his first MLB appearance, going 1-for-2 (he singled in his first big league at-bat) with a walk and turning the game-ending twin killing as the Pirates hung on to beat the Cubs, 6-5, at PNC Park. Ngoepe was the first African native (he’s from South Africa) to ever play in the majors, and it took the 27-year-old eight-plus minor league seasons to get the call. Pittsburgh jumped off to a 5-1 lead, started off by Josh Harrison’s lead-off homer in the first. Josh Bell later went long (both Joshes collected a pair of hits), but the Cubs kept chipping away. After an error on a potential inning-ending DP ball in the ninth left two Cubbies aboard, Tony Watson served up another grounder that did the trick to save Wade LeBlanc’s win. Ngoepe became a coach with the Newport Rams of Australian Baseball and is now a D-Back minor league coach. 

Gift Ngoepe - Topps Now 4/26/2017

• 2017 - Ellwood City’s Hack Wilson, who banged 56 home runs and drove in a major league record 191 runs in 1930, was recognized before the Cubs’ game at PNC Park. It was the 117th anniversary of Wilson’s birth, who put up those big 1930 numbers as a Cubbie (he spent half his 12-year career in Chicago from 1926-31), the night’s opponents. It was a nice touch by the Ellwood City Area Historical Society to recognize a local boy that made good, even if the Cubs oddly didn’t opt to participate in the celebration. Proving once again that karma is a beach, Chicago lost, 6-5. 
• 2022 - It wasn't a good day for the Bucs, as they lost the opening game of a homestand, 12-8, to the Milwaukee Brewers at PNC Park. But for those who wanted a peek at what was bubbling below the surface, it was a good match to catch. OF Jack Suwinski made his first MLB outing, starting in right, and banged out his first big league hit, a ninth-inning single and infielder Tucupita Marcano pinch-hit and posted his first Pirates hit, a double (he had 25 MLB games & eight hits under his belt with San Diego). He and Suwinski were brought up from AA Altoona. The duet were injury replacements after a viral surge hit the clubhouse and Suwinski broke camp with the Bucs in 2023 after a power burst (he hit 19 HR in ‘22) and late cut Marcano was called up in April.