11/20: Leyland Hired; Stu-Pags; Tanner Dealt; Rosters Churned; Big Daddy '85 Comeback Player; Law, Maz '60 AS's; JR Staff; Brown Kept; Rickey Replaces Hamey; Creech Joins; Bucs For Sale; Pie Served; HBD Jeff, John & Pinch

• 1880 - SS George “Pinch” McBride was born in Milwaukee. McBride put together a 16-year career, mainly with the Senators, but one of his early stopping points was in Pittsburgh in 1905, where as Honus Wagner’s sub, he hit .218 in 27 games (also his lifetime BA; George was a good field, bad hit SS) before being sent to St Louis for Dave Brain in July. Despite that sickly average, he earned his nickname because of his perceived talent to hit in a pinch. McBride spent his final couple of years in Washington as a player/coach and was rewarded with the skipper’s job in 1921, but only lasted one season due to an odd injury - he was conked by a ball thrown by an OF’er during warm-ups and suffered dizzy spells the rest of the year. He resigned and left baseball until 1925, coached for a while and then retired for good, living to the ripe old age of 92. 
• 1887 - RHP John Scheneberg was born in Guyandotte, West Virginia. John got his only MLB start in 1913, going six innings for the Bucs and giving up four earned runs (five overall) on 10 hits to take the loss. He got one more big league outing as a St. Louis Browns reliever in 1920, getting shelled for seven runs in two frames. John nevertheless had a long pro career, working from 1910-21 on the farm, with time off during the war. He went 12-0 in 14 games for Class D Paris (Kentucky) in 1911 and won 19 games for Joplin of the Western League in 1920. 
• 1950 - Pirates GM Roy Hamey resigned and was replaced by Branch Rickey. He was under contract until 1952, but with Branch Rickey on board and a chance to go to Gotham, he decided the iron was hot. Hamey had been a New York Yankee baseball exec for a dozen years who got his first GM gig in Pittsburgh in 1946. He hired Billy Meyer to manage and added players Tiny Bonham, Bob Chesnes and Hank Greenberg to go with holdover Ralph Kiner. What he didn’t develop was a farm system to stock a team lacking in depth, Rickey’s forte. Hamey landed on his feet, returning to the Yankees as GM George Weiss’ assistant, and was in various exec suites until 1970. Rickey would falter in restoring the Bucco sheen too, but his minor league spadework helped his 1955 replacement, Joe Brown, build the successful late-fifties & sixties Pirates. 

Roy Hamey - undated Getty photo

• 1956 - 38-year-old GM Joe Brown was given a new contract after he had generated a bit of a buzz both on the field and at the gate for the Pirates in his first campaign behind the wheel. Terms of the agreement weren’t leaked, but Brown told reporters “I’ll be around for awhile” when quizzed on the length of the deal. He sure enough was; Joe lasted as GM from 1956-76 and came back in 1985 to help transition a battered and embattled franchise. 
• 1960 - RHP Vern Law and 2B Bill Mazeroski were named to The Sporting News MLB All-Star team, selected by the Baseball Writers of America Association. Law went 20-9/3.08 and won the Cy Young while Maz hit .273 and earned a Golden Glove; both were also mid-season All Stars. The NL continued to be well represented by winning eight of the team’s 11 spots. 
• 1962 - The Pirates traded 1B Dick Stuart and RHP Jack Lamabe to the Boston Red Sox for RHP Don Schwall and C Jim Pagliaroni. Pags appeared in 490 games over the next five years for the Bucs, batting .254 while Schwall became a multi-role pitcher, tossing four years for Pittsburgh with a 22-23-4/3.24 ERA. Stu hit 103 homers in the next three seasons and then faded away, while Lamabe lasted six more seasons in the show, with strong campaigns in 1966-67. 
• 1971 - Pie Traynor, the first third baseman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, was honored by the Baseball Writers with a dinner program at the William Penn Hotel ballroom, MC’ed by another Pirates HOF player and Mets broadcaster, Ralph Kiner. Guests included Lloyd “Little Poison” Waner, Frankie Frisch, Stan “The Man” Musial, “Bullet” Bob Feller, Joe “Ducky” Medwick and Edd Roush. 

Pie Traynor - 1976 Fleer Greats of the Game

• 1984 - Dan Galbreath announced his decision to sell the Pirates, saying that his family didn’t want to unload the team but as a family ownership group, the drain on their assets was more than they could handle. He added that the team was to remain in Pittsburgh as he considered the agreement to play at TRS through 2011 to be unbreakable (though he would quickly change his mind). It was the first step in what was to prove a long, strange trip... 
• 1985 - 36-year-old Rick Reuschel was named the NL’s Major League Comeback Player of the Year by United Press International. Big Daddy went 14-8/2.27, starting the year with Hawaii in the Pacific Coast League after signing as a free agent with Pittsburgh in February. Rick went on to win 71 more games in the next five seasons with the Bucs and Giants before leaving the slab in 1991. 
• 1985 - Syd Thrift hired Jim Leyland to manage the Pirates, replacing Chuck Tanner after a 57-104 finish in ‘85. During his Pirate era of 1986 to 1996, Leyland won two Manager of the Year awards (1990 & 1992), finished as runner-up in 1988 and 1991, and led the team to three divisional titles (1990-92) before taking the reins in Florida, Colorado and then Detroit. 
• 1987 - LHP Jeff Locke was born in North Conway, New Hampshire. He joined the Bucs in 2009 as part of Nate McLouth’s trade, and the Redstone Rocket (nicknamed by a local paper, Redstone is his home 'hood, Jeff had a mean HS fastball, and that was added to the association of NASA’s moon-launch from a Redstone Rocket) made his MLB debut in 2011, joining the rotation full time in 2013 and earning an All-Star berth. He was DFA’ed in 2016, tossed for Miami, sat out nearly two seasons after a shoulder injury and never returned to MLB. 

Jeff Locke - 2016 Topps Heritage

• 1995 - The Pirates lost OF Micah Franklin and reliever Jeff McCurry to the Tigers via waiver claims and DFA’ed pitchers Rick White, Dennis Konuszewski and Gary Wilson to AAA Calgary. They added C Jason Kendall, OF’s Jermaine Allenworth, Trey Beamon and Charles Peterson to the 40-man. Later, they re-signed White, but he had arm surgery and missed the year. As it ended up, Kendall was the only true keeper; he debuted in April, got into 130 games and batted .300. 
• 1996 - The Bucs made a flurry of moves to set their 40-man roster. They added nine guys: OFs Adrian Brown, Jose Guillen & TJ Staton; IFs Jeff Cromer & Lou Collier and Ps Kane Davis, John Dillinger, Jeff Kelly & Jose Pett, none of whom ever stood out for Pittsburgh although Guillen would later blossom. There was also some addition by subtraction: IF Nelson Liriano was taken by the Dodgers (which had also snagged John Wehner a month earlier) and P Marc Pisciotta, who was lost to the Cubs after being waived. Also in the air: rumors were flying that Jeff King and Jay Bell were being dangled (the Indians and O’s were early frontrunners), and though the teams involved were off, the rumors weren’t as both were dealt to the Kansas City Royals in December. 
• 2001 - The Pirates hired Ed Creech away from the Dodgers (he also worked for the Expos and Cards) and made him their new scouting director, taking over for Mickey White. He held that role until October of 2007, when the Pirates under Neil Huntington began to make their housekeeping changes (he was replaced by Greg Smith) and Ed moved on to the Giants. 
• 2003 - Pittsburgh added pitchers Sean Burnett, Mike Johnston, John Van Benschoten and Ian Oquendo (Ian Snell), their minor league Pitcher of the Year, to their 40-man roster after losing pitchers Duaner Sanchez and Matt Guerrier, along w/OF Walter Young, on waivers. They were good choices; all four appeared for the big team in 2004. The shuffling left the roster at 37 players. 

Mike Johnston - 2005 Topps Total

• 2007 - Newly hired manager John Russell started to put together his staff, naming Tony Beasley third base coach, Gary Varsho bench coach and Luis Dorante bullpen coach. He later added Jeff Andrews as pitching coach, Don Long as batting coach and Lou Frazier as the first base coach to complete his first staff. It was new management but the same ol’ results - the team went from 68 wins in ‘07 to 67 in ‘08 and finished in sixth place again in the NL Central 
• 2018 - The Pirates sent RHP Tanner Anderson to Oakland for a PTBNL (RHP Wilkin Ramos). Anderson, 25, was a Harvard grad and had a six-game audition with the Pirates in 2018, going 1-0/6.35, with solid farm stats and a 60% ground ball rate. He was considered a potential mid-inning arm for the pen, but was caught in a 40-man roster churn and moved to the A’s. He didn’t impress in Oakland and was DFA’ed in late 2019; he pitched some indie ball in 2020 and returned to the A’s system in ‘21. He then rejoined the Pittsburgh fold briefly before being DFA’ed at the end of the year; since then, he’s pitched in several foreign leagues and is now a free agent. Ramos was a teen lotto ticket, having pitched in the Dominican but not yet stateside. He tossed very little in 2019, trying to work through a bum elbow, was a non-camp minor leaguer in 2020 and saw action in the Rookie GCL in ‘21 as a 20-year-old. He’s now in the Mets system. 
• 2019 - The Pirates added 3B Ke'Bryan Hayes, SS Oneil Cruz, 1B/OF Will Craig, and RHP's Blake Cederlind & Cody Ponce to the 40-man roster, DFA'ing P’s Dario Agrazal, Montana DuRapau, Luis Escobar and Williams Jerez. There was a lot of churn; the Pirates still had eight players on the 60-day IL to restore (RHP Chris Archer, RHP Nick Burdi, RHP Kyle Crick, RHP Chad Kuhl, OF Jason Martin, OF Gregory Polanco, RHP Edgar Santana, RHP Jameson Taillon), and so prior to these moves, they let LHP Frankie Liriano, OF Melky Cabrera & OF/3B Lonnie Chisenhall walk, outrighted RHP James Marvel, RHP Alex McRae, RHP Yefry Ramirez, LHP Wei-Chung Wang, C Steven Baron, IF/OF Jake Elmore & IF Corban Joseph and sold RHP Parker Markel to the Angels.