1/18: Big Joe-Bednar/Endy, Bix-Brito; Greenberg, Bockman Deals; Felipe; Francisco, Bo, Sudden Sam, Hal, Tiger, Kiner Signed; '91 Arbs; Pete GM; Ralph DD-MOY; HBD Justin, Gift, Wandy, Lauren, Eddie & Charlie

• 1855 - OF Charlie Eden was born in Lexington, Kentucky. He joined the Alleghenys for two seasons, 1884-85, hitting .258 after a five-year minor league stint. Charlie played a little corner infield and also pitched some, going 1-3/5.53 with Pittsburgh. Those campaigns ended the 30-year old Charlie’s four-year MLB career; it appears that he went back to barnstorming through the minors. 
• 1899 - Utilityman Eddie Moore was born in Barlow, Kentucky. Moore hit .301 as a Bucco from 1923-26 and was a starter on the 1925 WS club, but he clashed with management a couple of times and was sold to the Boston Braves after getting into a shouting match with Fred Clarke, who was not only a club exec at the time but also served a dual role as a bench coach. 
• 1931 - RHP Laurin Pepper was born in Vaughan, Mississippi. A football star drafted by the Steelers (he was an All-America halfback at Mississippi Southern), Pepper was inked for $35K by the Bucs in 1954 as a bonus baby, as the Pirates easily topped the Steelers’ $15K bid. He probably should have stuck with the pigskin, though: in four MLB seasons (1954-57), he worked just 109-2/3 IP, going 2-8/7.09 with 98 walks. He then spent some time in the minors before becoming a long-time HS football coach and Athletic Director back home in the Magnolia State. 
• 1947 - The Pirates purchased Hank Greenberg, the original “Hammerin’ Hank,” from the Tigers for $75,000 after he had a spat with Detroit owner Walter Briggs. It didn’t come easy; the Bucs had to talk the 36-year-old out of retirement, even after a 44-homer campaign in ‘46. To celebrate the move, team co-owner Bing Crosby recorded a song, "Goodbye, Mr. Ball, Goodbye" with Groucho Marx and Hank after the Bucs signed him to a reported $90,000 deal, the biggest in history at that time. In his one season with Pittsburgh, he hit .249 with 25 HR/74 RBI to become the first player with a 25-homer season in both leagues, walked a league-high 104 times and served as a mentor to a young Ralph Kiner. He inspired “Greenberg Gardens” when the Bucs shortened Forbes Field’s left field wall by 30’ for him. When he retired after the season, his nook became “Kiner’s Korner.” 

Ralph Kiner & Dapper Dan Fans - Post Gazette photo 1/19/1948

• 1948 - Ralph Kiner was presented the Dapper Dan “Athlete of the Year” award at the DD’s annual dinner at the William Penn Hotel (he was gifted with a watch). Newly retired Hank Greenberg made the trip to Pittsburgh as an honored guest of Kiner’s. Ralph also set aside some face time to talk contract with the Bucco brass, and made out pretty well by more than doubling his 1947 salary, inking a deal that upped his paycheck from $15,000 to $35,000 (per Baseball Reference). OF Dixie Walker had been the first Bucco to sign the day before, John Hancock’ing a deal thought to be in the neighborhood of $25,000. Two days later after Mr. Swat’s deal, they agreed to terms with staff workhorse RHP Kirby Higbe, paying him $15,000. 
• 1948 - The Bucs bought IF Joe “Eddie” Bockman from the Indians for an undisclosed amount. The 27-year-old had hit .259 for the Tribe after coming off an All-Star season in the American Association. Bockman spent two years behind Frank Gustine and Pete Castiglione at the hot corner (.230 BA in 149 games) and then settled in the minors as a player/manager through the 1958 season. After his stint behind the bench, he became a long-time Philadelphia Phillies scout, finally closing out his baseball days as a bird dog for the expansion Florida Marlins. 
• 1960 - 3B Don Hoak, who the Pirates acquired the season before from the Cincinnati Reds, was rewarded with a fatter wallet by GM Joe Brown for anchoring third base during the campaign, playing 155 games at the hot corner while batting .294. The Tiger returned his signed contract to the club that jumped his salary from its current $20,000 to $27,500 in 1960. 
• 1961 - C Hal Smith signed the biggest contract of his career, a $25,000 deal, after hitting .295 as Smoky Burgess’ platoon partner and swatting a huge seventh-game homer in the World Series to set the scene for Bill Mazeroski’s blast into Bucco history. He also had a lucrative night shift job, singing in the clubs with Elroy Face and adding another $8-10,000 to the purse. 

Sudden Sam - 1975 Topps

• 1975 - LHP Sudden Sam McDowell, 32, signed an NRI deal with the Bucs for an undisclosed amount. The Central grad who still lived in Monroeville was out to prove that despite posting a 1-6/4.69 slash with the Yankees in 1974, he wasn’t quite ready for last rites. He broke camp with the team and went 2-1/2.86 in 14 outings w/29 K in 34-2/3 IP, but the bullpen was overloaded with lefties and the Pirates released Sam in June, ending his MLB career after 15 seasons. His replacement was a scrawny righty called up from AAA Charleston, Kent Tekulve. 
• 1979 - The Pirates announced that Harding “Pete” Peterson would be the Executive Vice President, in effect the GM, ending the two-man system of him and Joe O’Toole, the VP of Business Administration, trying to share the duties of the prior GM, Joe Brown. Pete lasted until 1985 when he was let go in mid-season for the man he replaced, Brown, who kept the seat warm for Syd Thrift. Peterson was the New York Yankees GM for a season and finished his career in player evaluation roles for San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays. 
• 1979 - LHP Wandy Rodriguez was born in Santiago Rodriguez, Dominican Republic. Wandy joined the Bucs in 2012 when he was acquired from the Astros. He didn’t become a major contributor as hoped, as his 2013 season derailed because of arthritis in his pitching arm after a dozen starts. He claimed just 11 wins in 25 outings with a 3.66 ERA as a Pirate before being released in May of 2014. Wandy worked for Texas the next year in his curtain call campaign. 
• 1980 - SS Gift Ngoepe was born in Randburg, South Africa. Ngoepe became the first black South African to sign a professional baseball contract when he agreed to a deal with the Pirates in October 2008 and the first to play MLB in 2017. He was born to be a ballplayer; Ngoepe's mom was a clubhouse attendant for the Randburg Mets, and they lived in one of the clubhouse rooms, as he literally grew up in a ballyard. Gift is a brilliant fielder but hasn’t solved hitting the ball, with a .222 Pirates BA (.231 career MiLB) and was sold to Toronto in the 2017 offseason. He played in Australia in 2018, then the Phils/Pirates/Indie League, back to the Land Down Under last year and the Frontier League. Gift is now the rookie league manager for the D-Backs after a coaching stint. The Bucs signed his middle infielder brother Victor, and he played in the system until 2019. 

Gift Ngoepe - 2017 Topps

• 1984 - LHP Justin Thomas was born in Toledo, Ohio. He was drafted out of Youngstown State by Seattle in 2005 and the Pirates claimed him off waivers from the Mariners in 2009. He had his longest stint as a Buc (12 outings, 0-1/6.23). JT spent the next year with the MLB Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, and then went East to toss for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in Japan, the Kia Tigers of the Korean League, and the Chinese League Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions before hanging up his well-worn spikes after the 2015 season. 
• 1989 - Pittsburgh came to a one-year/$730K agreement, adding various award bonuses, with 25-year-old 3B Bobby Bonilla. Bobby Bo was one of seven Buccos who had filed for arbitration after hitting .274 with 24 HR’s & 100 RBI in 1988 to earn a big jump from his $245K paycheck. 
• 1991 - The Pirates and their eight arb-eligible players traded salary offers. Not surprisingly, there was a sizeable gap between the Three Amigos and Bucs: Bobby Bo ($1.25M in ‘90) wanted $3.475 and was offered $2.4M; Doug Drabek ($1.1M) requested $3.35M and was met with a $2.3M bid, and Barry Bond ($850K) asked for $3.25M; the Pirates countered with $2.3M. Drabek and Bonds won their hearings; Bonilla lost his and left after the season. Bonds and Drabek joined him in changing MLB employers after the ‘92 campaign to scatter the playoff core. 
• 1996 - The Bucs signed LHP Francisco Cordova out of the Mexican League. He tossed for five years in Pittsburgh, slashing 42-47/3.97. Francisco had three good years with the Bucs, throwing the front end of a combined no-hitter finished by Ricardo Rincon and getting the Opening Day call in 1998 and ‘99 before arm troubles caught up to him. He lasted two more years as a Pirate. After he left, he had enough left in the tank to pitch in Mexico from 2002-2011 with the Mexico City Tigres, the Mexico City Diablos Rojos, and the Petroleros de Minatitlán. 

Brian Bixler - 2009 Topps

• 2010 - The Buccos traded OF/SS Brian Bixler to the Cleveland Indians, getting young minor league handyman Jesus Brito in return. Bixler was Pittsburgh's second-round pick in the 2004 draft, but in 166 Bucco PA’s between 2008-09, he batted just .178. Bix also got shots with Washington and Houston, but his bat never came around; his lifetime BA was .189, and his best single-season OPS+ was 59. Utilityman Brito never advanced past Class A. 
• 2018 - Felipe Rivero officially signed a four-year/$22M deal to cash in his arb years. He gets $2.5M in 2018, $4M in 2019, $5.25M in 2020, $7.25M in 2021, plus a $2M signing bonus. The deal includes club options in 2022 and 2023 for $10M with buyouts of $1M in 2022/$500K in 2023. Rivero had filed for an arb hearing as a Super Two (he asked for $2.9M & the Pirates countered with $2.4M), but he traded it in for guaranteed money and team-friendly cost certainty for the club. A 2019 arrest/conviction for kiddie porn/sexual contact ended his MLB connection. 
• 2021 - The Pirates continued their teardown/rebuild when they pulled the trigger on a Big Joe Musgrove swap with San Diego and the Mets (it became official the next day after the physicals were completed). The Bucs got CF Hudson Head with RHPs David Bednar, Omar Cruz and Drake Fellows from the Padres along with C Endy Rodriguez from Mets (NY received LHP Joey Lucchesi from SD). Musgrove, 28, turned the corner during the 2020 campaign (1-5 but with a 3.86 ERA & 12.5 K per nine), had two years of team control and the added plus of going back to his hometown. Head, 19, and Rodriguez, 20, were the top kids coming back in return, while Bednar (who went to Mars HS) had seen sporadic MLB action with the Friars as a reliever and established himself as a back-ender with the Bucs. Endy is now on the big league roster and became the starting catcher, although he’s on the shelf for ‘24 with a bum wing incurred playing winter ball. Last season, Cruz was playing AA ball, Head was toiling in Hi-A and Fellows was tossing in Lo-A.