- 1922 - Jim “Cotton” Tierney had his homecoming celebration spoiled by the minor league Kansas City Blues of the American Association. KC rallied for three eighth-inning runs and held off a ninth inning Bucco rally in the pre-season match played at the KC Speedway to take a 4-3 victory. Cotton didn’t help himself much, going 0-for-3 at the leadoff spot. The KC battery had past ties to the barnstorming Bucs - Beltzhoover’s Otto Knabe did the Blue’s hurling (he also pitched in 1905 as a rookie for the Corsairs, then spent his last MLB season, 1916, as a Pirate) and Bill Skiff, who Pittsburgh had released, did the catching - who helped do in their ol’ mateys. 35,000 plus turned out to honor local-boy-done-good Tierney, whose hometown was just across the river in Kansas City, Kansas.
- 1942 - The Sporting News released a vote of 100 former major leaguers and managers tasked with selecting the best player of all time. Ty Cobb won easily, with Buc SS Honus Wagner second. The Flying Dutchman handily outpolled both Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby.
- 1954 - TV station WENS, the City’s first ABC affiliate, announced that it would broadcast 20-30 Pirates games during the season beginning with the April 17th Season Opener at Philadelphia. Bob Prince and Rosey Rowswell were the TV broadcast team with Joe Tucker taking over the WWSW radio mic when the Rosey-Gunner radio duo switched over for TV games.
- 1958 - Just in case you thought rumors of selling the Bucco franchise started as an eighties/nineties thing, think again. Sportswriter Al Abrams in his Post Gazette “Sidelight on Sports” column asked club president John Galbreath about the rumors that New York interests wanted to buy the franchise to replace the Dodgers and Giants. Galbreath said “I didn’t get one offer, I got 20 offers. Some of them were tremendous (thought to be in the $8-10M range)...(But) I would like to put an end to this stuff once and for all...We didn’t sell the club or move out in our worst years when we could have without any trouble. I don’t see why we should now.”
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| Vern Law - 1963 Fleer |
- 1963 - The Pirates left pitcher Vern Law at Daytona Beach to start the season so he could work on strengthening the lingering rotator injury he first suffered in 1960. What was hoped to be a two-week stay turned into a month, and Law made just 18 outings (12 starts), good for 76 IP and a 4-5/4.93 slash before he was shut down in early August. The long rest period paid off as he put together three solid seasons on the hill from ‘64-66, averaging a 14-10/3.20 line with 196 IP over that span and earning the NL Comeback Player of the Year award in 1965.
- 1970 - RHP Jon Lieber was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The Pirates picked him up at the 1993 deadline as part of a trade for Stan Belinda with Kansas City, and he pitched his first five (1994-98) seasons with the Bucs, going 38-47-2/4.36. Pittsburgh sent him to the Windy City for Brant Brown after the 1998 campaign. He spent another nine workmanlike years in the show for four clubs, winning 131 games in 14 seasons, including 20 dubs in 2001 for the Cubs.
- 1973 - The Pirates picked up RHP Chris Zachary from the Detroit Tigers in exchange for a reluctant C Charlie Sands. Sands refused to report to AAA Toledo, and the Tigers gave him permission to make another deal if he could. He couldn’t, and Motown traded him to California two weeks later. As for Zachary, he spent most of his time at Charleston, going 0-1-1/3.00 in his six Bucco outings. He was in the Philly system in 1974 before hangin’ ‘em up at age 30.
- 1975 - LHP Hisanori Takahashi was born in Tokyo. Takahashi spent a decade with the Yomiuri Giants before being signed by the Mets, where he was converted to the bullpen. He came to the Pirates thanks to Zack Greinke, then an LA Angel. Grienke came off the DL in 2012, Takahashi was released to clear roster room for him, and then was claimed by the Bucs in August. It wasn’t a very high octane move as Hisanori had no decisions and an 8.64 ERA in nine Pirates outings and was set free by Pittsburgh after the year. He made brief stops with the Chicago Cubs and Colorado Rockies the following season before returning to Japan as a 38-year-old and retired from pro ball two years later.
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| Hisonari Takahashi - 8/31/2012 photo Morry Gash/AP |
- 1975 - The Pirates signed pitcher Sudden Sam McDowell, a 32-year-old free agent who started out at Central Catholic. It would be the last hurrah of a 15-year career that saw him win 141 games and fan 2,453 batters, mostly with the Indians. Sudden Sam was The Sporting News Pitcher of the Year in 1970 when he worked 305 frames and punched out 304 batters. But his bouts with the bottle caught up with him; he pitched well for the Pirates but was released in June. McDowell later went through rehab and turned his life around. The character Sam Malone, the bartender on the TV show “Cheers,“ was said to be loosely based on Sudden Sam after the producers decided on Ted Danson rather than gridder-turned-actor Fred Dryer, causing a switch of sports in the storyline.
- 1992 - Utilityman Wilmer Difo was born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. After spending six years with the Washington Nats, the Pirates signed him to a NRI contract for 2021. He didn’t break camp with the team but was called up during the first week of the season to replace the injured Ke’Bryan Hayes. He’s now a free agent after spending ‘23 in the Yankee system.
- 1994 - The Pirates and Indians christened Cleveland’s Jacobs Field with the Bucs winning the park’s first-ever MLB game, an exhibition match played before the Pittsburgh season opened at TRS, by a 6-4 count. A bases-loaded walk to Jay Bell in the ninth sent the game into extras and two unearned runs in the 10th sealed the deal with Will Pennyfeather’s sac fly plating the lead run. Rick White worked two frames for the win while Dave Clark collected three hits during the final tune-up outing. Mayor Tom Murphy led a posse of civic movers to the game, and was talking up Cleveland’s effort while selling Pittsburgh’s plans for a new ballyard.
- 1995 - The players’ strike ended after a court ruling undercut the owner’s position. The 1994–95 strike was the eighth work stoppage in baseball history as well as the fourth in-season work stoppage in 22 years. The strike began on August 12th, 1994, and resulted in the remainder of that season being canceled, including the postseason and, for the first time since 1904, the World Series. After spending 232 days walking the picket lines, the walk-out was the longest such stoppage in MLB history. 948 games were lost and the MLB became the first major pro sports league to lose an entire postseason due to labor struggles. Because of the strike, neither the 1994 or 1995 seasons were played in entirety; the strike was called after most teams had played 113 games in 1994 and 1995’s schedule was reduced to 144 games to accommodate the late settlement.
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| Carlos Gonzalez - 1996 Donruss |
- 1996 - Carlos Garcia banged a two-out, two-strike, three-run homer in the ninth to break a 1-1 tie with Florida at Joe Robbie Stadium. The inning was kept alive thanks to a Marlin error. Jason Christiansen earned the win while Dan Miceli retired all three batters he faced to earn the save. Denny Neagle started and went six frames with Francisco Cordova and Jon Lieber behind him.
- 2014 - The Pirates and Cubs hooked up for the longest baseball game ever played in Pittsburgh, a 16-inning marathon that lasted five hours and 55 minutes before the Bucs could eke out a 4-3 decision. Chicago tied it in the ninth and took the lead in the 12th, but the Corsairs knotted the score again on a two-out single by Starling Marte. Tony Sanchez ended the longest day with a knock to drive home Jose Tabata. Stolmy Pimentel got his first MLB win while Carlos Villanueva dropped his second straight game - he was the losing pitcher on Opening Day, another extra-inning affair played two days earlier.
- 2018 - The Home Opener went the Buccos way thanks to an early grand slam by Colin Moran. It was his first at-bat in front of the home crowd, his second career homer, and his first curtain-call in Pittsburgh. The blast was only the third Home Opener granny by a Buc; Roberto Clemente (1962) & Ralph Kiner (1949) had the others. It gave the Buccos a 5-0 first inning lead over Minnesota, and the Pirates survived a four-run pitching meltdown in the sixth to hang on for a 5-4 win, their fourth without a loss. Jameson Taillon struck out nine Twinkies for the victory, with George Kontos earning his second career save. The game was played in front of 30,186, the smallest Opening Day crowd in PNC Park history, as a morning snowfall, low-40s temperatures and general malaise caused by the off season trades of fan favorites Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen took their toll. The Bucs sprinted out of the box with a mark of 11-4 by mid April, but finished up with an 82-79 slate, good for fourth place in the division and well out of the wild card race.
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