4/26: Xavier Joins; Spanky POTW; Drew, Jack & Gift Debuts; '23 Glee; Goin' Long; Maz Muscle; Rallies & Bummers; Expo Game Tales; Mr. Swat Statue; Almost Sold; Hack's Night; HBD S-Rod, Francisco, Curtis, Amos, Ron & Fire Truck

• 1900 - The Bucs drew 11,000 to the newly expanded Exposition Park, the biggest Pittsburgh baseball turnout to date, with a couple of thousand more fans trying to get in. The Pirates were fortified by the recent influx of Louisville players like Honus Wagner, but dropped a 12-11 slugfest to Cincinnati as the Reds lit up Rube Waddell and Jack Chesbro. The Bucs made a game of it by rallying for seven ninth-inning tallies and left the tying run at second base. The rooters caused a delay when the 11th run scored by showering the field with cushions to celebrate, but were a tad premature in their revelry. 
• 1905 - The Chicago Cubs beat Pittsburgh at Exposition Park, 2-1, as Cubbie center fielder Jack McCarthy became the only major league outfielder to throw out three runners trying to score in one game; all three assists were on tag-up tries on flies following triples (they whacked four three-baggers during the day; the other was stranded; so much for clutch hitting). The game story in the Pittsburgh Press stated simply in the headline that “McCarthy Made the Throws.” 
• 1917 - Coach Virgil “Fire” Trucks was born in Birmingham, Alabama. After a long pro career, he became the bullpen coach/batting practice pitcher for Pittsburgh in 1960 and stayed with the Pirates until 1963, later operating baseball camps for the Bucs. Jack House of the Birmingham News gave him the apt moniker “Fire,” not because he enjoyed chasing hook and ladder trucks but because of his blazing heater; Trucks tossed two no-hitters for Detroit in 1952. 
• 1920 - Coach Ron Northey was born in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, near Hazelton. An outfielder with some pop and a good eye (he walked more than he whiffed), Northey played 12 MLB seasons, missing some time for WW2. After his playing days, he spent three years as a coach on Danny Murtaugh’s staff from 1961-1963 before becoming a White Sox scout. 

Joe Bowman - 1940 Play Ball

• 1940 - After rallying for four runs in the eighth inning the day before but falling just short, the Bucs crossed home seven times in the eighth frame on this day to roll over the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-4, at Forbes Field. Debs Garms and Joe Bowman both had homers with three RBI to spark the comeback outburst and earn Mace Brown his second relief win in four days. 
• 1947 - OF Amos Otis was born in Mobile, Alabama. He played the final year of his 17-season career with the Pirates in 1984, coming over after 14 campaigns with the KC Royals. (He actually had been dealt to the Bucs during the 1976 off season, but as a 5 & 10 year player vetoed the trade of him and Cookie Rojas for Al Oliver.) His TRS season wasn’t much of a swan song for the 37-year-old: in 97 at-bats, he hit .165 and he was released in August. Amos then worked briefly for the San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies as a hitting instructor before retiring. 
• 1958 - With Pittsburgh and Cincinnati knotted, 4-4, at Crosley Field heading into the eighth, Bill Mazeroski took the game into his hands. First, he drilled an eighth-inning solo shot to put the Pirates on top, then his three-run bomb in the top of the ninth sealed the deal, 8-4. It was the first of eight multi-homer games in his career, with his next coming less than a month later on May 10th. 1958 was also the year Maz earned his first of seven All-Star spots. Billy’s heroics gave the Bucs third pitcher, Don Gross, the win after he spun four innings of one-hit relief, with Roberto Clemente, Bob Skinner and Ted Kluszewski adding three hits apiece. 
• 1961 - IF Curtis Wilkerson was born in Petersburg, Virginia. Wilkerson spent 11 years in the show as mainly a bench guy, getting into 85 games for the Pirates in 1991 and hitting .188. After he retired, he managed for three years in the Rangers system and then three more years (1999-2001) for the Buccaneers squads in Williamsport and Lynchburg. He then skippered in the indy leagues and at last look was managing in a collegiate summer league in Texas. 

Curtis Wilkerson - 1992 Score

• 1972 - RHP Francisco Cordova was born in Cerro Azul, Mexico. He spent his five-year MLB career (1996-2000) as a Pirate, first as a reliever who notched 12 saves in his rookie year, then joining the rotation. His slash was 42-47-12/3.96. Arm injuries derailed his career, but he did continue to toss in Mexico through the 2011 campaign. He was the main man in one of the great Pirate red letter moments on July 12th, 1997 at a sold out Three Rivers Stadium when he pitched nine innings of a combined 10-inning no-hitter, with Ricardo Rincón closing out the no-no, winning the game on Mark smith’s pinch-hit home run in the extra frame. 
• 1978 - Ed Ott hit an 11th-inning home run at Shea Stadium to give the Bucs and Bert Blyleven, who pitched a complete game six-hitter, a 1-0 win. It took 35 years for another Pirate, Neil Walker, to homer for the only run in a Bucco extra inning victory in a 2014 win over the Cubs. 
• 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. 

Spanky - 1988 Topps

• 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 re: Rangos 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. 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. 

Xavier Paul - 2011 photo Doug Pensinger/Getty

• 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. 
• 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. 

Jack Suwinski - 2022 Bowmans Best

• 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. Jack is still here and an outfield fixture, while Diego was eventually sent to Arizona and is now a Twin. 
• 2023 - The PNC Park crowd 12,152 had lots of reasons to cheer on the Buccos tonight, and they sure did. The Pirates dismantled the LA Dodgers by an 8-1 count behind Roansy Contreras, but there were a couple of sidebars that the faithful also celebrated. Bryan Reynolds, in his first outing since signing his record-contract (he had been on Bereavement leave), was greeted by a “Bry-an Rey-nolds” chant by the OF faithful, stilled only after he gave the fans a grin and wave. Then 33-year-old Drew Maggi made his first MLB appearance after 13 seasons/1,100+ minor league games, pinch-hitting for Andrew McCutchen (Cutch was the DH) and drawing an ovation that even the umps stood back and allowed despite the pitch clock. Contreras went six shutout frames for the win by letting the bottom of the order do its thing. Rodolfo Castro, Ji Hwan Bae and Jason Delay, the 7-8-9 hitters, went 8-for-11 with two doubles, four stolen bases, four runs scored and six RBI. It was Pittsburgh’s eighth win in nine games as they continued their April frolic.