Stan the Man, Manny, and oh yah, Camp...

-- Stan the Man Musial from Donora, for you young 'uns, is the greatest ballplayer that Western Pennsylvania has ever produced, or at least one side of a coin with Honus Wagner.

He was an outfielder/first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1941-63, played on three World Series champions, was MVP three times, had a career BA of .331 and was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1969. The Man was also one of the best humans to ever play the game, right up there with Chuck Tanner.

The 90 year-old added the crowning touch to his trophy case today as he was one of 16 people to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award bestowed by our grand nation. Other winners were George Herbert Bush, Maya Angelou, Bill Russell, Yo-Yo Ma, Warren Buffet...well, you get the idea. It's a big deal.

Bob Cohn of the Tribune-Review has his bio. If you're not aware of Musial's accomplishments on and off the field, give it a read. He's one of the unsung giants of the game.

-- This weekend, Manny Sanguillen was inducted into the Latino Baseball Hall of Fame along with Edgar Martinez, Luis Tiant, Andres Galarraga, Rico Carty, Dennis Martinez and Fernando Valenzuela, reports Jen Langosch of MLB.com on her blog.

In 13 seasons (1967-1980), twelve with the Pirates, he put together a .296/65/585 slash, was an All-Star three times and played on a pair of World Series-winning clubs.

-- Sifting through the tweets and reports from camp, here's today's news: Tyler Yates and Mike Crotta were throwing well, the Bucs will announce their closer sooner rather than later (maybe this week) and James McDonald got engaged. Hey, what did you expect for day 2?

the roadrunner

The Roadrunner Manny Sanguillen from Mop Up Duty

Manuel De Jesus Sanguillen Magan, better known as Manny Sanguillen, was born March 21, 1944 in Colon, Panama.

Along with Omar Moreno and Rennie Stennett, Sanguillen was one of the Panamanian stars that Pittsburgh scouts had discovered back in the Lumber Company days when the Pirates ruled the Latino roost. Panama is a mother lode of baseball talent and has produced stars like Mariano Rivera, Carlos Lee, Manny Corpas, and Rod Carew in addition to the Buc haul.

Sangy's first game for the Bucs was played on July 23, 1967. In his first full season of 1969, Sanguillen hit .303 for the Pirates. To put it mildly, he was a free swinger, and he used a long, heavy bat to swat pitches that were well off the dish.

If a ball got by him, it was a fairly safe bet that it was a wild pitch or a 55' curve ball. He was also a pretty decent baserunner for a catcher before his wheels went south on him later in his career.

He twice finished third in the NL batting race, in 1970 when he batted .325, and again in 1975 when he hit a career-high .328. Sanguillen was a great contact hitter, but rarely walked. Sangy also rarely struck out.

He never saw a pitch he didn't like and couldn't hit. Some thought he should show more plate discipline, but there wasn't a NL hurler of the era that had any idea of how to pitch to the swing-at-will Panamanian.

Sanguillen turned into a solid catcher, even if not exactly defensively stellar (some years passed balls plagued him.) But he was always among the league leaders in throwing out wanna be base stealers.

Sanguillen also liked to yap to the batters while he was behind the plate, sometimes while the pitch was in mid flight, just to distract them a bit from the job at hand.

Overshadowed by Johnny Bench, he edged out the Red's catcher on The Sporting News NL All-Star Team in 1971, the only time between 1967 and 1975 that Bench was not selected. Sangy was durable and dependable, catching more than 100 games in seven of his first eight full seasons with the Pirates.

The exception was 1973, when the Pirates tried to move Sanguillen to right field as the successor to its' legendary star Roberto Clemente. The experiment ended by July when Richie Zisk took over. That's all you need to know to realize how poorly Sangy was faring in the outfield. He gladly strapped on the tools of ignorance once again.

Sanguillen was a close friend of Clemente. He was the only Pirate that didn't attend Clemente's funeral. Sanguillen chose instead to dive into the waters off the Puerto Rican coast where Clemente's plane had crashed in a last ditch effort to recover his bud's body.

On November 6, 1976 Sanguillen was involved in one of the oddball trades in the MLB annals. He was sent to the Oakland A's in exchange for manager Chuck Tanner and $100,000. To this day, Sanguillen is the only player in major-league history to be traded for a manager.

After one season with the A's, Sanguillen was dealt back to the Pirates for Miguel Dilone and Elias Sosa.

He won two World Series with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1971 & 1979. He batted .379, collecting 11 hits for the Pirates in the 1971 World Series and contributing a two-out, game-winning RBI single in Game 2 of the 1979 World Series, both against the star crossed Baltimore Orioles.

After playing for Pittsburgh virtually all of his career, Sanguillen last suited up for the Bradenton Explorers of the Senior Professional Baseball Association in 1989. In 13 big league seasons, 12 with the Bucs, he hit .296, scored 566 times and drove in 585 runs.

Ronny Paulino and Ryan Doumit have been receiving extra defensive instruction throughout camp, and God knows they need it. Sangy, a special spring instructor, is just the guy to teach them the ropes.

Trying to show his young charges how to field a throw to the plate like an infielder, he grabbed a mitt and mask (at the age of 63 and just coming off major knee surgery) and took a couple of pegs. They bounced off him - Sangy blamed the mitt, hehe - but his point was made.

"How about Manny?" Paulino asked WTAE TV. Doumit added that "He played back in the era when men were men. ...he would have gone out there without a mask unless we'd given it to him." Fortunately, the Buc staff curbed his enthusiasm and gently reminded Sanguillen that drill was for the catchers, not the coaches.

Now Sangy does less physical work, but he still gets to hang out at PNC Park. Walk out to center field and say "hi" to the smiling guy sitting on a lawn chair hawking Manny's BBQ. The pulled pork sandwiches are pretty dang good, and if you ask nicely, you'll even end up with an autograph. The Roadrunner is still a crowd pleaser. (To prove it, he ran away with our poll for Pittsburgh's best catcher, taking a whopping 72% of the vote.)

(Our contribution to spring training will be highlighting the careers of the old Bucs in camp who are trying to pass on the torch to today's squad. Up next - Steve Blass.)

baddest 'burgh backstop

Catcher's mask image from USCSPC

We may have run on some tough times as Pittsburgh baseball fans lately, but one sweet thing we have lived through is the golden age of Pirate catchers. Manny Sanguillen, Tony Pena, and Jason Kendall are at the head of the Bucco list in backstop stats (and no, I'm not willing to throw in any of the platooned Spanky/Slaught, Ott/Dyer or Burgess/Smith tagteams into the mix, though they were pretty solid pairings.)

Sanguillen can rightfully be called the first great Pirate catcher. The good natured Panamanian with the wide smile came to Pittsburgh in 1967. Except for a season in Oakland, when he was the bait for us to get Chuck Tanner in 1978, he was with us through the 1980 season. The Bucs sent Miguel Delone, Mike Edwards and Elias Sosa to the A's to get him back.

Sangy was around for five pennant winners and earned two Series crowns during that time, and was elected to three All-Star berths, which wasn't easy in the Johnny Bench era. He was behind the dish for over 1,000 games while in Pittsburgh. For a while, he was even appointed the successor to the great Roberto Clemente in right field, although sanity was quickly restored and Manny once again strapped on the tools of ignorance.

He left after 1980 for good, traded with Bert Blyleven to the Cleveland Indians for Gary Alexander, Victor Cruz, Rafael Vasquez, and Bob Owchinko. And you thought Littlefield was the only one that made lousy deals? Actually, Sanguillen was at the end of the line and retired as an active player after 1981, but Blyleven threw that hellacious curve for another dozen years and won 140+ more games. Oh well.


Manny Sanguillen from Baseball Almanac

Tony Pena followed in 1980. He caught 800 games for Pittsburgh, made the All-Star squad four times and earned another four Golden Gloves. Pena's unorthodox catching stance, with his leg stuck straight out, might have looked funny, but no one caught a ball as well as he did. His fielding range matrix is out of sight - it was 12% higher than the league average.

Pittsburgh sent Pena to the Cards after the 1986 season for Andy Van Slyke, Mike LaValliere, and Mike Dunne, so the Pirates got a very nice return on him when they dealt him. Pena managed KC for 4 seasons and today is the first base coach for the Yankees.


Tony Pena and Junior from MLB News

Jason Kendall, one of the few bright spots of recent Pirate history, joined the show in 1996. He hustled his way into three All-Star appearances and with Brian Giles gave us at least a couple of guys that could put the ball in play. Kendall has been behind the plate more times than any other Bucco - 1,205 games.

He was shipped to Oakland to save the McClatchy clan a few bucks for Mark Redman and Arthur Rhodes after the 2004 season. Now he's back to haunt us, signing with the Brew Crew as a free agent this year.


Jason Kendall from Kendall Web Ring

There's one other name to throw into the pot too - Josh Gibson. The black Sultan of Swat played 17 years for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords. It's said he hit over 800 HR's in all play, but that includes exhibitions, three different leagues (Negro majors, Cuban, and Mexican) and against any nine that his gang could barnstorm against.

His glovework was supposed to be just so-so, although his arm was allegedly a rifle, but we don't have any stats to prove or disprove his fielding ability. He only caught 500 games officially because the Negro National League, where his stats came from, usually only scheduled 40-50 games per year. They had to leave the teams enough open dates to book exhibitions, their lifeblood financially.

He was born too soon to match his bat against major league pitching, playing from 1930-'46. It was said in the late 1930s that both Pittsburgh and Washington tried him out but were afraid to sign him. The story goes that the Pirates actually did get his name on a contract in 1943, but then commissioner Judge Kenneshaw "Mountain" Landis voided it. In spite of that, Gibson's the only Pittsburgh catcher in the Hall of Fame.

Gibson died in 1947. The doctors said it was from a stroke, but his friends claimed it was from a broken heart brought about because he never got a shot at the majors.


Josh Gibson from MLB

player     avg  obp  slug rs  rbi hr  f-% range

Kendall    .306 .387 .418 706 471 67  .988   7%
Pena       .286 .327 .411 307 340 63  .987  12%
Sanguillen .301 .333 .408 507 509 56  .986   5%
Gibson     .351 .436 .687 467 432 115  n/a  n/a

(The stats are for time in Pittsburgh. Gibson's fielding stats are unavailable. I didn't include the stolen base success rate because Kendall's are fairly complete, Pena's nearly non-existant, and none are available for Sanguillen or Gibson that I could find via my humble Google resources. The fielding range shows the percentage above the league norm. All three of the catchers graded out as superior to the league average during their time in Pittsburgh.)

So who's the best? Well, we'll leave that up to you. Since so many of the factors are subjective, we decided to rate the catchers by poll. Vote early and often on top of the sidebar. It's the American way.