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Hall
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As a young baseball fan growing up in the 1970s, I liked and admired Willie Stargell so much that I was once motivated to do something very foolish: at the age of nine, I stole his 1974 baseball card from my next door neighbor’s house. Fortunately, my neighbor—the older brother of one of my best friends—knew about my infatuation with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ slugger and quickly confronted me about the pilfered card. Feeling humiliated at being caught and guilty over what I had done, I returned the stolen item. As I look back at that incident today, I’m tempted to make the following conclusion: in a strange and indirect way, Willie Stargell taught me a simple but important lesson about how it was wrong to take things that didn’t belong to me.
Although my friends
and I grew up in Westchester County as fans of either the Mets or Yankees,
we loved to imitate two “out-of-town” hitters of the day. One was
Cincinnati Reds superstar Joe Morgan, who regularly flapped his left elbow
like a fluttering chicken wing. The other was Stargell, for the way that
he “windmilled” his bat in a rhythmic circle. As he awaited each
pitch, Stargell rocked back and forth in the batter’s box, motioning
his bat forward, pointing it for a moment toward center field, and then bringing
the bat backward for another swirl.
The windmilling seemed to relax Stargell and aid his timing at the
plate. At the same time, the
constant motioning of the bat must have frightened opposing pitchers, as
they envisioned the massive Stargell preparing to unleash his ferocious upper-cut
swing.
The Stargell that
we enjoyed watching was in the prime of his Hall of Fame career. Given our
youth, we didn’t realize what Stargell had overcome in reaching the
major leagues. At the time, we didn’t understand that he had grown up
poor, in contrast to our relatively wealthy upbringing.
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For much of his
youth, Stargell lived in a governmental project in Alameda, CA. Stargell
certainly experienced poverty, but on the favorable side, encountered relatively
little racism while growing up in the projects. Those circumstances began
to change in 1959, when he signed his first professional baseball contract
and reported to the Pirates’ minor league affiliate in the Class-D Sophomore
League. There he discovered a different world, one more antagonistic and
harsh toward African Americans. “When I first entered baseball in New
Mexico and Texas,” Stargell said in an interview that appeared in the
Syracuse Herald American, “they
separated the black players. They
emphasized that blacks were less superior than
whites.” Since many hotels
did not permit black residents, Stargell often slept in cots on the back
porches of private homes owned by other blacks. Restaurants also discriminated
against blacks. Stargell often
had to wait in restaurant kitchens, where he was handed small scraps of
foods. At other times, Stargell
had to sit on the team bus while the white players ate comfortably in roadside
diners.
Other devices of
segregation were just as infuriating to
Stargell. “We had to drink
from different fountains,” Stargell
recalled. “There was always
a constant reminder that we were less
superior.” Stargell found
little solace at the ballpark, where fans treated him and other black players
cruelly. “I’d get
to the ballpark,” Stargell told
Sport Magazine, “and the fans
would be name-calling me—‘Nigger,’ ‘Pork Chop.’
They’d threaten to shoot me if I beat their ballclub. It scared the
hell out of me. I would go home
and cry.”
The severe racial
hostilities that Stargell and other black players experienced left the slugger
feeling understandably bitter—at least early in his career. On one occasion,
a white man threatened Stargell with a
shotgun. The man told Stargell
that if he dared to hit successfully in the game that night, he would shoot
him. “I couldn’t understand how the color of my skin could make
people hate me for something I had never done,” Stargell recalled in
the Syracuse Herald
American.
In 1961, the situation
improved somewhat when the Pirates assigned Stargell to Asheville, NC, their
affiliate in the Sally League. “The people of Asheville gave us a warm
welcome,” Stargell revealed in Sport
Magazine. “We were still segregated, but at least there were five
blacks on the team.” As one of a handful of African Americans, Stargell
felt a greater sense of safety in numbers.
When Stargell first
arrived in the major leagues in 1962, the Pirates featured a more substantial
level of integration—with black and Latino players like Roberto Clemente,
Donn Clendenon, Alvin McBean, Diomedes Olivo, Elmo Plaskett, and Bob Veale.
While Stargell might have felt comfortable in a clubhouse that would soon
become a melting pot, he didn’t become a major league star overnight;
instead he settled into a platoon role, sharing left field duties with journeyman
outfielder Manny Mota.
At 6’2”
and 225 pounds, Stargell was a massive but mobile outfielder with a surprisingly
strong arm (second only to Clemente among the Pirates), who showed flashes
of promise at the plate. Yet, he really didn’t begin to commit himself
to the game until after he suffered a disappointing 1968 season, when he
batted.237 with 24 home runs. At
that time, Stargell left himself open to some careful
self-evaluation. “I wondered
if all I wanted to be was a player who stayed around for 10 years and
didn’t really accomplish anything,” Stargell told
Baseball Digest, “or did I
want to make myself a real good ballplayer, an outstanding
ballplayer?” Stargell realized
that he had been cheating himself.
“Once I used to think that all there was to this game was to
show up at the ballpark a couple of hours before gametime, go through the
usual routine, play nine innings, and go
home.” Such a mundane
philosophy, which seemed destined to attain mediocrity, was no longer good
enough to meet Stargell’s personal demands of
himself.
Stargell began to
hit more consistently in 1969 and ’70, but it was in 1971 that he emerged
as a star. After reporting to spring training in the best physical condition
of his career, he enjoyed a torrid first month of the season, making a run
at the April home run record. Needing just one to break the record, Stargell
stepped into the batter’s box in the eighth inning on April 27 against
the Los Angeles Dodgers. Facing former Pirate reliever Pete Mikkelsen, Stargell
connected against the sinkerballing right-hander—a long 430-foot line
drive over the center field wall at Three Rivers, a fittingly monstrous home
run for such a milestone occasion.
“Pete should be happy that Willie hit the ball in the air,”
Dodger infielder Billy Grabarkewitz remarked afterward in an interview with
sportswriter Arnold Hano.
“If he had hit it back through the middle, Mikkelsen would be
dead.”
The home run provided
the signature moment to an incredible month of power—and an April record
of 11 home runs. Stargell also
finished the month with 27 RBIs, a total that became even more impressive
when one considered the cold weather the Pirates had endured. Yet, his power
numbers, impressive enough on their own, told only a small portion of the
story. Stargell’s batting average at the end of the month rested at
.347, including a mark of nearly .300 against left-handed pitchers. Without
question, the spring of ‘71 represented the maturation of Stargell as
a complete hitter.
Stargell’s
monumental start also provided him with a forum to sound off on the issue
of racism in baseball. In contrast to the outright prejudice he had experienced
during his early minor league days, he expressed hopefulness for better race
relations in the future. “I
realize I can’t go around hating the system, hating what happened to
me,” Willie said in the Syracuse
Herald American. “I
just can’t wait to get in the position where my son doesn’t have
to get into that.” Stargell
felt it incumbent for prominent black athletes to reach out to the black
population while providing solid examples of behavior for African-American
youngsters. “I think the
black ballplayer should be responsible to the black community,” Stargell
explained to Lacy Banks of Black
Sports Magazine. “The
people, in many ways, helped to put him where he
is. He should be visible to
the kids in the ghetto. Sometimes
just a smile and a word of concern from him can help change the life of a
young brother toward the better.”
Although open
segregation no longer plagued baseball by the 1970s, another racial issue
bothered Stargell—the lack of equal salaries for comparable white and
black stars. Stargell felt that a lack of endorsements for minority players
exacerbated the problem. Up
until 1971, he had never received an endorsement opportunity, while older
black stars like Clemente and Frank Robinson had received very few
offers. “We have a long
way to go in endorsements,” Stargell lamented to
Black Sports
Magazine. “You see a few
blacks, but that’s tokenism.”
While Stargell championed the cause of the black athlete
off the field, he inspired his Pirate teammates on the field—with his
tape-measure home runs, the longest the game had seen since Mickey Mantle’s
heyday in the 1950s. “Willie’s inspirational feats, his home runs,
his towering home runs, and the way Willie handled himself, it rubbed off
on the ballclub,” says Bob Robertson, a teammate of Stargell’s
from 1967 to 1976. “We
had so much pride in ourselves with that
ballclub. We’d stand around
the batting cage, me and Clemente and Stargell, Richie Hebner and the rest
of us. We would challenge one another.” Stargell’s resume of
tape-measure home runs included two launched completely out of Dodger Stadium,
one of the toughest parks for hitters of that era. During Stargell’s
career, no other player even managed to hit one home run out of the ballpark
in Chavez Ravine.
Prior to the 1970 season, Stargell’s capacity for home runs had been diminished by the expansive dimensions of his own ballpark. In his early years (up until mid-1970), the Pirates played at venerable Forbes Field, arguably the most difficult park in which to hit home runs in the National League. Forbes Field had deep, spacious power alleys that were not conducive to a hitter like Stargell, who often hit the ball from left-center to right-center. The right field power alley at Forbes Field measured 408 feet, while the left field power alley stretched out to 406 feet. At its deepest point, just to the left of straightaway center field, the distance measured 457 feet. As a result, no Pirate team calling Forbes Field home had ever led the National League in home runs.
On July 16, 1970, Stargell and the Pirates moved into a new ballpark—Three Rivers Stadium. In contrast to Forbes Field, the power alleys at Three Rivers measured a more reasonable 385 feet to both right-center and left-center field, and 410 feet to its deepest point in center field. What was the impact of the difference on Stargell? In 1969, Stargell’s wife, Dolores, performed her own informal study of the differences in dimensions between Forbes Field and Three Rivers, which was then under construction. She estimated that her husband would have hit at least 50 home runs that season if the team were already playing in Three Rivers, as opposed to the 29 that he actually hit while playing home games at Forbes Field. “It’s funny, but that year I hit 21 outs to the fence or just in front of it in center field,” Willie told United Press International. If only Willie had been able to play his entire major league tenure at Three Rivers (instead of merely half), he surely would have finished his career as a member of the 500-home run club, as opposed to falling 25 short of the milestone.
As much as home runs defined Stargell on the field, they only scratched the surface of portraying his overall contributions to the game, including his relationship with teammates and the general public. Unlike some self-centered athletes, Willie knew how to connect with fans. For example, after he bought a restaurant in The Hill section of Pittsburgh in 1970, he conjured up a special promotion: every time, he hit a home run, the restaurant would give free chicken to anyone placing an order at that time. The giveaway prompted legendary Pirates announcer Bob Prince to proclaim, “Spread some chicken on the hill!” when Willie blasted another long ball. More importantly, Stargell didn’t merely focus his efforts toward patrons of his restaurant. He reached out to all Pirate fans by regularly chatting with them prior to games and willingly signing autographs.
Stargell also tried to exert a positive influence on his teammates. In 1979, Stargell achieved his greatest fame as the leader of the World Champions, carrying the nickname “Pops” as the patriarch of the team known for its “We Are Family” credo. While Stargell’s individual statistics that season were far less impressive than the ones he had compiled during his hallmark 1971 and ’73 campaigns, he shared the National League’s MVP Award mostly on the strength of his pronounced leadership abilities. Stargell popularized the practice of handing out gold stars to certain players and coaches after each game, for anything from advancing a runner to delivering the game-winning hit. Stargell had actually started the practice in 1978, as a way of informing his teammates that he appreciated their contributions. Pirate players donned the gold “Stargell Stars” on their caps, in what would become an outward symbol of team recognition and unity. “We have shown what men can do together,” Stargell told a reporter from the Washington Star after the ’79 season. “We have blacks, whites, Latinos, but we were family. We had to scratch and crawl sometimes, but we did it together.”
Although Stargell is best remembered as the clubhouse leader of the ‘79 team, he had begun to emerge as a major off-the-field force well before that—as early as 1971. “There’s no doubt about it,” says Dave Cash, who played second base for the Pirates from 1969 to 1973. “He used to have us over to his house. He’d invite the whole team over, have a cookout, say on a Memorial Day if we were [playing] at home, or during the Fourth of July, we’d always get together at his house. It was like a family when we were there. That was one of the things that he tried to do, especially for the young ballplayers. He’d try to get them to relax, and would accept them on the team as part of the family. It was a lot easier for myself to relax in that kind of environment.”
According to his
teammates, Stargell’s parties provided all Pirate players—black,
Latino, and white—with an opportunity to socialize together, and
unwind. “We all were
there. I think the reason why
Wil liked to have those parties is he that he liked to see guys stagger,”
says former Pirate outfielder Al Oliver, who played with Stargell from 1968
to 1977. “Will would fix
this drink that was called ‘purple
passion.’ It was grape
juice and grain alcohol. Guys
would start staggering, and talking, and you know we had a very talkative
team anyway. We had so much
fun. I think Wil really enjoyed that. Wil basically enjoyed seeing people
laugh and have a good time.”
Still, Stargell
had another reason to host those periodic parties. “If we might lose
three or four games in a row, which was kind of uncharacteristic of our ballclub,
if he thought something wasn’t going right, well, he would call a team
party,” says Oliver. “He would have one and it always worked out
right. You know, that’s how Wil would lead
us. He would lead us in a social
manner.”
Certainly, a number
of players on the Pirates of the sixties and seventies provided leadership.
Through his own determination and character, Roberto Clemente supplied his
teammates with an appropriate example of behavior. Bill Mazeroski, the
team’s mainstay at second base, exuded a quiet professionalism and a
guiding hand to younger players.
Steve Blass, the Pirates best pitcher in 1971 and ’72, often
lightened the mood around the ballpark with his keen sense of humor. But
it was Stargell, through his outgoing, charismatic personality, who provided
the team with a proper social setting away from the
stadium. Thanks to the relaxed
atmosphere created by Stargell, Pirate made strides in bonding—strides
that would not have been possible solely in the confines of a ballpark clubhouse.
Unfortunately, the
unexpected death of Clemente on New Year’s Eve, 1972 stripped the Pirates
of their most prominent and visible
leader. Most writers assumed
that Stargell would replace Clemente as the Pirates’ point man, even
though the quiet veteran had already provided ample leadership throughout
the 1971 and ‘72 seasons. General manager Joe L. Brown hinted that Stargell possessed
the necessary qualities to steer the
Pirates. “I think there
are other people on this team who will take on an added dimension now that
Roberto will not be around,” Brown told the Associated
Press. “A fellow like Willie
Stargell, who plays when he’s hurt and gives everything he
has.”
Stargell tried to
downplay talk of “succeeding” Clemente as the Pirates’
leader. “No one can do the job that Clemente was doing on
or off the field,” Stargell said at the
time. “And for me to be
an individual, other than what I’ve been in the last 10 years, I can’t
change. I have nothing to
sell. I’m not trying to
impress anyone.” While
Stargell insisted that he could not replace Clemente, he did promise to counsel
any teammates who asked for help.
“I know what it’s like to be on a winner,” Stargell
told the AP. “So if anyone
asks my advice, or wants to be evaluated on different things, then I’m
in a position to talk about these things.”
Although Stargell
humbly tried to downplay his role in following Clemente as the unquestioned
team leader, most others close to the Pirates knew differently. In the spring
of 1974, Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh rewarded Stargell for his leadership
by naming him team captain.
Stargell became the Pirates’ first captain since Mazeroski, who
had served in the role from 1962 until his retirement in
1973. Then on April 11, 1974,
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn presented Stargell with Major League Baseball’s
annual Roberto Clemente Award, given to the player who best exemplifies
Clemente’s spirit on and off the
field. Stargell topped the voting,
beating out 47 other major leaguers who had been
nominated. “Of all the
awards, this ranks No. 1 with me,” Stargell told
The Sporting News, “because
it identifies with Clemente, who always tried to help
people.”
For years, Stargell
had impressed the baseball world with his success in hitting home runs and
driving in runners; now, baseball had taken notice of Stargell’s
Clemente-like willingness to devote time to humanitarian causes. During the
1970-71 off-season, he participated in a USO tour for the benefit of American
soldiers in Vietnam. On the local front, he performed volunteer work for
the Job Corps and the Neighborhood Youth Corps in Pittsburgh, working in
the ghettoes as part of the “War on Poverty.” He became president
of the Black Athletes Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping
African-American athletes earn better contracts and endorsement opportunities
while also addressing problems that affected the black community at-large.
And in perhaps his most well-known cause, he served as chief spokesman for
the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation,
successfully mobilizing public awareness of a disease that had received
very little publicity in the 1960s. Stargell made numerous public appearances
throughout his playing career in efforts to raise money to combat the sickle
cell disease, which attacks blood cells, mostly in African
Americans. “So many people
know so little about this disease,” Stargell once said in an interview
with the New York
Times. “These people
live a short, miserable life. We
need the help of everyone.”
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In 1998, just three years before his death from kidney disease, I was privileged to meet Willie Stargell for the first time. In January of that year, during the depths of another Northeast winter, he came to Cooperstown as part of a program put together by the U.S. Postal Service. He agreed to speak to a group of children who had assembled in the Hall of Fame’s Grandstand Theater. Although most of the kids didn’t know who he was—and none of them ever saw him play—they were still captivated by the positive messages of inspiration coming from this once-great player. In spite of the generational divide, he was able to reach those children, just as he had always reached me, starting with those days in the early seventies when I collected his cards and imitated his swing.
Willie Stargell,
it seemed, could connect with anyone.
Bruce Markusen is the author of
The
Orlando Cepeda
Story, a new release in 2001, and
Roberto
Clemente: The Great
One.
