Chapter 6

We Are Family

THE CLUB THAT ASSEMBLED in Bradenton in early 1979 looked very much like the one that made a late—albeit ultimately unsuccessful—run the previous season, although Peterson did acquire reliever Enrique Romo from the Seattle Mariners in what proved to be a key addition. The rest of the regular lineup, led by Parker—who became the game’s first million-dollar-a-year man when he signed an off-season deal for $5 million over five years—and the rejuvenated Stargell remained intact. However, a major shakeup occurred on April 19 when Peterson swapped shortstops with the Mets, sending Taveras to New York for Tim Foli, who had developed a reputation as a hothead but whose energy and defensive talents would make him a perfect fit in the Pirates infield.

An early six-game losing streak put the team in a 4–10 hole in late April, and it wasn’t until May 29 that it again reached the .500 mark at 21–21. Nothing much changed by late June, as the Pirates remained around the break-even point. But fortunes turned on June 28 when Peterson pulled the trigger on a five-player deal with the San Francisco Giants, acquiring two-time league batting champion Bill Madlock and pitcher Dave Roberts in exchange for three pitchers—Ed Whitson, Al Holland and Fred Breining. In Madlock, the Pirates obtained the quintessential professional hitter who gave the club much-needed punch from the right side and carried the league’s highest active career batting average at .325.

Stargell was elated with the acquisition and said it would help all involved. “It was good for Madlock because it’s a change of atmosphere for him, just what Bill needs. I feel sure Bill is happy to be coming over here.” Not everyone was as thrilled with the deal, though. Garner, who figured to be the odd man out at third base with Madlock’s arrival, said, “It looks like a good trade but I’ll think it’s a horsefeathers trade if I wind up watching the games from the bullpen.”¹

On July 8, the Pirates found themselves 40–38 and in fourth place, seven games out of first, but they then reeled off 13 wins in their next 14 starts to improve to 53–39 and climbed to second place, just a game behind Montreal. A week into August, the Bucs had moved into first place and by mid–August had opened up a four-game lead. But a three-game skid in mid–September dropped the Pirates out of the top spot, a game behind Montreal. After splitting the first two games of a four-game showdown with the Expos on September 24, the Pirates were in second place, a half-game back. But convincing wins each of the next two nights—10–4 and 10–1—put Pittsburgh in first place by a game and a half with four to play. A 13-inning, 7–6 loss to the Cubs—made possible in part by a Stargell throwing error—on the season’s next-to-last day cut the Bucs’ lead to a single game with one to play, but a 5–3 win over Chicago in the regular-season finale clinched the division and left the Pirates with a sparkling 98–64 record.

Dan Donovan, a Pirates beat writer with the Pittsburgh Press in the late 1970s and early ’80s, recalled the next-to-last game loss to the Cubs. “He butchered a play at first base and basically cost them the game,” Donovan said of Stargell. “He hardly ever made really bad plays at first base, but he did on that one. He walked into the locker room later talking about it to everyone. ‘I looked like a monkey fucking a football,’ he said. I had no clue what that would look like. So I wrote, ‘A monkey playing with a football.’ That was his way to keep the team loose and to take responsibility for things. They laughed and joked and kidded him and they realized it wasn’t the end of the world. That’s the kind of thing he would do.”²

Stargell didn’t hit for much average down the stretch—just .222 for the month of September—but he slammed eight home runs, including one in the season-finale, and drove in 18 runs that month to lead the charge. His final two RBIs came in the division-clinching win and gave him 1,476 for his career—enough to move him past Honus Wagner and into the top spot among all Pirate players. “This is the most warm-feeling thing I’ve ever been associated with,” he said afterward as champagne flowed in the victorious clubhouse. “We don’t have many .300 hitters and we don’t have any 20-game winners; what we have is 25 guys who play hard. What we have is a lot of junkyard dogs.”³

Junkyard dogs with pedigrees; statistically, the Pirates had their share of heavy hitters and standout pitchers. Stargell put together his second straight outstanding season, hitting .281 with 32 homers and 82 RBIs in 126 games. Parker belted 25 home runs, drove in 94 and hit .310, and was a major force down the stretch as he ripped 15 hits in his final 24 regular-season at-bats, Madlock did just what the Pirates had hoped when they brought him in from San Francisco, hitting .328 while Robinson—who played 125 games in the outfield and another 28 at first base—offered solid power numbers with 24 homers and 75 RBIs. Garner, inserted at second base after the Madlock trade, hit 11 homers, drove in 59 runs and batted .293 in 150 games. On the mound, no one pitcher dominated but six Pirate hurlers—Blyleven, Candelaria, Kison, Romo, Jim Bibby and Kent Tekulve—reached double figures in wins. Tekulve, the tall, thin right-handed reliever who threw from down under, saved 31 games to go with his 10 wins in a mind-boggling 94 appearances.

But it wasn’t the numbers that were the sum of the Pirate parts. Rather, it was the atmosphere and the spirit that separated the Bucs from their division rivals. Reminiscent of the Pirate teams from the early ’70s, with players getting on one another with abandon night after night, the ’79 squad had its own brand of no-holds-barred clubhouse camaraderie that was a sight—and a sound—to behold. Bartirome, the longtime trainer, had been present for both eras and said that while the teams of the early ’70s were close, they couldn’t compare to the ’79 club in that respect. “I have a World Series ring from 1979 and on one side of it, it says, ‘We Are Family.’ And that’s just exactly the way it happened. There was no dissension. The ’79 team was like they were put together in heaven because they got along so well. The early ’70s teams got along well, but there wasn’t the cohesion that the ’79 team had.”⁴

And the ringmaster of it all was Stargell. “Anything that happened in the clubhouse that was funny, he was in the middle of it,” Bartirome said. “But he gave more than he received. That whole club was crazy. I was the trainer but I really wasn’t the trainer—I was the psychiatrist. I was the zookeeper. They were all crazy—the craziest bunch of guys I ever met in my life. Ed Ott, Candelaria, Jim Rooker, Enrique Romo—every one of them was nuts. But they’d all go along. And it’s tough to have 25 guys live together all summer and work together and not have a fight. But there was nothing. Everything that happened was some kind of a joke.” Bartirome believed that attitude definitely showed up in the standings. “They never thought they were gonna lose. It didn’t matter who was hurt—when they walked out on the field, they knew they were going to win that game. Lots of people don’t remember this, but when Foli was hurt the last month of the year, Dale Berra had to play and he played the hell out of the game. He really stepped up because we didn’t have anybody else to play shortstop and we needed him. And he did it. Omar Moreno had the best year of his life. Bill Robinson had the year of his life. Mike Easler, John Milner—those guys were crazy, but all they thought about was winning.”

The outstanding talent, mixed with the fun-loving and confident nature, made the Bucs fan favorites. But when one other ingredient—an iconic disco-based anthem—was added to the recipe, the ’79 Pirates became an unforgettable creation. Greg Brown, now a Pirates broadcaster and then an intern in the team’s promotions department while studying at what was then Point Park College in Pittsburgh, was responsible for running any number of errands in the clubhouse as well as taking care of in-game entertainment and the sound system at Three Rivers Stadium. In between organist Vince Lascheid’s offerings, Brown would spin records designed to go along with a particular development. For example, when the reed-thin and rubber-armed Tekulve would come on in relief, Brown would play “Rubber Band Man” by the Spinners. When the Pirates beat the Cubs, he would put on “The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace. A win over the Braves? “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” by Vicki Lawrence. “It was kind of scripted,” Brown said. Occasionally, Brown’s duties would take him inside the Pirates’ clubhouse and he noticed one song in particular would often be playing there—a song by the group Sister Sledge titled “We Are Family.” Brown mentioned to his boss that perhaps he should play the song during one of the in-game breaks, but his boss, Steve Schanwald, said it wouldn’t be a good idea. “He said, ‘It sounds like a disco song and we’re not into disco here,’” Brown recalled of Schanwald, who went on to become a front-office executive with the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association. But Brown’s instincts said otherwise. One day, he asked his older brother, who was going shopping, to pick up a copy of the Sister Sledge album. And then one night, following a dramatic comeback victory, Brown threw caution to the wind and cranked it up over the stadium sound system. The place went crazy. Virtually overnight, the fans adopted the song. And it became the soundtrack to the ’79 championship season.

“It was Willie (Stargell) who made it the theme song in the clubhouse, but it never went public until we started playing it in the stadium,” Brown recalled. “And from that point on, about mid-summer, we just blared it on the sound system. We’d put that record on and blast it. Almost everyone would stay in the stadium to dance to the sounds of it. It all happened at once—it was playing in the clubhouse, it was playing in the stadium.”⁵ Lanny Frattare, the longtime Pirates broadcaster who was in his fourth season with the team that year, said the family atmosphere that Stargell cultivated certainly helped in the clubhouse, and that might have aided several key platoon situations on the field as well—most notably with Milner and Robinson in left field and Ott and Nicosia behind the plate. Frattare heard plenty of ribbing that went on in the clubhouse “and there’s probably a lot of stories about that clubhouse that we don’t know about,” he said. “They were smart enough to know what they wanted to show to the media and not show to the media. Even the ‘We Are Family’—I think some players were disappointed that what had become the clubhouse song found its way out into the stadium. It was their clubhouse song. But there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that because that was shared with the public, it gave the public a chance to share a lot of the atmosphere about what went on with ‘The Family.’”⁶

Like Frattare, Brown had plenty of opportunities to see the ’79 Pirates in action—not just on the field, but in the clubhouse before games. With a roster that included players from Panama, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and the Netherlands in addition to the United States, the club featured a veritable racial potpourri that—in the wrong hands, under the wrong leaders—could have been explosive in all the wrong ways. Instead, the pre-game gatherings might have been even more impressive than what took place between the white lines—and that was mighty memorable in its own right. It was an act that played nowhere else in baseball, according to those who were lucky enough to be a part of it. Not only were there verbal hijinks, but Stargell had taken to awarding what he called “Stargell Stars”—small gold stars that players could affix to their black pillbox caps. Essentially, the stars were handed out in appreciation for a positive contribution of any kind. The players did not take them lightly. “We fought for those stars,” Bill Robinson said. “Those were precious. If he forgot to give you one, we’d be at his locker saying, ‘Willie, I did this’ or ‘Willie, I did that.’ To get those stars from your leader and captain, that was special.”⁷

The stars also caught the public’s imagination—who couldn’t relate to getting a gold star for a job well done?—and along with “We Are Family” only added to the club’s growing mystique. Stargell said the idea for the “Stargell Stars” germinated after he had dinner with a friend and his wife who had taken to giving out stickers that looked like roses whenever someone did something that impressed him. Stargell liked the idea and mentioned that he might like to do something like that for his teammates. The friend had a catalog with numerous stickers, and when they came upon the page with a “star” sticker on it, all three of them said, “’That’s it!’” Stargell recalled nearly 20 years later. “With my name being Stargell, the star was a natural fit.” Stargell said he didn’t want to decide who would receive the stars, so—after getting Tanner’s permission—he chose to have a different player decide who should get the stars each week. “That way, it wouldn’t be that people were getting them just because they were close to me,” Stargell said. “The idea just kind of took off, especially when we made it to the World Series.”⁸

It wasn’t just the fans who got caught up with it; the players were having just as good a time with the ’79 club. “Ask anyone who went through the Pirate clubhouse and then played on another club—you never had the fun that you had in the Pirate clubhouse,” Kison said. “The clubhouse presence was a form of entertainment in itself.” Ott, who started 103 games behind the plate that year, spent seven of his eight big-league seasons in the Pirate clubhouse and said he didn’t realize what he had until he finished his career in Anaheim with the California Angels. That was a strong club—in fact, with players like Rod Carew, Freddie Lynn, Don Baylor, Brian Downing, Rick Burleson and Butch Hobson, the Angels might have had more raw ability than the ’79 Pirates. “But we went nowhere,” Ott said of the ’81 Angels, who finished fourth in the first half and sixth in the second half of that strike-truncated season. “Why? We didn’t have the unity of saying this is a team effort and we’re gonna do things we have to do in order to be successful. That’s the difference between the ’79 Pirates and the ’81 Angels. In ’79, we knew what we had to do in order to perform for the best of the team. The California Angels, they wanted to perform the best they could for themselves.

“In ’79, the chemistry we had was the most important element. Did we have a good ballclub? Yes. Did we have the best? No. If you matched our starting rotation against Baltimore’s, we shouldn’t have won a game. And we ended up winning the World Series. And we did it because everyone stayed within himself. Me hitting seventh, I knew what I had to do. Garner at number 8 knew what he had to do. And Stargell at number 4, and so on. We all stayed within ourselves. That came from the camaraderie of the ballclub. I never played with any club that was so close-knit. We respected each other, monitored each other, took care of each other. If Parker made a mistake, someone would go to him at the end of the game and say, ‘You gotta do better.’ If I had a passed ball that cost us a game, someone would come to me and say, ‘You gotta do better.’ Today, no one wants to monitor themselves. If one player goes up and says something to someone else, the other guy will want to fight. That’s not what it’s all about.”⁹

Ott said the ’79 Pirates had the best of two leadership worlds in Stargell and Parker. “Willie led by example,” Ott said. “He very rarely raised his voice or got into confrontations. The other was Parker and they had two very different styles of leading. Willie was a very confident individual. David, in my opinion, was a very insecure person, so he had to be boastful in order for him to perform at the highest level. We had two leaders. When we got into brawls, we took on Parker’s attitude. When we really got serious about winning and trying to get the little things done, we took on Willie’s personality.” Parker certainly appreciated Stargell’s example. “He only spoke out when he had to,” Parker said. “He was a practical joker—he made the clubhouse fun. I led in a different manner. I was more of a guy who would get ’em up. I was the sergeant at arms. That was my role. I got ’em up by verbalizing, yelling, screaming. Willie held on his own accord. He was a silent leader and when he said something, everybody listened. But we both got the job done.”¹⁰

The two different leadership styles didn’t run counter to one another, but rather they seemed to mesh nicely in the clubhouse, particularly in the latter part of the ’70s. “People have different personalities and sometimes those personalities fit together,” Parker said. “One thing we had jointly—we cared about each other as teammates and people. The ’79 team was just that—a family. I don’t think you could ever duplicate that feeling, that camaraderie, again. Garner was the clubhouse lawyer—that was his role. He tried to keep stuff going, playing one player off against another. He tried to verbalize—he was one who would challenge me, but I would chop him up every day. And he liked it. He was a masochist. He couldn’t verbalize. That was something everyone looked forward to.”

The verbal brawling that took place in the clubhouse before games is the stuff of legend. Perhaps the two biggest players, at least in terms of the clubhouse shenanigans, were Parker and Garner. The two men couldn’t have been more different. Parker was a giant, a heavily muscled African American man generously listed at 6-foot-5, 230 pounds, who played high school baseball in Cincinnati. The 5-foot-10, 175-pound Garner, who referred to himself as “a poor white boy,” was born in Jefferson City, Tennessee. But when the two verbally squared off in the clubhouse before games, it was sheer magic. Their verbal sparring actually began within minutes of Garner’s arrival in spring training in 1977, just after the Pirates acquired him from Oakland in exchange for Giusti, Medich and several prospects. “When I walked into the clubhouse in Bradenton, the first guy I see is Jim Bibby. Then Stargell walks in a little later. Bibby’s 6–6, 250 and Stargell’s 6–3, 250. Then Parker comes walking in at 6–5. These guys were massive. Parker looks at me and his comment was, ‘How could we trade four black guys for one little itty bitty gray boy?’ That was the first thing he ever said to me.” It wasn’t the last time he said it, either. Parker kept harping on Garner about the trade until finally Garner had enough. “I finally turned around and said, “There’s a good reason why they needed a white boy here—we have to have someone to tell you what to do.’ Stargell started laughing at that one.”

As it turned out, Parker and Garner became good friends, and their needling became part of the routine on the way to a championship two years later. Garner would insist on verbally sparring with Parker, even though he knew he was no match. “Not only was he bigger and stronger physically, but he’s very smart and very articulate and you couldn’t get the best of him in a verbal battle either,” Garner said. “He’s just quicker.” Parker would often bring up what he believed to be mistreatment that he felt he and other black players were receiving. Garner and others knew that Stargell and other black players of his generation had suffered just as much if not more abuse and racial discrimination, but many of them—Stargell included—opted to internalize those difficulties. “They had to sit in the back of the bus and couldn’t go in the same restaurants,” Garner said. “Willie couldn’t stay in the same hotels or eat in the same restaurants in the minor leagues. He grew up in baseball with that, but he suppressed it. Guys like Stargell and Bibby internalized some of the ugly things that happened.”

Parker did not, but the back-and-forth agitation in the clubhouse didn’t seem to bother Stargell, and in fact Garner said Stargell encouraged that type of banter. “But he had a way of not letting it escalate into hatred or fighting,” Garner said. “That was the real key. That’s what happened with that team and why we ended up being so good. The majority of the credit goes to Stargell, and Tanner deserves some, too. It became like group therapy. In any other situation without a guy like Stargell, there would have been a racial tension deal. Black vs. white. That’s where it would have gone. Black vs. white. It couldn’t have been anything other than that. But Stargell was somehow able to monitor everything. If it went one way or the other too much, he had a great way of bringing it back to the center and putting a little levity in it. He had a great way of diffusing potentially difficult situations with a bit of sly humor. And he included everyone in the deal. He allowed the black guys to get off their chest the anger for the wrongful treatment they had received. But it was also an environment where a white guy could say, ‘You’ve gone too far—I understand, but you’ve gone too far.’ Stargell monitored that group therapy and he was brilliant with it. That’s why we called him ‘Pops.’”¹¹

While Stargell was a presence, not many players targeted him for ribbing. “The only guys who ever said anything to Willie were Parker or Sanguillen,” said Don Robinson, a young right-handed pitcher. “Nobody ever got on Willie. And it was never Willie giving it to someone. He’d do it in a different way. He would not yell and scream. He would talk to you in a low manner and make you feel good. Even if you were going bad, he’d try to make you feel good.”¹² Garner said Parker would throw a jab or two in Willie’s direction. “And now and then we’d try to do it,” he said. “But he was held in such high esteem, people didn’t go after him very often.”

Garner said he considered Stargell a renaissance man; his love of fine wine was just one way that manifested itself. “He was really marvelous. For a young guy like me, relatively new to the big leagues, he had what I would call great elegance. He knew fine restaurants. He had figured out how to live. He put a lot of the ugliness from earlier in his life behind him; he chose to go forward and not look back. If you wanted to talk about ugly things, he could. But he wouldn’t do it out of anger—he’d do it in a way that people didn’t know any better. It elevated him in my eyes and I think other people might have looked at it that way, too.” Garner said that rather than “fire” on the people who mistreated him, Stargell chalked it up to his persecutors not knowing any better. “That elevated him to a higher status,” Garner said. “At a time when civil rights was in its infancy and you had the Black Panthers and other groups in the early ’70s, with all the anger coming out, Stargell was one of the cooler heads on the planet.”

If Stargell had chosen to go the other way and let his anger guide him, Garner said, he could have been just as influential in a negative fashion. Instead, he sang a different tune, one to which Garner could relate despite their obvious racial differences. The reason? Garner felt he, too, had been discriminated against while growing up poor in rural Tennessee—and he claimed that discrimination didn’t end, even after he made it to the big leagues. “I couldn’t get into some of the more prestigious academic schools because I was a poor white boy from east Tennessee,” he said. “Plenty of doors were not open to me, either.” Garner also claimed he was “blackballed” from a Pittsburgh country club because of his background. “Who do I blame? It can’t be because I’m black. I was a poor white baseball player. I wasn’t a doctor or a lawyer.”

One of Stargell’s great qualities was his desire to include everyone in the act. For example, Garner said Stargell would go out of his way to softly needle Omar Moreno, the ultra-quiet Panamanian centerfielder. “We’d get on the bus going to the ballpark and Willie always had a little something to say to Omar. ‘Omar, is your room OK? I don’t know if they treat Panamanians well here.’ When we’d go into Montreal, we used to drive along the river going out to Olympic Stadium. At one point along the way, there was a pole that stuck out of the river about five feet. It looked like a periscope if you just glanced at it quickly. One day, Willie said, ‘Hey Omar, that’s a Panamanian submarine over there, trying to attack the United States. Those dirty sons of guns, they’re lost.’ So every time we’d go to Montreal, we couldn’t wait to go on the bus and hear Willie make a comment about the Panamanian submarine that got lost trying to blow up the United States. That’s how Willie was.”

Stargell didn’t just help the regulars; he made sure that the little-used players were a part of the action, even though several Pirates said Tanner had an unwritten rule that young players should only be seen and not heard—unless they were spoken to. “He took the rookies on like they were his own kids,” Blyleven said. “I remember one time on a bus, Willie asked Dale Berra if he’d ever eaten a fish called carp and Dale said no. So Willie says, ‘Let me tell you how to cook it up. Go down to the lumber store and get this good piece of redwood, two inches high. This carp you’re gonna catch is two feet long. Set the oven at 400, then take the carp, clean it up, gut it and everything.’ Then he describes all the spices and herbs that Dale is going to put on this piece of redwood with the carp on top. He’s going on and on and Dale’s sitting there with his mouth open, listening to how he’s going to eat this carp. Willie says, ‘After you cook it for 20 minutes, you broil it and get it all good and crispy. And then when it’s all said and done, Dale, you take it out of the oven, you throw the carp away and eat the redwood.’ He had us rolling. It was unbelievable. It was Willie. And his love of life.”¹³

Nicosia, who platooned with Ott behind the plate in his first full season in the big leagues in ’79, said he had been around Stargell for several years during spring training before he made the big club, and initially he wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was real. “When he talked to you, he made you feel special, and it didn’t matter if you were the guy emptying the trash or cleaning out the bathrooms or the president of the United States. He greeted you with a smile and treated you with respect. At first, it made you wonder. But the longer you got to know him, the more you realized this was not a façade. This is the real deal. That’s how he treated everybody. That’s how he became so revered. People just loved the guy.”¹⁴

Stargell’s influence was well known throughout the game; former Pirate players who had shared a clubhouse with Stargell told their new teammates and it became common knowledge. Rudy May, who grew up near Stargell’s boyhood home in Alameda and worked out with Stargell during the off-seasons before Stargell relocated permanently to Pittsburgh, said he imagined the influence Stargell had on the Pirates was similar to the influence Thurman Munson wielded over the New York Yankees clubhouse. “When I was first traded to the Yankees, it was really weird how Thurman and I bonded,” May said. “I was older than Thurman but it wasn’t very long before I looked up to him as a leader on the field. So then you start to talk to people in the game—players and coaches—and it starts to get around what a great influence Stargell was in all of his teammates’ lives, simply because he took a personal interest in all the guys on the ballclub. The manager has to have a leader in uniform on the field that he can go to to get things done with certain players. And Stargell was that guy. And everyone on every team knew that.”¹⁵ Although Stargell certainly was an understanding and sensitive man, Nicosia said the big slugger was not all smiles, handshakes and pats on the back. “A lot of people have asked me about Chuck Tanner and while he was our guy, he didn’t have to do a lot of discipline or say much to anybody. If you didn’t run a ball out, or if you were out late or not getting the job done on the field, you had to go through Stargell. He didn’t say a whole lot, but all he had to do was look at you from his end of the bench and you knew it was time to straighten up. That’s the kind of presence he had, both on the field and in the clubhouse. I’ll never forget this one day, I was in my second or third year and feeling kind of cocky; I was a big-league veteran. I hit a lazy fly ball and jogged around first base, and then turned and headed back toward the dugout at Three Rivers. And Pops is standing there. All he did was give me that look of his, like he was scolding one of his children. He never said a word. But I knew. That was the last time I ever did it. He would be standing at the dugout waiting for you.”

But Stargell would also stand up for the young players if they needed a boost. Nicosia recalled one incident early in spring training during his rookie season when he was catching Dock Ellis during batting practice. Ellis, like all pitchers at that stage of spring training, was throwing nothing but fastballs and after Stargell had touched him for four or five straight homers, Ellis surprised Stargell—and Nicosia—by unleashing a big breaking curve ball, which bounced in the dirt in front of home plate and caught Nicosia in the throat. “Stargell stopped and walked out to the mound, whispered something to Dock and turned around and walked back,” Nicosia said. “I didn’t know what was going on; I was so embarrassed that I didn’t catch the ball and I had this lump in my throat. About an hour after the workout was over, Dock came up to me and apologized—and he didn’t apologize to anyone. He said, ‘Hey, catch’—he didn’t even know my name—‘Sorry—Pop told me what I did out there wasn’t cool, so I apologize.’ That was the kind of stuff Stargell did. He didn’t make a big deal out of it, but here he is, telling a 10-year vet to apologize to a rookie. You had to be around him every day to realize what he meant to everybody.”

Stargell’s influence wasn’t confined to the clubhouse, bus rides to and from ballparks, offering needed direction to young players momentarily losing their focus or arranging for apologies from veteran players to rookies. On the field, he delivered—and did so in a big way in 1979. Even at an advanced age, he continued to be a force at the plate. “He was a tremendous hitter,” Parker said of Stargell. “He would have hit .300 every year if he hadn’t tried to hit for power. He was maximizing his swing just about every time a run was needed or we were behind. He knew hitting inside and out. His bat speed was tremendous. You could hear his bat go through the air like a broomstick from the on-deck circle.” Nicosia said it was most evident from behind the plate. “Nobody else had that swoosh sound coming through the zone. The sound the bat made from his shoulder to meeting the baseball was something else. You could hear the bat go through the zone.” Garner said if you walked into a ballpark during batting practice, you’d know when Stargell was hitting in the cage. “There was just a different sound coming from his bat,” he said. “A different bat speed. You’d get a louder, better crack of the bat when he hit the ball.”

Parker maintains that when he was negotiating his contract before the 1978 season, Pirates management indicated that Stargell—coming off two straight sub-par seasons—might not be part of the plan. “I told them me and Willie had a dream of being in a World Series together. If Willie’s not there, I didn’t want to be there. We had that kind of relationship. I ended up signing, and he stayed. It was poetic justice. And then in ’79 he won the MVP.”

It was more than his power and bat speed that continued to make Stargell a dangerous hitter, even at 39. It was his cerebral approach that played a major role in his success. Garner recalled an incident when the Pirates were playing in St. Louis against the Cardinals and Stargell was facing Darold Knowles, who relied more on guile in the form of a changeup and slider than velocity to get hitters out. “They bring Knowles in to face Stargell in the seventh inning with a couple guys on base and Darold strikes him out with a changeup in the dirt. I’m standing there and Willie walks back and calmly puts his helmet in the rack. He says, ‘I’ll hit that changeup next time. I’ll hit it a long way.’ Well, it’s the ninth inning and Knowles is still in there and Stargell comes up. He throws a slider for strike one, then a fastball, and maybe a ball or two. Then here comes the changeup, six inches off the ground and Stargell hits it through an exit in the upper deck. It was one of the longest ones I’ve seen. Absolutely mammoth. Sure enough, it was that little changeup and Stargell hit it a mile.”

Nicosia remembered a similar episode in ’79 when the Pirates were facing the Mets and catcher John Stearns was calling pitches for right-hander Craig Swan. “The first pitch, Swan throws a fastball 88 miles an hour right down the middle and Stargell takes it for strike one,” Nicosia said. “Stearns asks him, ‘Will, what were you looking for?’ and Stargell looks at him and says, ‘It was not in my zone.’ Next pitch—fastball again, middle of the plate, he takes it for strike two. Stearns asks him, ‘Were you looking for something else again?’ and Willie says, ‘Not in my zone.’ He throws a ball, then throws a curve about ready to bounce—a 59-footer. But he’s a dead low-ball hitter, down and in. And he golfs it into the upper deck at Shea Stadium. He’s rounding the bases and comes down the third base line and says to Stearns, ‘Now that one was in my zone.’ That’s what Stargell would do—he’d look for a certain pitch in a certain zone and that was it.”

While the Pirates were fashioning a reputation as a rollicking, rabble-rousing group that knew how to cut up and have a good time, behind it all they were a seriously competitive bunch. Peterson, the general manager, said every player on that team was a fierce competitor. “They hated to lose. But when they did lose, it was still a happy-go-lucky type atmosphere. I think Willie played a part in that. He would say, ‘OK, we got beat today but we’ll win tomorrow.’ It wasn’t, ‘We got beat today and that’ll carry over to tomorrow.’ It was, ‘This loss was forgotten about and we’ll win tomorrow.’ It showed in the World Series when we were down three games to one. Baltimore had a good ballclub but the atmosphere around the clubhouse was, ‘We’re still gonna win this thing.’”¹⁶

It was a lesson that many Pirate players carried with them after they left the ballclub and went elsewhere. Ott, who stayed in the game and eventually wound up managing a team in the independent Can-Am League in New Jersey, said he attempted to pass that philosophy—the one he learned from Stargell—on to his players. “I tried to get them to understand that at the end of the game, it’s over. Once the last out is made, it’s history. And you can’t do anything about history. You have to look to the future. Put your heads in your lockers for five minutes, go over the things you did right and the things you did wrong. For the things you did wrong, you think about how you can correct them. For the things you did right, you try to remember them. But once you bring your heads out of your lockers, the game is over. If you bring yesterday’s game to today, an 0-for-4 can turn into an 0-for-8. Forget it—it’s history. It’s over and done. That’s basically what Willie taught me.”

Don Robinson, who won 14 games as a 21-year-old rookie in 1978 and played a key role on the ’79 club, said soon after his arrival in Pittsburgh, Stargell sat him down and offered some friendly advice. “He told me if I wanted to stay in the big leagues a long time, I had to be able to accept the failure part of the game. The success part, he said, was easy to accept. But things were gonna happen—you were gonna get whacked and beat up some time. It’s how you come back from those failures that determines how long you’re going to stay in the big leagues. I spent 15 years in the big leagues. I guess I took what he said to heart because I had never really thought of it that way. Never in my whole career up to that point had I gotten hit very hard. Maybe once or twice. But he was telling me it was gonna happen.”¹⁷

Pirate players to a man say that one of Stargell’s greatest attributes was his ability to somehow release pressure that his teammates might be feeling. In Game 1 of the 1979 National League Championship Series against the Reds, Tanner summoned the young Robinson from the bullpen in the bottom of the 11th with runners at first and second and two outs. The Pirates were holding a 5–2 lead that Stargell provided with a three-run homer in the top half of the inning, but Robinson was a bit amped and walked the first batter he faced to load the bases. “I was throwing hard,” he said. “Willie came over and said a few words and put a grin on my face and took all the pressure off. After that, I kind of relaxed. This was the most important game of my career and he made me start laughing. I’m sure I’m not the only one.” After the game, Stargell was asked what he told Robinson on his visit to the mound. “I asked him if he wanted to play first base and let me pitch,” he told the media. “He laughed. He knew I was only kidding him.”¹⁸

While Robinson came up through the Pirate system, Rooker was obtained in a trade in 1972 and recalled that Stargell was one of the first Pirates he met after joining the club. “It didn’t take long for Willie to make you feel comfortable, to make you feel like you were part of the team,” he said. “You didn’t really have to earn your way even though you wanted to prove you belonged there. He wasn’t the type of person who made you prove yourself.”¹⁹

When people reflect on the ’79 club and the success that it enjoyed and the way it endeared itself to Pirate fans—and baseball fans in general—perhaps the two most enduring figures are Stargell and the club’s manager, Tanner. A native of nearby New Castle, Tanner signed as an 18-year-old with the Boston Braves in 1946 and spent nearly a decade in the minor leagues before making his major-league debut in 1955 at the age of 26 with Milwaukee. In that game, he homered in his very first big-league at-bat, against the Cincinnati Reds’ Gerry Staley, pinch-hitting for future Hall of Famer Warren Spahn. Tanner’s homer tied the game, which the Braves eventually won 4–3. He wound up spending parts of eight seasons in the big leagues and finished with a .261 career batting average. But it was in the dugout where Tanner earned his reputation, managing four clubs over 19 years, including his hometown Pirates for nine of them. Being a Pittsburgh area guy, Tanner was well aware of Stargell when Tanner came over from Oakland to manage the Pirates for the 1977 season. “He was a star,” Tanner said of the slugger. “He was a quiet leader. He just went about his job. He was getting older, so I kind of babied him that first year. I didn’t want to kill him. I’d just give him days off here, days off there. He had bad knees and I wouldn’t overuse him. He never complained. He knew he couldn’t be in there every day. His legs wouldn’t let him. He was 37 years old.”²⁰

Stargell had played sparingly in ’77—just 63 games—but Tanner liked what he saw. “I thought he did a good job that year. I was pleased. He made the other players better. They had a chance to watch him play and at the same time they got their rest. Against certain pitchers, I’d play guys they had good luck against. Some of the guys they had problems with, I’d play Stargell. I’d try to pick my spots, not just for Willie, but for Bill Robinson and others. I tried to use their pluses—and I used everybody.” And if Stargell wasn’t in the regular lineup, he always posed a major threat off the bench as a pinch hitter. Tanner would look for strategic spots to use him; he’d never insert him with first base open, for example, because the opposing pitcher would simply walk Stargell. “I put him in when people had to pitch to him,” Tanner said. “But people were afraid of him. They’d even want to walk him with runners at first and second.”

While Stargell’s playing time was somewhat limited in ’77, Tanner found a way to get his bat into 122 games in 1978, and Stargell responded with 28 homers and 97 RBIs. Tanner used a similar approach in ’79, as Stargell played in 126 games and produced similar numbers (32 home runs, 82 RBIs). “Down the stretch, I played him every game,” Tanner said of Stargell. “He said, ‘I feel good.’ I said, ‘That’s all I want to hear—you’re in there every day.’ And he said, ‘I’m ready.’ When I played him, he felt strong—he acted like he was 29. He appreciated the way I used him. I really believe that using him the way I did kept him feeling like he was 29, not 39. That’s what made him so effective.” The two talked often; Tanner wanted to keep his finger on Stargell’s playing pulse. “I’d ask him, ‘How do you feel today, Willie?’ Sometimes he’d say, ‘I feel great.’ Sometimes he’d say his knee or his back or his shoulder was bothering him and I’d say, ‘All right—be ready in case I need you coming off the bench.’ We communicated a lot.” Tanner obviously appreciated Stargell’s leadership qualities, but said it was his ability to produce that was the key. “When the other players see that, it gives them more incentive to do well,” he said. “They realize he’s busting his tail. Here’s a guy 39 years old and he’s going out there and winning games for us. Parker was just as important in his own way, though. He was a leader, too—he led us with 95 RBIs and had 25 homers.”

It sounds like the hokiest of clichés, but the Pirates truly were a team that season, as Tanner had a wealth of players who could perform at multiple positions—and perform well. Players like Milner and Bill Robinson could play both first base and the outfield; the young Berra provided some middle infield depth, and even Garner saw action at shortstop in addition to second base and third base. Matt Alexander, an outfielder by trade, was used almost exclusively as a pinch runner; he scored more runs (16) and stole as many bases (13) as he had at-bats that year, but he appeared in 44 games. “It was just a well-rounded group,” Tanner said of his team. “You know that ‘We Are Family’ song? That’s what we really were. They all fed off one another. But Stargell was the quiet man on top.” Tanner did not discourage the “We Are Family” talk. “I loved it. That’s what you want—a family. They argued all day in the clubhouse and then went out there like a family and they played to win. That’s what we were like.”

Tanner was often shown smiling and acting as a benevolent leader when it came to guiding his group, but he said he was hardly a softy. “They’d ask Parker about me always smiling and Parker would say, ‘Don’t go in a room with him by yourself because he’s the only one who’ll come out.’ Don’t give me that smile shit. Maybe for the news media and the TV reporters. But in my clubhouse, that was my team. And Willie knew. He had a way to get his point across, a way to get to people.”

It wasn’t so much that Stargell had one way to reach people—he somehow found what made each person tick and could make the connection when needed, Tanner said. “That’s what you have to do because everyone’s different,” Tanner said. “There were a couple of guys I could hammer, some I’d pat on the back and some I wouldn’t. Some guys you kick, some guys you hug. He knew stuff about each individual. And to me, that’s the key to how you communicate. Take Ed Ott—I could scream at him and get in his face. But Omar Moreno, you could never yell at. It’d break his heart—he’d be afraid to do anything. So I’d hug him.”

Tanner said his ’79 team had a once-in-a-lifetime personality and it was the club’s resilience that separated it from other teams he managed. “We’d be losing by two runs in the sixth inning and Stargell would say, ‘They don’t even know—they think they’re ahead but they’re really behind.’ We came back 25 times to win that year. We just had that kind of attitude.” One of the most amazing comebacks occurred on August 11 against the Phillies at Veterans Stadium. The Pirates trailed 8–0, and Madlock—still relatively new to the club—wondered aloud why Tanner wasn’t pulling some of his regulars to give them some much-needed rest. “And Tony Bartirome said, ‘The game isn’t over yet,’” Tanner recalled. “Stargell’s sitting on the top step of the dugout and he says, ‘Let’s go, men, let’s show them what the Buccos are made of.’” The Pirates rallied for five runs in the fifth to make it 8–5, then pushed across four in the seventh to take a 9–8 lead. They nursed that lead for another inning before Ott smashed a grand slam off the Phillies’ ace reliever, Tug McGraw, and the Pirates held on for a 14–11 win. Afterward, a bemused Tanner was entertaining questions from disbelieving Philadelphia writers. “How did that happen?” one writer asked. “They just don’t give up,” Tanner said. “They believe they can win. That’s the way they’ve been since I’ve been here. I know that people laugh at me. They make fun of me in the papers, and on radio and TV. They laugh. I know that. But that’s the way it is.”²¹

And when they wrapped up the division title on the season’s final day on September 30, the players all celebrated and more than a few tipped their hat to their elder statesman—number 8—who helped carry them down the stretch. Milner, who played for the ’73 Mets team that won the NL title, saw Stargell shed a few tears in the clubhouse after the regular-season finale and was touched. “I watched Willie Mays cry in 1973 and we dedicated the playoffs to him,” Milner said amid pouring champagne that followed the regular-season finale, “and I watched Willie Stargell cry today, and we’re dedicating these playoffs to him.”²²

The playoffs brought a foe familiar to Stargell and a couple of other Pirate holdovers from the early- to mid–70s teams: the Cincinnati Reds. But unlike 1970, 1972 and 1975, the Pirates had Cincinnati’s number—sweeping the Reds out of the playoffs in three games just as Cincinnati had swept the Bucs in 1970 and 1975. In the opener at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, the two teams battled to a 2–2 standoff through 10 innings as Candelaria and Tom Seaver matched wits, but in the 11th, Foli and Parker opened with singles off the Reds’ Tom Hume, and Stargell—who lugged a career .220 playoff batting average into the game—followed by hitting the first pitch over the right-center wall for what proved to be the game-winning three-run homer. Tanner was not surprised Stargell came through in the clutch. “This is what he’s done for me ever since I’ve been here,” he said later. “Willie’s come up with the big hit, time and time again, for us. In my opinion, he’s the Most Valuable Player in the National League.”²³

Nine innings weren’t enough to settle Game 2, either. Thanks to a couple of timely hits and a strong seven-inning performance from Bibby, the Pirates took a 2–1 lead into the bottom of the ninth behind their ace reliever Tekulve. But with one out, Hector Cruz and Dave Collins smacked back-to-back doubles to tie the game and send it into extra innings. Then, in the 10th, Moreno led off with a single, moved to second on Foli’s sacrifice bunt and scored on Parker’s base hit, and Don Robinson retired the side in order in the bottom of the inning to send the Pirates back to Pittsburgh with a 2–0 series lead.

No such drama ensued two days later in Pittsburgh in Game 3, thanks in part to Blyleven, who tamed the Reds on eight hits, and Stargell, who hit a solo homer in the third and then cracked a two-run double in the fourth that turned a 4–0 lead into a 6–0 edge that ultimately finished in a 7–1 series-clinching win. However, there were some theatrics, as a group of Pirate wives leaped onto a cement wall behind home plate during the seventh inning stretch and began boogying to “We Are Family.” “I thought it was something they deserved,” said Stargell, who was named the playoffs Most Valuable Player after hitting a pair of home runs, driving in six runs and posting an NLCS-record 1.182 slugging percentage. “When you’ve got high-strung athletes around, coming in at all times, they’re mother and father most of the time. They deserve as many stars as we get. To look up there and see them letting it go, I was very happy.” He was also elated for the win and a ticket to his second World Series—another matchup with the Baltimore Orioles. “If they took a picture of my body,” he said, “it would show goosebumps everywhere. The good Lord lets us shed tears at touching moments, and that’s what transpired with me. I wish there was a way to thank every fan individually.”²⁴ It took an hour before Stargell was finished with media interviews and then he finally made it into the Pirate clubhouse, where he talked about how proud he was of his teammates—his Fam-A-Lee members. “These guys,” he said. “They made it happen.”²⁵

Stargell told reporters it was the loose clubhouse atmosphere that played a key role in the club’s success up to that point. “We feel we can have fun in the clubhouse, and that way there’s no way we can wrap ourselves up so tight that we’ll go onto the field and do things unnaturally. The Series will be like this. We’ll be out there playing good country baseball. Nothing fancy. If we keep that up, we’ll give Baltimore a good Series.”²⁶

But after Game 4 of the Series had ended, it looked like the Pirates had done exactly the opposite. In Game 1, Kison—traditionally a big-game pitcher—surrendered five runs in the first inning and the Orioles held on to win 5–4. The Pirates outhit the O’s 11–6, and Baltimore managed just one hit after the second inning. Stargell did his part, driving in a run with an infield out and then hitting a solo homer in the eighth that trimmed the margin to one run, but he also popped out to short left field with Parker on third base and two outs in the top of the ninth inning to end the game. While Kison did not pitch well, he was also betrayed somewhat by his defense. Garner, for example, fielded a potential double-play ground ball with the bases loaded, and threw it—as he said—“like a bar of soap” beyond shortstop Foli and into left field, allowing two runs to score. “The ball was wet and my fingers were numb with cold,” Garner told reporters later, referring to the 40-degree game-time temperature, which followed intermittent rain and snow earlier in the day—a continuation of the type of weather that forced Game 1 to be pushed back a day. “I couldn’t feel the stitches and get a grip on the ball.”²⁷

Garner was disconsolate after the game—and it was just the type of situation where Stargell was known to work his attitude adjustment magic. Although he didn’t preach to his teammates, he seemed to have a knack for knowing when one of them needed a pick-me-up. Garner needed just that following Game 1. Even 30 years later he believed his throwing error “cost Kison three runs and probably cost us the game. If I make the play, they don’t score. So I’m feeling pretty crappy. I sit down on the bus after the game and Willie sits down beside me. I’m looking out the window. He coughs. I turn around and look at him. Now, take your index finger and bend it toward the palm of your hand and stick your knuckle in your nose hole. That’s what he was doing. And he says, ‘You know, in the ’71 World Series, I made an error and I cut my finger off.’ He said it with such a deadpan delivery. I started laughing. That’s all he did. That’s leadership. That wasn’t a rah-rah speech. I think there’s a subtle way that leaders head off problems. We had players who could be volatile. You didn’t know what Parker would say and you didn’t know what I would say. But Willie had a way of guiding it into a fun sort of thing. That’s how he led. That was his style and how he did it. He did it because he was in close communication with everyone as individuals. He didn’t have to stand up and deliver a group thing, although he could speak brilliantly.”²⁸

Stargell spoke about his approach to Mike Littwin of the Los Angeles Times years later. “The game is 85 percent mental. The parts that are physical, everyone has when he comes to the big leagues. But if you’re going to make it, you have to be able to live under a microscope. You have to learn to deal with pressure. Maybe that’s part of what I do. If I see someone who isn’t dealing with the pressure, I try to loosen him up.”²⁹

Blyleven bounced back to pitch well in Game 2, limiting the Birds to five hits in six innings, and relievers Robinson and Tekulve combined to allow just one hit in the final two frames. The Pirates took a 2–0 lead off Baltimore starter Jim Palmer in the second inning on consecutive singles by Stargell, Milner and Madlock, and Ott’s sacrifice fly. Eddie Murray’s home run in the bottom of the second cut the margin in half, and his RBI double in the sixth tied the score. Then in the ninth, with two outs and nobody on, Ott singled, moved to second on Garner’s walk and scored when the veteran Sanguillen—a key cog in the ’71 club that vanquished the Orioles in the Series but now relegated to spot duty—served a soft line drive to right field for a pinch-hit single. Tekulve set the Orioles down in order in the bottom of the inning and the Pirates had evened the series at one game apiece.

The Series shifted to Pittsburgh for Game 3, and after two innings it looked as though the Pirates were off and running, scoring once in the first and twice in the second off Orioles starter Scott McGregor. But the Orioles narrowed the margin to 3–2 in the third off Candelaria and then erupted for five runs in the fourth to take a 7–3 lead on the way to an 8–4 win. The inning was punctuated by an error, a wild pitch, a hit batsman and—as in Game 1—the Pirates’ inability to convert a double play. “We’re going to have to start playing better baseball,” Garner said afterward, “or we’re not going to make it back to Baltimore.”³⁰ The frustration continued for Pittsburgh in Game 4. After scoring four runs in the second—one coming on Stargell’s solo homer—and then adding single runs in the fifth and sixth, the Pirates appeared on course to even the Series, taking a 6–3 lead into the top of the eighth inning. But a pair of singles and a walk off reliever Robinson loaded the bases and prompted Tanner to call on Tekulve with one out. The submarine-style closer was not up to the task, though, yielding two-run doubles to John Lowenstein and Terry Crowley and then surrendering a base hit to Tim Stoddard and a run-scoring groundout to Al Bumbry, giving the Orioles a 9–6 advantage. The Pirates put a pair of runners on base in the ninth to bring Ott up as the potential tying run, but Stoddard struck him out to end the game and give the Orioles what appeared to be a commanding 3–1 lead.

Afterward, Tanner stood behind his battered closer Tekulve, saying if the same situation presented itself in Game 5, he’d make the same move and bring the reliever—known as Teke—into the game. “Kent saved our life,” Tanner said. “He took us to the World Series. But today, he threw a couple of balls that didn’t sink. It was as simple as that. But I still think he’s the best reliever in baseball.” Tekulve, a standup guy, offered no excuses. “I threw the right pitches for the situation but I didn’t get the location,” he said. “The ball doesn’t always do what you want it to do.”³¹

Facing elimination at home in Game 5, the Pirates sent the veteran lefty Rooker to the mound to start—this despite the fact that he was just 4–7 with a 4.59 ERA during the regular season. “He’s the only guy I can start,” Tanner said, noting that Kison—the Game 1 starter—was unable to go because of a tender forearm. Rooker certainly had respect for his opponent. “They’ve put on a baseball clinic,” he said, referring to the Orioles’ performance in the Series’ first four games, “and we’ve watched it.”³² Through the first half of Game 5, things did not look good for Pittsburgh, but it was no fault of Rooker’s. The 37-year-old started strong, retiring 12 of the first 13 hitters he faced and, heading into the fifth inning, the game was scoreless. But in the fifth, Rooker yielded a double to Gary Roenicke and a single to Doug DeCinces, and when Rich Dauer bounced into a double play, the Orioles took a 1–0 lead. Just as Rooker was sharp early, so was Orioles starter Mike Flanagan, who allowed just two hits through the first four. Then in the sixth, the slumbering Bucco bats finally awakened. A walk to Foli, Parker’s single and Bill Robinson’s sacrifice left runners at second and third, and Stargell plated the tying run with a sacrifice fly that also moved Parker to third. Madlock then followed with a base hit to drive home the go-ahead run. Pittsburgh added two more runs in the seventh on Foli’s triple and a double by Parker and then put the game away with three in the eighth to seal a 7–1 victory. Blyleven, who came on in relief of Rooker in the sixth, was even more effective, limiting the Birds to three hits and no runs in pitching the final four innings. Rooker, who came through with a clutch performance, said the club finally played its game. “The real Pirates played today,” he said later. “The first four games, we had some no-shows. Today, we rose to the occasion.”³³

Game 6 started out just the way Game 5 did, with neither team able to muster much of an attack, as starters Candelaria and Palmer had their way with the opposing hitters. With the game scoreless through six, the Pirates finally broke through against Palmer with two runs in the seventh. Singles by Moreno and Foli set the stage, and Parker followed with an RBI single. Stargell then contributed a sacrifice fly, and that proved to be all the offense Pittsburgh would need in what ultimately proved to be a 4–0 series-evening victory. Candelaria rebounded from a sub-par Game 3 effort, yielding just six hits and no walks through six innings, and the resilient Tekulve allowed only one base runner in his three-inning save.

The Bucs’ second straight win set up a Game 7 showdown between Bibby and Scott McGregor, and brought with it all the drama that usually accompanies a winner-take-all meeting. If that wasn’t enough, hanging over Tanner’s head was the death of his mother, which occurred the same day Game 5 was played. Baltimore struck first on Dauer’s solo homer in the second and the Orioles got into the Pirate bullpen early, as Tanner called on young Don Robinson to start the fifth. He recorded two outs but also allowed a single and a walk, and Tanner then summoned Grant Jackson from the pen, and the veteran lefty escaped with no further damage. Then in the sixth, the tide turned for Pittsburgh. With one out, Bill Robinson singled to left and on the first pitch, Stargell took McGregor deep and beyond the right-field wall for a two-run homer for what proved to be the deciding runs. Stargell said later that McGregor threw him a breaking ball. “I didn’t want to commit myself on the pitch too soon. I was out in front of it, but I got the bat speed I wanted. At first, I didn’t think it would travel that far. When it did, I was just thrilled.”³⁴ McGregor tipped his hat to the Pirates’ slugger afterward. “Mr. Stargell is an amazing man,” he said. “He must be 50 years old, but God bless him, he’s just a fantastic hitter.”³⁵

Jackson worked into the eighth before yielding a pair of walks and giving way to Tekulve with one out. Stargell came in from first base to offer a few words of encouragement. “I said, ‘Teke, show how you are the best reliever there is,’” Stargell said after the game. “’And if you can’t, you play first base and I’ll pitch.’”³⁶ Tekulve induced Terry Crowley to ground out, then intentionally walked Ken Singleton to load the bases before retiring Murray on a deep fly ball to right field, preserving the 2–1 lead. In the top of the ninth, the Pirates added some insurance as Garner—who doubled to lead off the inning—scored on Moreno’s base hit, and Moreno came around to score when Bill Robinson was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. Then in the bottom of the ninth, Tekulve mowed the Orioles down, striking out Roenicke and DeCinces swinging on seven pitches combined and then getting pinch-hitter Pat Kelly to fly out to Moreno in center on the first pitch.

On the day that Mother Teresa of Calcutta won the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work with the poorest of the poor, the Pirates were champions again—becoming only the fourth team in World Series history to erase a 3–1 deficit and win a title. Stargell was brought to an interview room between the two clubhouses, where he answered questions from the media. While he was talking on a wooden platform, his sister, Sandrus Collier, made her way into the room, and Stargell spotted her sitting there. “There will be a short pause,” he said and then brother and sister embraced, and all the memories of Willie’s childhood came roaring back. He could not control his emotions and as he continued to embrace his sister, the tears came pouring out. He reached for the towel around his neck to wipe away the tears. “We’ve been together a long time and it’s been hell, but....”³⁷ The embrace earned applause from the reporters who remained in the room. Later in the clubhouse, Sandrus answered a few questions as well. “Ever since I was a little girl, I always loved my brother,” she said. “Our whole family loves him—whether he ever hits another home run or not.”³⁸

For Collier, the moment was a dream come true. She had moved to Pittsburgh the year before to help Stargell with his sickle cell anemia foundation and so she was on hand for the entire “We Are Family” magic that culminated with that moment in the clubhouse following the seventh game. Collier, like other family members, was ushered into a room while the clubhouse celebration commenced, but she went looking for Willie. She found a room and a man at the door told her she could not enter. “I said, ‘I don’t care,’” she recalled 31 years later. ‘How many people have a brother who just became the MVP of the World Series?’ He said, ‘OK.’”³⁹ So Collier made her way into the interview room and embraced her big brother. “I was very proud of him,” she said. “He had come a long way to reach that point where he was in his life and I was really happy that he had finally gotten some recognition. I always felt he was such a good baseball player. People used to talk about his strikeouts, that he was such a strikeout king. But it was nice to hear people in the stadium cheering for him. And when we got back to Pittsburgh, the people in his hometown went literally crazy.”

Before Stargell left the interview room on that victorious night in Baltimore, a reporter asked him if he ever had a moment in baseball that was more satisfying than his triumphant effort in Game 7. “One other time,” he said. “When the Pirates signed me in 1959, they gave me a $1,500 bonus and $175 a month. I was elated then. But then and now ... it’s hard to find the words to say how I feel.”⁴⁰

Stargell was named the series Most Valuable Player after hitting .400 with three home runs and seven RBIs in the seven games. He also set a series record for most extra-base hits with seven—three homers and four doubles—and finished with 25 total bases, which tied Reggie Jackson’s mark set in 1977. In the seventh game alone, he had four hits—two doubles and a single to go with his game- and series-deciding home run. None of his teammates were surprised. “He is,” Garner said, “a thoroughbred junkyard dog.”⁴¹ In addition to celebrating with real family members, Stargell defended the importance of the family-like atmosphere that the ballclub had cultivated all season long—something that several Baltimore media members had questioned earlier in the series. “Someone asked me if The Family was overrated,” Stargell said afterward. “That bothered me, because this person didn’t live with us and didn’t see how much we depended on each other. There’s really no words to put into the way I feel. We had to scratch, we had to crawl and we did it together because we are family. We didn’t mean to be sassy or fancy, but we felt the song typified our ballclub.”⁴²

Although beat writers have a tendency to be somewhat cynical at times, Donovan said the “We Are Family” theme was legitimate and Stargell took the song’s lyrics to heart. “That was all him,” he said. “The words reflected how people from different backgrounds all came together with the Pirates—and they worked together. That team made a lot of moves and had lots of people playing roles, but they all seemed to get along. It wasn’t fake or anything.” The close-knit attitude paid off when the team was staring at a three-games-to-one deficit; no finger pointing ensued but rather a determination to start playing Pirate baseball and chip away at that deficit, one game at a time. “When we were down and had to win the last three, Joe Safety, our PR guy, walks past Garner and Garner says, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?” Tanner recalled 31 years later. “And Joe says, ‘Well, you know...’ Garner says, ‘Don’t worry—we got ’em right where we want ’em.’ So we beat ’em that day and then went down there and won the last two and we’re world champs.” Donovan recalled seeing Stargell exude the same attitude with the Pirates facing elimination. “He acted as if it was just a game,” he said. “He’d be asking, ‘Who’s tight back there?’ and then they’d end up joking with one another. That was his way of saying, ‘There’s nothing to be nervous about. Just go out and play the game and things will work out the way they work out,’” Donovan said.

Amid the pandemonium of the clubhouse, Stargell recalled a former teammate, one who had set the tone for a previous Pirate championship team eight years earlier. “I thought 1971 was Roberto Clemente’s moment of glory,” he said. “He had started something with his winning, driving attitude. Whatever contribution I’ve made has been merely an extension of what he started.”⁴³

The next day, some 25,000 fans packed Market Square in downtown Pittsburgh to pay tribute to the new champions. Stargell had to wipe tears away from his eyes before he addressed the crowd. “The greatest thing we can do, is this winter when we’re all traveling, to say, ‘We are from a city that has nothing but champions.’ You people are just as responsible for our winning as we are. We really are a big family. I can’t think of another place I want to bring my kids up in.”⁴⁴