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  THE SLIDE

  LEYLAND, BONDS, AND THE STAR-CROSSED PITTSBURGH PIRATES

  RICHARD PETERSON AND STEPHEN PETERSON

  UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS

  Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260

  Copyright © 2017, University of Pittsburgh Press

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Printed on acid-free paper

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress

  ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6444-5

  ISBN 10: 0-8229-6444-9

  Jacket photograph: Copyright © Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2017, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

  Jacket design: Joel W. Coggins

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-8278-4 (electronic)

  To Everett and Adeline

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Decline and Fall of the Pirates Family: The 1980–1985 Seasons

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Unknowns Syd Thrift and Jim Leyland: The 1986–1989 Seasons

  CHAPTER THREE

  Leyland and Barry Bonds Lead the Way: The 1990 Season

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Pirates Take on the Nasty Boys: The 1990 National League Championship Series

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Winning the Division, after Losing Sid Bream: The 1991 Season

  CHAPTER SIX

  Too Much Steve Avery: The 1991 National League Championship Series

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Barry Bonds’s Last Hurrah: The 1992 Season

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sid Bream’s Slide into History: The 1992 National League Championship Series

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Pirates Slide into History: The 1993–2010 Seasons

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hurdle, McCutchen, and the End of the Slide: The 2011–2013 Seasons

  Notes

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  Photographs

  PREFACE

  FATHERS

  Even before I saw my first baseball game, I fell in love with the Pittsburgh Pirates. My father was a sandlot pitcher in his day and played catch with me in the alley on the working-class South Side where we lived. With each toss, he talked about the legendary Pirates, like Pie Traynor and the Waner brothers, he had watched at old Forbes Field.

  On May 2, 1948, at the age of nine, I finally saw my first Pirates game. I had no doubt the Pirates would win that day and that some Pirate would match the heroics of those greats who had thrilled my father when he was a boy. That Sunday afternoon, the Pirates did not disappoint. They defeated the Cincinnati Reds, and slugger Ralph Kiner hit two home runs off an intimidating sidewinder, Ewell Blackwell.

  On the streetcar ride back to the South Side, I thought I had just spent a few hours in Baseball Heaven, where the Pirates would always win and Ralph Kiner would always hit at least two home runs. The following Sunday, however, I sat in the left-field bleachers with my father and watched the Pirates as they turned my baseball heaven into a baseball hell by losing a lopsided game in which no Pirate, not even Kiner, hit a home run.

  It is a good thing my father taught me to love my Pirates before I saw them play baseball, because for the next decade, until 1958, they were terrible. In 1952, when I was playing in the Little League, Branch Rickey’s “Rickey Dinks” also played like Little Leaguers and set a modern Pirates record by losing 112 games in a 154-game season. It wasn’t until 1960, when I was twenty-one, that the Pirates, with one swing of Bill Mazeroski’s bat, gave me the miracle I had dreamed of since that first game at Forbes Field.

  In 1969 my wife, Anita, and I—with our two young daughters, Anne and Amy—moved to Carbondale, Illinois, where I had accepted a teaching position at Southern Illinois University. When the Pirates won the 1971 World Series, Anita was pregnant with our son, Stephen, who was born that November. Stephen was a bit too young to share my joy in the World Series victory, but I thought his birth was a good omen for his future life as a Pirates fan. By the time he approached the age when I saw my first Pirates game, the Pirates had won the 1979 World Series and confirmed my belief that Stephen was born under a lucky baseball star.

  During much of the 1980s, as Stephen entered his teenage years, that lucky star seemed to vanish from the heavens. The Pirates lost their best players, fired a popular manager, and almost left Pittsburgh to play bad baseball in another city. But at the beginning of the 1990s that star seemed to reappear as new Pirate heroes, like Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, and Andy Van Slyke, and another popular manager, Jim Leyland, led the Pirates to the postseason.

  The Pirates struggled in the 1990 and 1991 playoffs, but in 1992, as Stephen approached his twenty-first birthday, they were only one out away from defeating the Atlanta Braves and winning their first National League pennant since 1979. We sat anxiously in front of our television set, praying for that last out, but in one heart-breaking moment, our dream of watching the Pirates play in the World Series was gone. With two outs and the bases loaded, little-used Braves pinch-hitter Francisco Cabrera singled home the tying run, and when former Pirate Sid Bream, carrying the winning run on his surgically repaired knees, slid home safely just ahead of Mike LaValliere’s lunging tag, the Pirates suffered one of the most devastating defeats in team history.

  I was stunned by the loss, but before I could say anything, Stephen burst into tears and threw his plastic foam hook at the television screen. I tried to comfort my son by telling him that pain was part of being a fan, but he was inconsolable. I even brought up my remembered joy of watching Mazeroski’s miracle home run and Franco Harris’s immaculate reception, but Stephen was so upset that nothing I said could ease his pain.

  Former baseball commissioner and Yale president A. Bartlett Giamatti once wrote that baseball is a game that “breaks your heart. It’s designed to break your heart.” Giamatti could have been writing about what Stephen and I and so many Pirate fans experienced that night. At the end of three remarkable seasons the Pirates, even after two disappointing playoffs losses, raised our hopes of a World Series, once again, until a heart-breaking slide by a former Pirate who did not want to leave Pittsburgh turned our hope into hopelessness.

  SONS

  The Pirates won the World Series in 1971, the year I was born. I’ve always felt that was more than a coincidence. My own son, Everett, was born in 2013, the year the Pirates finally ended the streak of twenty losing seasons. That was also more than a coincidence in my eyes. My life has always been connected to the Pirates in some way, partially by fate, mainly because my dad didn’t give me a choice. He was born and raised in downtown Pittsburgh and my mother was born and raised in nearby Coraopolis. I was not actually born in Pittsburgh, however. I’ve never even lived in Pittsburgh. My roots to the city consist of the two weeks every summer that I spent there visiting my grandmothers (my favorite two weeks of the year) in the 1970s and 1980s. But my father made sure that none of this mattered when it came to my sports loyalties. I was born into a world of black and gold, outfitted with Pirates hats and T-shirts, regaled with heroic stories of Clemente and Mazeroski since the day I was born, all while growing up in the middle of southern Illinois. As a result, I’ve been a devoted Pirates fan for forty-three years.

  I was seven years old when the Pirates won the World Series in 1979. My memories of that championship run are fuzzy at best. They have less to do with the actual games than with the fun and celebration that followed. I have no memory of Willie Stargell’s home run in Game 7, but I can still see the fire hydrants painted to look like Stargell on the st
reets of downtown Pittsburgh in the summer of 1980. That summer I also saw my first Pirates game (my first professional baseball game anywhere) at Three Rivers Stadium, a rainy night game against the Mets that would barely register as an official game. It was my first win, though, and I was instantly hooked. It was less than a year since the Pirates had won the World Series and the place was electric. I attended the game with my whole family, my mom, my dad, and my two sisters. My dad bought me a Dave Parker button and the notorious pillbox hat, both of which I wore every day for the rest of the summer. The game went into a rain delay in the fifth inning and we spent most our time playing along with games posted on the jumbotron. But I had also seen Stargell, Parker, and some of the great Pirates of the 1970s play that night. I had also unknowingly fallen in love with the entire experience and this baseball team. My love, although severely tested through the years, would never waiver.

  Like most kids, my rooting for the Pirates may have started when they were winning, but it solidified while they were losing. I was born and raised in Carbondale, Illinois, a small college town located about two hours southeast of St. Louis and six hours south of Chicago. Most of the kids I grew up with were devoted Cardinals fans; the rest rooted for the Cubs. But in my younger days, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was rarely teased because the Pirates were good. In the 1980s, when my baseball memories finally had to do with baseball, the Pirates were really bad. All those Cardinals and Cubs fans reminded me just how bad throughout my adolescence. My pillbox hat became less cool every year. It would have been much easier just to become a Cardinals fan, but my loyalty to the Pirates was too deep already.

  In the late 1980s that loyalty finally paid off. When the Bucs finally returned to the National League Championship Series (NLCS) in the fall of 1990, I was a directionless high school graduate, working at a fast food fish place. Nothing much was going right for me, but after years of bad teams, the Pirates came through when I needed them the most. The Pirates finally had a winner, and I finally had my own greats to worship, like Bonds, Bonilla, and Van Slyke. My dad and I—who weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on much at that time—had something to share.

  The Pirates would stay good for the next few years, returning to the NLCS in 1991 and 1992. During that time my dad and I watched every Pirate game we could together. When the Pirates lost in 1990 and 1991, we shared the losses together. He got me through both of them, reminding me that it was just a game and there was always next year. But nothing prepared us for what was then to come. When Sid Bream slid into home plate in Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS, I was sitting next to my dad once again. It was the only time in my life I cried after a sporting event of any kind. I was devastated. And unlike Stargell’s home run, I remember it all—Lind’s error, Bream chugging around the bases—like it happened yesterday. My grandmother had mailed me a foam Pirates hook from Pittsburgh that I wore on my hand throughout the entire series. I threw it down afterward, inconsolable. I can still see it lying on the floor the next morning. My dad knew nothing would make things better. It was the worst Pirates loss in their history, and he knew it. At least we went through it together.

  After that loss and the two decades of hell that followed, it again would have been easy to jump ship. People still ask me how I stayed loyal to this team all this time, and I tell them it is not a choice. I’m a Pirates fan until I die, like my dad and as my son will be too.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We have many present and past members of the Pirates organization to thank for their cooperation and support, but we’d like to begin with Jim Leyland, who was generous and gracious with his time. We’d also like to thank Sid Bream, Darnell Coles, Doug Drabek, Bob Kipper, Bill Landrum, Mike LaValliere, Roger Mason, Bob Patterson, Chris Peters, Don Slaught, Zane Smith, Paul Wagner, Bob Walk, and John Wehner for sharing stories of their ball-playing days with the Pirates.

  Besides Walk and Wehner, we’d like to thank other members of the Pirates broadcasting team, including Steve Blass, Greg Brown, Lanny Frattare, and Rob King for sharing their memories. We appreciate the help of Dan Hart, Neal Huntington, Patti Mistick, and Jim Trdinich for their help when we visited the archives at PNC Park.

  Our deepest gratitude to a member of the Pirates family goes to the late Sally O’Leary, long-time Alumni Liaison with the Pirates and the editor of the Pirates alumni newsletter, for her invaluable close reading of the manuscript and for the many interviews that she arranged for us. Sally was recently given the first Woman of the Year Award presented at the Rotary Club’s annual Chuck Tanner Awards banquet. The award is now named in her honor.

  During the preparation of our book, we had the good fortune of talking with writers of numerous baseball columns, articles, personal essays, and books, including Gene Collier, Paul Meyers, John Mehno, Laurie Graham, and Erik Sherman. We are especially grateful to Jeff Pearlman, author of Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero, for sharing his challenging experiences in writing his book on Bonds. Special thanks also go to Joe Shuta, the talk show host for Leading Off out of Altoona, for his insights and for his help in setting up interviews for our book.

  Those helping with the research include Jim Gates of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Brian Butko of the Heinz History Center, Gil Pietrzak of the Pennsylvania Room in the Carnegie Library, and George Skornickel, president of the Forbes Field chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research. We’d like to thank Mario Moccia, current athletic director at New Mexico State, for sharing his experiences playing college baseball with Barry Bonds, and we offer special thanks to Sam Reich for his many insights into Pirates history, especially the Pittsburgh cocaine trials.

  Our thanks to the editors of the University of Pittsburgh Press begin with Maria Sticco, chief publicist, who encouraged us to submit our proposal and was its earliest supporter. We thank Josh Shanholtzer, senior acquisition editor, for his enthusiasm throughout the project and his insights and guidance from the early stages to the completion of the manuscript, and Alex Wolfe, editorial and production manager, for his preparation of the manuscript.

  Our last expression of gratitude goes to our wives, Anita and Anna, for their encouragement, understanding, and patience. While it often isn’t easy being a baseball fan, it’s much more challenging and difficult being the wife of a baseball fan. No matter what our frustrations and anxieties, Anita and Anna never wavered in rooting for us.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PIRATES FAMILY

  The 1980–1985 Seasons

  As over forty-four thousand Pirates fans headed to Three Rivers Stadium for the home opener of the 1980 season, they had every reason to feel optimistic about the Pirates and Pittsburgh sports in general. In the 1970s, their Pirates had captured six divisional titles, two National League pennants, and two World Series championships. Their Steelers, after decades of futility, had won four Super Bowls in the 1970s, while the University of Pittsburgh Panthers led by Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett added to the excitement by winning a collegiate national championship in football. There was no reason for Pittsburgh sports fans to doubt that the 1980s would bring even more titles to the City of Champions.

  After the “We Are Family” Pirates, led by Willie Stargell, won the 1979 World Series, the ballclub’s goals for 1980 were “Two in a Row and Two Million Fans.”1 If the Pirates repeated as World Series champions, it would mark the first time that a Pirates team had accomplished that feat in franchise history. If two million fans came out to Three Rivers Stadium to see the Pirates win back-to-back World Series titles, it would break the attendance record of 1,705,828, set at Forbes Field during the improbable championship season of 1960. The offseason after the 1979 World Series victory was a whirlwind of awards and honors, highlighted by World Series Most Valuable Player (MVP) Willie Stargell and Super Bowl MVP Terry Bradshaw of the Steelers appearing on the cover of the December 24, 1979, Sports Illustrated as corecipients of the magazine’s Sportsman of the Year Award.

  The Pirates
had lost veteran pitcher Bruce Kison to free agency during the off season, but manager Chuck Tanner replaced Kison by moving 1978 Sporting News Rookie Pitcher of the Year Don Robinson into the starting rotation. Utility infielder Rennie Stennett also opted for free agency, but the Pirates already had a strong infield with Bill Madlock, Tim Foli, and Phil Garner, all acquired in brilliant trades in 1979 by General Manager (GM) Harding “Pete” Peterson. With “Pops” Stargell at first base, Dave Parker in the outfield, and a veteran bullpen led by Kent Tekulve, the 1980 Pirates were considered by many to be heavy favorites to defend their World Series title. During spring training, there was a brief walkout and threatened player strike, but the Pirates had almost their entire starting lineup returning and were a confident team when they opened the season in St. Louis. After taking three out of four games from the Cardinals, they headed to Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh for their home opener against the Cubs.

  Rain threatened throughout the pregame festivities, which included Sister Sledge delighting the sellout crowd with a rendition of the team’s 1979 theme song. Pirates players received several awards and honors during the pregame ceremony, but the moment that drew the greatest roar from the crowd came when the team received its World Series rings. Outfielder Bill Robinson said, “This was a special day in my life. . . . Getting the ring. It meant so much to me.”2 Once the game started, there were four rain delays totaling more than two hours, but the fans who stayed to the end saw a dramatic victory they hoped was a harbinger of things to come in the 1980 season. Leading 4–2 in the top of the ninth, the Pirates brought in the usually reliable Tekulve, but he yielded the tying runs that sent the game into extra innings. In the bottom of the tenth, Robinson gave fans a reminder of the heroics of the 1979 World Series in which the Pirates rallied from a 3-games-to-1 deficit when he homered to give the Pirates a 5–4 victory and their fourth win in a row.