When Sports Were Played: Pirates win one for the ‘Great One’
Associated Press
Roberto Clemente, outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, is one of 19 inductees into the club’s hall of fame.
Vera Clemente accepts the Gold Glove Award for fielding excellence in April 1973 on behalf of her husband, the star Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente, who had been killed in a plane crash a few months.
Today was supposed to be when the Pittsburgh Pirates played their home opener but the sports world has been put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic. In this “When Sports Were Played,” we go back to April 6, 1973, when the Pittsburgh Pirates played their first home opener after the death of Roberto Clemente.
PITTSBURGH – Opening day was everything it should have been for the Pittsburgh Pirates Friday, and the key figures in the Bucs’ 7-5 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals had to agree. However, the reasons for their accord were many and diverse.
The wonderful pregame tributes to Roberto Clemente, the late superstar of the Pirates who is now enshrined in Cooperstown, seemed to have lulled baseball’s consummate team to sleep for five innings against veteran pitcher Bob Gibson.
“I don’t think we were affected by the speeches and ceremony too much,” said Al Oliver, heir-apparent to the Pirates legacy Clemente left behind. “When we heard some of the things they said about him, I’m sure we wanted to cry. But as soon as the game started, we knew we would be OK.
“Sangy (Manny Sanguillen) took it hard. He was so close to the Clementes. When the speeches started, he just headed into the dugout. I know it hurt him all over again.”
Clemente, a fixture in right field for the Pirates for the previous 18 seasons, was killed last Dec. 31 in a plane crash off the coast of Puerto Rico.
Oliver, a determined and fierce young man, had the Pirates’ first hit off the powerful Gibson, a two-out triple in the fourth, and later figured in the Pirates’ first run on a sacrifice fly in the sixth.
In the Bucs’ big eighth inning, he had one of their four hits to finish the day, ala Clemente, 2-for-3 in the No. 3 spot in manager Bill Virdon’s lineup.
“Batting third, I feel like I have to hit,” Oliver said.
The real star of the game, third baseman Richie Hebner, said little about his 3-for-4 batting performance: a single in the fifth, the National League’s second home run of 1973 and his run-scoring double in the eighth.
Hebner voiced instead what all the Pirates apparently feel but cannot verbalize.
“If we lose, the people will think it’s because Roberto is not here. But if we lose, it will be our fault. We have the club to win it all,” he said.
Hebner’s home run, a line-drive shot to right, which skipped off the fence and into part of the crowd of 51,695, the largest crowd ever to see a baseball game in Pittsburgh, cut Gibson’s lead to 5-2.
Cleon Jones of the New York Mets beat Hebner in the home run department when he hit his first of two in the Mets’ 3-0 win over the Philadelphia Phillies. The lack of distinction had apparently no effect on Hebner.
Almost awed by the spectacle of it all was lefthander Jim Rooker, the game’s winning pitcher, who had never quite believed he would play in Pittsburgh at all. Rooker pitched one inning against the Cardinals, the top of the eighth, then sat in the dugout and marveled as the Pirates dismantled Gibson and losing pitcher Diego Segui.
“I still wasn’t sure I was going to make the team,” Rooker said. “I had a good early spring, then fell apart just before we came north. I’m surprised because that late in the game I figured Ramon Hernandez would get the call.”
Rooker, who made the ballclub when 1971 World Series star Bruce Kison went on the disabled list, figures the performance “will help me stick.”
The Cardinals tagged Pirates starter Steve Blass for two runs in the second inning and three runs in the third.
The Pirates broke the game open in the eighth inning after singles by Sanguillen and Oliver and a walk to Willie Stargell loaded the bases and sent Gibson to the showers. Hebner’s two-run bloop double to left off Segui was followed by a two-run pinch-hit triple by Gene Clines that gave Pittsburgh a 6-5 lead. Clines scored on an error.
Relievers Luke Walker, Rooker and Hernandez held St. Louis scoreless over the last four innings.