Homer History: Bill Mazeroski’s great walk-off World Series winner

In our Homer History series, writers re-tell the stories of memorable home runs from their perspective. In this installment, Yahoo Sports boxing and MMA columnist Kevin Iole gives us a different perspective on one of MLB’s famous homers — the Bill Mazeroski blast that won the 1960 World Series.

Andy Jerpe was a 14-year-old boy on Oct. 13, 1960, and late that afternoon, he was idling around in Schenley Park in Pittsburgh. Adjacent to the park sat Forbes Field, where at that exact moment, the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees were locked in the closing stages of one of the most memorable World Series in the sport’s history.

That the Yankees were the superior team – the far superior team, perhaps – went without question. They proved that by winning Games 2, 3 and 6 by a combined score of 38-3. In those three games, the Yankees had 52 hits, including four home runs.

(Yahoo Sports / AP) Playing in, and winning, the World Series was old hat to the Yankees. Pittsburgh last had won the Series 35 years earlier, when it defeated Walter Johnson and the Washington Senators in seven games in 1925.

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Since the Pirates’ last Series victory, the Yankees had won world titles in 1927, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1943, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1956 and 1958. The Yankees had also won pennants in 1942, 1955 and 1957 but lost in the Series.

There was little comparison between the franchises.

None of that was on Jerpe’s mind as he stood amid the cherry trees in the brilliant sun of the mid-fall afternoon in Pittsburgh. A ninth grader at nearby Central Catholic High School, Jerpe managed to slip inside Forbes Field during the game but, intimidated by the large crowd, he left.

“I didn’t want to get squashed by all those people,” Jerpe told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2010.

Little did Jerpe know that the seventh game had gone to the bottom of the ninth tied 9-9. The Series itself had been stellar, and Game 7 was the best of them all.

The Pirates had gone up 4-0 early, scoring two times in each of the first two innings. The Yankees, as they seemingly always did, fought back, going ahead with a four-run sixth to assume a 5-4 lead. New York added two more in the top of the eighth, on a Johnny Blanchard single and a Clete Boyer double, to take a 7-4 lead.

Gino Cimoli opened the bottom of the eighth for the Pirates with a single. That brought up Pirates center fielder Bill Virdon, who rapped a tailor-made double play ball to short. But the ball took a bad hop and struck Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat. Instead of having two out with nobody on, down three and with only four outs left, the Pirates suddenly had something going.

[Previously in Homer History: When Albert Pujols silenced Minute Maid Park]

They went on to score five in that inning, three of them coming on a Hal Smith home run to left. According to the Sports Illustrated account of the game in its Oct. 24, 1960, issue, Yankees left fielder Yogi Berra barely moved in pursuit, because the ball was long gone.

(Getty Images) The Pirates took that 9-7 lead to the ninth, but New York scored twice off of Harvey Haddix to tie the game at 9-9.

The first batter in the bottom of the ninth was the Pirates’ second baseman, 24-year-old Bill Mazeroski. A story in the New York Times on Oct. 14, 1960, noted that Pirates’ fan blamed Mazeroski for a collapse in 1959. Married the preceding October and also active on the dinner circuit the preceding winter, he had let his weight get out of hand. At bat and in the field, he was just a parody of the fine player had had been the three preceding seasons.

As 1960 dawned, no one could deny that Pittsburgh was a sorry sports town. The city’s beloved Steelers had made the playoffs once in their 26 years of existence to that point, that coming on a second-place finish in 1947. The Pirates were even worse. The closest the Pirates were to first place at season’s end during the 1950s was eight games out in 1958, when they were 84-70. For much of the decade, though, they were nearly as bad as an expansion team.

The Pirates lost 90 games in 1951, and followed that by seasons with 112, 104, 101, 94, 88 and 92 losses, in a 154-game season. Pittsburgh was a dirty, gloomy city in those years, the soot from its ever-present still mills casting a pall over the sky.

Mazeroski took the first pitch from Ralph Terry to open the home half of the ninth. On the second, he lashed out and cracked a liner to left. Berra, the long-time catcher now stationed in left in deference to old knees, took a few steps back before turning around and trotting in.

Mazeroski had hit the first, and to this point only, walk-off home run in Game 7 in World Series history. The Pirates became World champions by virtue of the 10-9 win. Mazeroski waved his cap and raised his arm aloft as he circled the bases as fans streamed from the stands to celebrate. His teammates rushed to the plate to welcome him.

Red Smith, the great columnist who was working for The New York Herald Tribune, wrote (as taken from his book, ‘Red Smith on Baseball’), “Terry watched the ball disappear, brandished his glove hand high overhead, shook himself like a wet spaniel and started fighting through the mobs that come boiling from the stands to use Mazeroski like a trampoline.”

(AP)

Jerpe, standing amid Schenley Park’s cherry trees, caught site of a ball coming his way. It landed about 15 feet or so to his left, and he casually ran over to pick it up. As he grabbed it, the crowd erupted and Jerpe knew something sensational had happened.

[Elsewhere: Los Angeles to rename road to Dodger Stadium Vin Scully Avenue]

Not long after, Jerpe found himself in the clubhouse, where he offered the ball to Mazeroski. Sports collectibles weren’t the industry then that they are now, but in today’s market, that ball could be worth around $1 million.

Mazeroski declined the ball. According to an Associated Press story in the Oct. 14, 1960, version of The Times, Mazeroski said to Jerpe, “You keep it, son. The memory is good enough for me.”

Jerpe managed to get Mazeroski and Smith to sign the ball. A few months later, he was playing with it with some friends, when he hit it into a patch of knee-high weeds. An hour search was fruitless. One of the most significant, and valuable, baseballs in the sport’s history was lost forever.

The one thing, though, that wasn’t lost, was the World Series. Thanks to Mazeroski’s heroics, the Pirates won Game 7 10-9 and the 1960 Series four games to three in what turned out to be Casey Stengel’s final game as New York’s manager.

Mazeroski would go on to become a Hall of Fame player, but nothing he did could ever match that moment. Every year since, fans congregate at the spot to commemorate the moment. The stadium has been closed since 1970 and is now part of the University of Pittsburgh campus.

“From second base on, I don’t remember a thing,” Mazeroski said on a Pirates’ telecast last year on Root Sports of his famous home run trot.

Later in that same interview, he summed up the feelings of scores of Pirates’ fans more than a half-century later when he said, “Everything was perfect.”

COMING SATURDAY: The David Ortiz homer that send Torii Hunter over the fence and made a ballpark cop a celebrity, by Yahoo Sports’ Al Toby.

PREVIOUSLY IN HOMER HISTORY
– The night a hobbled Kirk Gibson broke my heart (by Mike Oz)
– Cal Ripken Jr. wowed us yet again on Iron Man night (by Lauren Shehadi)
– When Albert Pujols silenced Minute Maid Park (by Jeff Passan)

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