MORGANTOWN —
The Pittsburgh Pirates have sent a lot of players to the Hall of Fame and also were the major league birthplace to baseball’s all-time leading home run hitter, but none of them did what rookie Starling Marte did Thursday night in Houston, hitting a home run on his first pitch in the major leauges.
What did the Pirates’ greatest players do in their playing debuts?
With help from baseball-reference.com, which has box scores for major league games all the way back to 1920 and play-by-play information back into the 1940s, we looked up what they did in their first big league games.
The most recent, and maybe the most memorable, was Bonds’ debut, for he collected his first hit officially before he had been called to the major leagues.
How’s that, you ask?
Well, on April 20 the Pirates were involved in a marathon extra-inning game against the Cubs that ran so long it was suspended. Bonds, at the time, was in the minor leagues. The game was completed on Aug. 11 and ended in 17 innings after 6 hours and 9 minutes of play.
Bonds, active on the Pirates’ roster by then, was used as a pinch hitter for Jim Morrison in that 17th inning, singled and drove in Johnny Ray with the go-ahead run, Bobby Bonilla also scoring on an error on the play to provide the 10-8 margin of victory.
In the record book, the hit is credited on April 20, the day the game began, so Bonds had a hit before he was a major leaguer.
Roberto Clemente, generally acknowledged as the greatest Pirate ever, also had a hit on his first major league at bat. The Dodgers actually had signed Clemente and tried to hide him in the minor leagues, but the Pirates saw him play one day and drafted him.
Pretty good draft pick 3,000 hits later, the first being an infield single on April 17, 1955 — naturally, against the Dodgers — when he beat out an infield hit to shortstop against left-hander Johnny Podres.
Willie Stargell, Clemente’s long-time teammate, the greatest home run hitter in the team history, showed another side of his game when he made his major league debut pinch hitting for reliever Joe Gibbons in the bottom of the 10th inning of a 6-4 victory over the San Francisco Giants.
No, Stargell didn’t hit his first of 475 home runs but instead was his first of 1,936 strike outs, which rank 8th all-time. Stargell did not have long to sulk, however, as catcher Smokey Burgess followed with a game-winning home run.
Bill Mazeroski, the Hall of Fame second baseman whose home run won the 1960 World Series and is still the most famous hit in Pittsburgh baseball history, even more than Starling Marte’s, started his career with a pinch single while batting for Dale Long on July 7, 1956, in a 3-2 loss to Johnny Antonelli and the San Francisco Giants.
The Waner brothers debuted a year apart, Paul pinch hitting and waking for pitcher Vic Aldridge on opening day, 1926. He went 0-for-2 in his first start in the season’s fourth game.
Lloyd debuted on April 12, 1927, and went one for four in a 2-1 road victory over Cincinnati.
On Sept. 15, 1920, Hall of Fame third baseman Pie Traynor went in for defense for Bill McKechnie — yes the former manager after whom McKechnie Field is named in Bradenton, Fla. — and went 1-for-2 while driving in a run.
Ralph Kiner, a six-time home run champion and Hall of Famer, went 1-for-4 in a 6-4 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on April 16, 1946, while infielder Arky Vaughn made his debut on April 17, 1932, as a defensive replacement and struck out in his first at bat in a 4-3 victory over Cincinnati.
There was no box score for the 1910 debut of third baseman Max Carey or for the 1897 debut of Honus Wagner.
Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com. Follow on Twitter @bhertzel.
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