Mazeroski's homer still resonates 50 years later

In his final year in office, President Dwight Eisenhower threw out the first pitch of the 1960 baseball season. Bill Mazeroski handled the last pitch. The Pirates' second baseman sent it more than 400 feet, over the left-centerfield wall at Forbes Field to break a 9-9 tie in Game 7 and win the World Series 50 years ago today.

The conquest of the mighty New York Yankees rocked the sports world. The underdog Pirates won their first world championship since 1925 while a Yankees dynasty of more than 30 years suffered a shocking (yet brief) setback. But at the same time, in politics and in our culture; in Pittsburgh, in the nation, in the world and in baseball, life as we knew it was quickly changing on a scale that superseded even a momentous sporting event.

Ike soon would leave the White House, taking the 1950s with him. One era was ending, another beginning. Like the confluence of a certain three rivers, powerful forces were merging. The World Series represented "a pinnacle moment" for the city, said Anne Madarasz, director of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum at the Heinz History Center, which features an exhibit devoted to the 1960 Pirates.

"It was a bright moment in Pittsburgh's history and in many ways a resplendent moment," she said. "For a whole generation of baby boomers coming of age, this was their first involvement with their first love, baseball."

A few hours after Maz's home run landed near Schenley Park at 3:36 p.m. on Oct. 13, 1960, as revelers danced in the streets and drank the bars dry, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon debated on television for a third time, the highest-rated presidential debate ever. Within a month, Kennedy would be narrowly elected, the youngest and first Catholic president. He exuded energy and optimism and spoke of a "New Frontier," and much of the nation bought in.

Few could imagine that a profound and turbulent time of our history, one of war, political assassination, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and huge social and cultural upheaval, loomed ominous and large. Writer and longtime Pirates fan Ceane O'Hanlon Lincoln calls the setting of Game 7 "the last age of innocence in America," and it was about to end.

The world was spinning faster, soon to be out of control. Who knew• In Pittsburgh, who cared• Long into the victorious night, fans toasted their "team of destiny," as 18-game winner Bob Friend put it years later. The less exuberant or more politically aware watched the debate, which pre-empted "The Donna Reed Show" and "My Three Sons." Innocence, indeed.

"It was such an era," Lincoln reflected. "Baseball was the American pastime. It was the American sport. Baseball was important."

That, too, would change. In January 1960, Alvin "Pete" Rozelle, a public relations man for the Los Angeles Rams and a true visionary, became the new NFL commissioner. Just more than a month before Game 7, eight teams in the new American Football League took the field for the first time. The wheels were in motion for pro football to surpass baseball as the nation's most popular sport.

A new identity

Pittsburgh also was in transition. The days of the labor intensive "Steel City" were numbered, a region's primary industry and its urban population already shrinking. The city eventually would assume a new identity, sports, and the 1960 Pirates laid the cornerstone. It didn't hurt that some viewed the Series as the blue-collared working stiffs sticking it to the haughty aristocrats. Even better, a coal miner's son struck the winning blow.

It was a nice image, and the city ran with it, even though the Pirates themselves had a star-laden team led by the National League's Cy Young Award winner (Vern Law) and Most Valuable Player (Dick Groat), the best relief pitcher in the game (Elroy Face) and future Hall of Famers Roberto Clemente and Mazeroski.

"More than any city in the country, (Pittsburgh) uses sport to tell its story to the world," historian and author Rob Ruck said. "And it has replaced steel as our narrative. It's our way of understanding who we are but also our way of projecting who we are to other people."

The Pirates showed the Yankees, and the rest of the world, what and who Pittsburgh was. The Series victory planted a seed that would take root and eventually flower into a lofty title after the Pirates won a second championship in eight years in 1979. At the same time, the Steelers were winning four Super Bowls in six seasons.

"This was a city that had been defined by industry, by iron and steel, forever," Ruck said. "By the '70s, we were the City of Champions."

But it was 1960 that first "confirmed for Pittsburghers a truer sense of their importance,"said Charles McCollester, author of "The Point of Pittsburgh," a history of the region's industrial development.

"We hadn't had a big winner in 33 years," said Friend, 79, referring to the Pirates' 1927 pennant winners (who lost the Series to the Yankees). "You win a world championship, I don't care what it is. Look what the Steelers meant to the city. It does a hell of a lot. No question about it, and we contributed early on."

The Series "reflected the end of a period," McCollester said. Celebrating well into morning, "Pittsburgh was on top of the world," he said. But noting that a 116-day steelworkers strike the year before heralded trouble for the industry, McCollester added, "From there it became much more complex and difficult."

A brand new ballgame

Baseball also would never be the same. JFK threw out the first pitch before the Washington Senators opened the 1961 season. The new Washington Senators, that is. The old Senators had moved to Minnesota. For the first time in modern history, Major League Baseball expanded, adding two American League teams and eight games to the schedule. The National League followed suit in 1962.

Game 7 in 1960 was the last to be played in the old order. Baseball had 16 teams since 1901, but goodbye to all that. The game "no longer described half a country," baseball historian John Thorn said.

Expansion not only created more teams and opportunities for players, it led to innovation and economic shake-ups. The Los Angeles Angels in 1961 and the Houston Colt 45s in 1962 furthered baseball's migration to the Sun Belt. The Colts became the Astros in 1965 and moved into baseball's first indoor stadium, the Astrodome, introducing the luxury suite concept, which would drastically alter the business of sport.

Yet even without its place as a historical pivot point, the '60 Series can stand on its own. It was filled with subplots, high drama and quirky doings. The Yankees won by scores of 16-3, 12-0 and 10-0 and still went home as losers.

Game 7 had several important moments aside from the last one and is regarded a classic. It was big news recently when a recording of the NBC telecast was found in Bing Crosby's wine cellar (the crooner was a Pirates minority owner). The video will be screened in Pittsburgh sometime next month and aired as a program on the MLB Network hosted by Bob Costas.

"It wasn't just the way it ended, but (the Series) had all the texture going in," Costas said. "The Pirates were a very, very interesting team, with the great Roberto Clemente, and Groat and Mazeroski in the middle of the infield. They represented a certain kind of town against mighty New York. The Yankees are the Yankees. It was the first year of (Roger) Maris and (Mickey) Mantle. (Pitcher) Whitey Ford is at his best. You had the ballparks, Forbes Field and the 'true' Yankee Stadium."

And, he added, "The Pirates had really cool uniforms."

Additional Information:

Rare treat

Game 7 of the 1960 World Series will be shown on the MLB Network Dec. 15 as part of a program to be taped next month in Pittsburgh, at an undetermined location.

The program, hosted by Bob Costas, will feature the TV broadcast of the game recently found in Bing Crosby's wine-cellar-turned-vault, and interviews with Game 7 hero Bill Mazeroski and other key figures from the Pirates victory over the New York Yankees.