Bill Mazeroski, 1936-2026

Only one human being, living or dead, has ever hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning of a Game 7 to win a World Series. Now, he is no longer living.

And the odd thing is, he was a great fielder first, and a timely hitter second.

William Stanley Mazeroski was born on September 5, 1936 in Wheeling, West Virginia, and grew up on the other side of the Ohio River, in Tiltsonville, Ohio. He starred in baseball and basketball in high school.

In 1988, Sports Illustrated published an article on "The Valley Boys." The were all from the same area in southeastern Ohio: Mazeroski, knuckleballing baseball pitchers Phil and Joe Niekro, basketball star Alex Groza, his football-playing brother Lou Groza, and basketball star John Havlicek. Mazeroski turned out to be the last survivor of that group.

Also contemporaries from that place and time, but not mentioned in the article: Bill's Pirate teammate Gene Freese, football coach Lou Holtz, and football stars Bob Gain, Calvin Jones, Chuck Howley and Bob Jeter. Baseball relief pitcher Rollie Fingers, a bit younger, moved with his family to California before he reached high school.

Mazeroski turned down college scholarship offers from nearby schools Duquesne, Ohio State and West Virginia to play baseball. He signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates as a shortstop, but made a lot of errors. Branch Rickey, running the Pirates after building winners of multiple Pennants with the St. Louis Cardinals and then the Brooklyn Dodgers, saw how good he was at turning double plays, and had him moved to second base. It was a decision that changed the history of baseball.

He made his major league debut on July 7, 1956, at the Polo Grounds in New York. Batting 8th, playing 2nd base, and wearing the Number 9 he would wear throughout his career, he went 1-for-3, as the Pirates lost to the New York Giants, 3-2.

In 1958, despite playing his home games at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, whose dimensions were similar to those of the pre-renovation original Yankee Stadium -- 300 feet to right field, but 457 to center, and 360 to left, not good for a righthanded hitter like Mazeroski or his teammate Roberto Clemente -- Mazeroski hit 19 home runs, which would remain his career high. He batted .275 with 68 RBIs. It was the 1st of 7 seasons that would see him reach the All-Star Game, and the 1st of 8 in which he would win the National League's Gold Glove at 2nd base.

After a dropoff in 1959, in 1960, he batted .273, with 11 home runs and 64 RBIs. He helped the Pirates win their 1st NL Pennant since 1927 -- 33 years. They hadn't won a World Series since 1925, and were facing the team that had beaten them in 1927, the New York Yankees, who were heavily favored.

The Yankees won Game 2, 16-3. They won Game 3, 10-0. They won Game 6, 12-0. But the Pirates won Game 1, 6-4. They won Game 4, 3-2. And they won Game 5, 5-2. The Series went to a Game 7. On that Thursday afternoon, 36,683 people jammed themselves into Forbes Field. Millions more listened to Pirates announcer Bob Prince and Yankees announcer Mel Allen call the game for television on NBC. Still more millions listened to NBC radio, with Baltimore Orioles announcer Chuck Thompson and Chicago Cubs announcer Jack Quinlan.

Forbes Field

The game went back and forth, and was tied, 9-9, going to the bottom of the 9th inning. On NBC radio, Chuck Thompson, usually the voice of the Baltimore Orioles, said, "Well, a little while ago, when we said this one was going right down to the wire, little did we know." Mazeroski led off, against Yankee pitcher Ralph Terry. His 1st pitch was high, ball 1. Terry threw a 2nd pitch. The time was 3:36 PM. Thompson's call on radio:

Here's a swing, and a high fly ball, going deep to left, this may do it! Back to the wall goes Berra, it is over the fence, home run, the Pirates win!

In case you're curious, the building behind the scoreboard

is the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

"I don't know it's out," Mazeroski recalled during a Pirates telecast in 2015, 55 years after the fact. "I don’t know it's a home run. But I know I;m going to end up on third if he misplays that ball off the wall. So I;m busting my tail getting around there, and by the time I hit second base, I looked down the line and the fans went crazy. From second base, I didn't touch the ground all the way in."

After pausing to let the cheering be heard, Thompson started again, and was so excited, he got the score wrong at first:

Ladies and gentlemen, Mazeroski has hit a one-nothing pitch over the left field fence at Forbes Field to win the 1960 World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates by a score of ten to nothing! Once again, that final score, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the 1960 World Champions, defeat the New York Yankees. The Pirates ten, and the Yankees nine! And Forbes Field is an insane asylum!

Mel Allen, so often accused of being a "homer" for the Yankees, called it this way on TV for NBC:

There's a drive into deep left field, look out now! That ball is going, going, gone! And the World Series is over! Mazeroski hits it over the left field fence, and the Pirates win it, 10–9, and win the World Series!

The ball went over Berra's head, at around the 406-foot mark in left field, and landed among the cherry trees in Schenley Park. Mazeroski took off his batting helmet and swung it around as he circled the bases. 

The ball was found by Andy Jerpe, 14 years old. Mazeroski would sign the ball for him, but he foolishly used the ball in a neighborhood game, and it was lost. No one knows where it is now. The Pirates don't have it. Neither does the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Yankees outscored the Pirates 55-27 during the Series, but the Pirates won it, 4 games to 3. Richardson had a Series record 12 RBIs, and remains the only player from a losing side to be named the MVP of a World Series. Mazeroski? He batted .320 in that Series, and that was his 2nd homer in it, for his 5th RBI in it, and he played his usual good games in the field. He got robbed. But I'm sure he'd rather have the title.

Not being old enough to remember 1960, I can hardly begrudge the Pirates that amazing victory. But there are Yankee Fans who are old enough to remember, and it still hurts. It shouldn't: They won the next two World Series, and another seven since. And Mazeroski was always a good guy.

There's a bronze statue of a young Mazeroski -- arms outstretched, cap in his right hand, right leg kicked up behind him -- along the Allegheny River outside PNC Park. The likeness is surrounded by a brick wall that includes an actual section of the outfield wall over which Mazeroski homered; the 406-foot marker is still visible in white.

Another part of Forbes Field's outfield wall still stands in place in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood, just off Roberto Clemente Drive, and there’s a plaque recognizing the spot where Mazeroski homered. Every Oct. 13, the "Game 7 Gang" gathers at that site, listens to the radio broadcast and celebrates the anniversary of Mazeroski's famous home run at exactly 3:36 PM.

"That doesn't happen anywhere else, does it?" Mazeroski said with a smile in February 2020, approaching the 60th Anniversary of the event.

*

He never again batted higher .271. He never again hit more than 16 home runs in a season. He peaked at 82 RBIs in 1966. But it's as a fielder that he became best-known. He led NL 2nd basemen in double plays turned every year from 1960 to 1967. He led them in fielding percentage in 1960, '65 and '66, and retired with a career .983 fielding percentage. He led them in assists 9 times, and led all of the big leagues in 5 of those seasons. He still holds the Major League record for double plays turned by a 2nd baseman, with 1,706.

For the record, the holders at the other positions are: 1st base, Mickey Vernon, 2,044; shortstop, Omar Vizquel, 1,734; 3rd base, Brooks Robinson, 618; catcher, Ray Schalk, 222; center field, Tris Speaker, 146; pitcher, Greg Maddux, 98; right field, Harry Hooper, 86; left field, Joe Vosmik, 23.

Mazeroski was involved in 2 triple plays in his career, in 1966 and 1968. He never hit into one in real life. But on June 27, 1967, at Shea Stadium, he was filmed staging such an event for the film version of The Odd Couple: Just before the regular game, he was filmed batting against Jack Fisher of the Mets. The play required 2 takes, as he hit the 1st ball foul. The point of the scene was that a phone call from Felix Ungar (played by Jack Lemmon) to Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau) in the press box at Shea causes Oscar to miss a triple play that ends the game in victory for the Mets. (Felix's surname was spelled "Ungar" in the play and the film, "Unger" in the TV show.)

Mazeroski and Clemente were the only 1960 Pirates still there when they won the World Series again in 1971. Mazeroski retired after the 1972 season, with a lifetime batting average of .260, and 2,016 hits including 138 home runs.

For many years, he was considered one of the best players not in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The argument for him was that the best-fielding player, ever, at every position should be in, and he was the best-fielding 2nd baseman ever. The argument against him is that he wasn't good enough of a hitter, and that nobody's defense made enough of a difference to put him over the top. In 2001, he was finally elected.

People who were against his election to the Hall have claimed that the real reason he's in is that home run. I would make the exact opposite argument: 

I think the home run changed people's perception of him. Think about it: The 1st thing that comes to mind when you hear his name is, "He hit the home run that won the 1960 World Series." Imagine that the Series had ended any other way, even one favorable to the Pirates. Suppose Mazeroski had led the inning off with a single, and scored the title-winning run on somebody else's hit. Then, the 1st thing that would come to mind when you hear his name is, "He's the greatest-fielding 2nd baseman who ever lived." He probably would have gotten in much sooner.

At a still-standing, ivy-covered piece of the

Forbes Field outfield wall, October 13, 2010,

the 50th Anniversary of the home run.

The Pirates retired his Number 9, and dedicated a statue of him outside PNC Park, depicting him running around the bases, swinging his batting helmet around. They also elected him to their team Hall of Fame. He was also elected to the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame.

He retired to a suburb of Pittsburgh. In 1987, he ran for the Democratic Party's nomination for Westmoreland County Commissioner, but lost. Eventually, he and his wife the former Milene Nicholson, moved to Panama City, Florida, enabling him to go down to Bradenton to serve as a Spring Training instructor for the Pirates. They had 2 sons: Darren, who became a college baseball coach; and Dave, an atmospheric scientist.

On October 23, 1993, Joe Carter became the 2nd player to end a World Series by hitting a home run, for the Toronto Blue Jays over the Philadelphia Phillies, at the SkyDome (now named the Rogers Centre) in Toronto. However, that was in a Game 6, not a Game 7. It appears that Mazeroski and Carter never met.

Bill Mazeroski died yesterday, February 20, 2026, in the Pittsburgh suburb of Landsale, Pennsylvania. He was 89 years old.

With his death, there are 3 surviving players from the 1960 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates: Bob Skinner, Vernon Law and Bennie Daniels.

There are 4 surviving players who played in Game 7 of that World Series: Skinner and Law of the Pirates, and Bobby Richardson and Tony Kubek of the Yankees. Kubek, famously, had to leave the game when a ground ball hit a pebble in Forbes Field's poor infield and struck him in the throat, helping to keep the Pirates' 8th-inning rally alive, and make Mazeroski's 9th-inning heroism possible.

And there are 11 surviving players from the 1971 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates: Al Oliver, Steve Blass, Manny Sanguillén, Bob Robertson, Gene Alley, Richie Hebner, Luke Walker, Bob Johnson, Milt May, Dave Cash and Carl Taylor.

How did Mazeroski want his career to be remembered: For his Hall of Fame defense, or for hitting arguably the greatest home run of all time?

"Oh," he said, laughing, "I'll take the home run."

If it had been me, so would I.

February 19, 1946: Baseball's "Mexican Jumping Beans"

Danny Gardella

February 19, 1946, 80 years ago: Danny Gardella, an outfielder for the New York Giants, becomes the 1st Major League Baseball player to announce he is "jumping" to the Mexican League.

It is considered an "outlaw" league because, unlike the American League, the National League, and most of North America's minor leagues, it is not under the control of MLB and its Commissioner. The Commissioner is controlled by the MLB team owners. And if there is one thing a major league sports team owner values more than money, it is control.

Jorge Pasquel was the man infringing on their control. He and his brothers began their fortune with a cigar factory in the port city of Veracruz. Jorge and Bernardo Pasquel had the ML's Azules de Veracruz -- in English, the Veracruz Blues -- and minority ownership of some other teams among their assets.

Jorge Pasquel

In 1943, knowing that the ML had no "color line" like the American majors did -- given the racial makeup of Mexico, such a ban would have been both hypocritical and nearly impossible to enforce -- he signed several players away from the Negro Leagues, and some found success in the ML. Among them was Monte Irvin, a future Hall-of-Famer, who said it was the best decision he made in baseball, and that he had never felt so free.

With World War II having ended, Pasquel began to offer high salaries to bring major league talent over to the Mexican League. He may have been driven by nationalism, and by a dislike for American imperialism, possibly spurred by the U.S. invasion of his hometown in 1914, when he was a child. (The year 1946 having been the 100th Anniversary of the start of the Mexican-American War also might have had something to do with it.) Pasquel further aided his family's fortune later in 1946, by getting his cousin, Miguel Alemán Valdés, elected President of Mexico.

A total of 22 players, including 8 Giants, moved to the Mexican League, becoming known as "the Mexican Jumping Beans." Commissioner Albert B. "Happy" Chandler banned all 22 players for life. In addition to Gardella, they included Mickey Owen, the catcher whose dropped 3rd strike cost the Brooklyn Dodgers Game 4 of the 1941 World Series; and Sal Maglie, a Giants pitcher who would go on to become the best-known of these players.

But Pasquel's plan didn't last long. Owen quickly returned to the U.S., citing poor playing conditions.  A long legal battle ensued, after which Owen was determined to owe Pasquel $35,000 for breach of contract. The league took large financial losses in 1947.

In 1948, Gardella filed a lawsuit against Chandler, and the League Presidents, Ford Frick of the NL and Will Harridge of the AL. He charged that they were engaged in interstate commerce, because the defendants had made contracts with radio broadcasting and television companies that sent narratives or moving pictures of the games across state lines.

This suit hit the team owners where it really hurt: Their money and their sense of control. If Gardella won his case, not only would it mean the end of the reserve clause, which would force them to pay much higher salaries than they wanted, but it would mean the end of their special antitrust exemption that had been granted in 1922, as fallout from their 1914-15 battle with the Federal League.

The team owners decided to save the reserve clause, save the antitrust exemption, and save face. They settled the case, offering all of the Jumping Beans amnesty. Their suspensions were ended, and all were free to return -- to the teams which had held their rights before they jumped.

Gardella and Owen barely played in the majors afterward, both having been traded by their teams. Both lived until 2005. The most successful returnee was Maglie, who became the Giants' ace, a key figure in their winning Pennants in 1951 and 1954. Knowing for having one of the best curveballs in the game, and nicknamed "Sal the Barber" because he threw close to batters' heads, giving them "a close shave," he went 119-62 in the major leagues, despite not becoming a regular starter there until he was 33. Had he not taken 2 years off to work in a defense plant during World War II (a sinus issue made him 4-F), and lost 4 years in the ML, he could have approached Hall-of-Fame-worthy career statistics. He lived until 1992.

Sal Maglie

Jorge Pasquel wasn't so lucky. Although his cousin the President enabled him and his brother Bernardo to make a great deal of money in the Mexican oil industry, the brothers lost a sizeable chunk of change in baseball. They sold their teams in 1952, but maintained ownership of Mexico City's largest ballpark, Parque Deportivo del Seguro Social (Social Security Sports Park), taking in rent from the teams' new owners. Jorge was killed in a plane crash in 1955. He was only 48 years old.

Founded in 1925, the Mexican League reached an agreement with MLB in 1955, becoming an official Class AA league. In 1967, it was promoted to Class AAA. Today, it has 20 teams, 10 each in a North Division and a South Division. The Diablos Rojos del México -- the Mexico City Red Devils, formerly simply the Mexico City Reds -- have won the most titles, 18 Pennants, including in 2024 and 2025.

February 17, 1776: "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Is Published

Edward Gibbon

Common Sense by Thomas Paine wasn't the only important piece of writing to be published in 1776, the year of American independence -- which, of course, depended on an important piece of writing, which Common Sense helped to set up. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith turned out to be pretty important.

But that was for the present and the future. There was also a very important book about the past, which contained warnings for the present and the future. And it had the same publisher as The Wealth of Nations:

February 17, 1776: Volume I of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is published in London by Strahan and Cadell. It becomes the biggest-selling work of history in history.

It was reissued in a succession of 6 revised editions between 1776 and 1789. Volumes II and III appeared in 1781, and the final three volumes -- IV, V and VI -- were issued together in 1788.

Edward Gibbon was born on May 8, 1737 in Putney, then in Surrey, now a part of South-West London. He attended a boarding school run by Catherine Porten, known to her students as "Aunt Kitty." Gibbon later wrote that it was she who gave him "the first rudiments of knowledge, the first exercise of reason, and a taste for books which is still the pleasure and glory of my life."

Included among these books was An Universal history, from the earliest account of time. Compiled from original authors; and illustrated with maps, cuts, notes, &c. With a general index to the whole. This was a 65-volume universal history of the world published in London between 1747 and 1768. It was one of the first works to attempt to unify the history of Western Europe with the stories of the known world.

He enrolled at Oxford University, left without graduating, and spent time in France and Switzerland, where the only major romance of his life happened, with a woman named Suzanne Curchod. But his wealthy father, a staunch Protestant, threatened to cut him off if he married Suzanne, a Catholic. Edward wrote, "I sighed as a love, but I obeyed as a son." She later married an official in the French government, and died during, but not as a result of, the French Revolution.

Gibbon published a study of literature, establishing his reputation as a writer, and served in the Seven Years' War (known in America as the French and Indian War). This service gave him a greater understanding of military life, ancient as well as current. He visited Rome, and gave it the nickname by which it would be known thereafter: "The Eternal City." He wrote:

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.

He returned to London in June 1765, and inherited his father's vast estate in 1770. His literary output led him to meet the leading man of letters in Britain at the time, Dr. Samuel Johnson, joining his Literary Club; and also Johnson's publishers, Strahan and Cadell. William Strahan (1715-1785) was Scottish, served in Britain's House of Commons, and was a friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Cadell (1742-1802) was from Bristol, in England's West Country. Each man's son continued the family business for a while after the father's death.

In 1771, Strahan and Cadell published The Man of Feeling, a novel of moral philosophy by Henry Mackenzie, establishing their reputation as well as his, making it possible to take them seriously when they published the works of Gibbon, Smith, Johnson, Scottish philosopher David Hume, Scottish poet Robert Burns, and others. Cadell was quoted as saying, "I had rather risk my fortune with a few such Authors as Mr Gibbon, Dr Robertson, D Hume … than be the publisher of a hundred insipid publications."

In 1774, Gibbon was elected to Parliament from Liskeard, in Cornwall, in the West Country, and remained in that seat until losing in 1780. In 1781, he won a seat in Lymington, in Hampshire on the South Coast, and held that seat until 1784. (It Britain, it is hardly unusual for a Member of Parliament to represent different constituencies in his or her career. Winston Churchill, himself a historian when he wasn't politicking, had 5 different constituencies over his 64 years in the Commons.)

Gibbon's initial plan was to write a history "of the decline and fall of the city of Rome," and only later expanded his scope to the whole Roman Empire. He leaned heavily on the French writers who became usually known as Montesquieu (a baronial title) and Voltaire (a pen name).

Although he published other books, Gibbon devoted much of his life to this one work. His autobiography, published after his death as Memoirs of My Life and Writings, was devoted largely to his reflections on how the book virtually became his life. He compared the publication of each succeeding volume to a newborn child.

The six volumes cover, from AD 98 to 1590, the peak of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and its ermergence as the Roman state religion in the early 4th Century AD, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476, the rise of Genghis Khan in the early 13th Century and Tamerlane in the late 14th Century, and the fall of Constantinople and thus the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire in 1453, which triggered the shifting of Europe's gaze from East to West, and thus the Age of Exploration.

(By concluding with 1590, it was as if someone in 2026 were writing about Gibbon's own time as the conclusion of a long study.)

According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to "barbarian" invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens. He began an ongoing controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the Empire.

Like other Enlightenment thinkers, many of them not so enlightened on the subject of Roman Catholicism, Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages -- usually defined as the time from the fall of the Western Empire until the fall of Constantinople -- as a priest-ridden, superstitious Dark Age. It was not until his own era, the "Age of Reason," with its emphasis on rational thought, he believed, that human history could resume its progress.

Gibbon suffered from gout, and from a rather embarrassing condition that left him with enlarged and painful testicles. Surgery to correct this in 1794 failed, resulting in peritonitis, which killed him at the age of 56.

Many writers have used variations on the series title, usually shortened to "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," including using "Rise and Fall" in place of "Decline and Fall." These include William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and David Bowie's album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. (What Bowie made of what happened to Gibbon, only he knew.)

Yankees and Mets Under Presidents

April 17, 1956, Opening Day, Griffith Stadium in Washington:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower throws out the first ball,

as Yankee manager Casey Stengel and

Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith look on.

The Yankees won, 10-4.

Today is Presidents Day. Or, as we should call it until we have a President again, the 3rd Monday in February.

The Curse of Ike? Since 1958, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President, and the Yankees won the World Series:

Under Democratic Presidents, the Yankees have won 12 Pennants and 9 World Series.

Under Republican Presidents, the Yankees have won 5 Pennants and no World Series.

The Mets?

Under Republican Presidents, 5 postseason appearances (but none since 2006), 3 Pennants, 2 World Championships.

Under Democratic Presidents, 6 postseason appearances, 2 Pennants, no World Championships.

Make of this phenomenon what you want, but the facts are clear:

* If you want the Yankees to win, vote Democratic.

* If you want the Mets to win, vote Republican.

Actually, given economics, social policy, and foreign policy, the facts are clear:

* If you want Americans to be better off, vote Democratic.

* If you don't, vote Republican.

Elroy Face, 1928-2026

Before Elroy Face, relief pitching was a thing. But, aside from the New York Yankees, hardly anybody used it well. The man known as "The Baron of the Bullpen" helped to change that.

Elroy Leon Face was born on February 20, 1928 in Stephentown, New York, outside Albany. He learned to pitch by throwing stones at windows, breaking them. He was too young to be drafted into World War II, but served in the U.S. Army in 1946 and 1947. Before the 1949 season, the Philadelphia Phillies signed him. Despite a sensational minor league record, both starting and relieving, he was made eligible for the minor league draft. After the 1950 season, he was drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers. After the 1952 season, he was drafted again, by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Pirates went 42-112 in 1952, one of the worst seasons in major league history. Singer-actor Bing Crosby was a part-owner, and, that year, in the film The Road to Bali, when Dorothy Lamour asked him, "Do they still have pirates in America?" he answered, "Yes, but they're usually in the basement."

It was the year that general manager Branch Rickey, having had so much success running the Dodgers, and before that running the St. Louis Cardinals, traded away the team's best player, Ralph Kiner, to save money and spend it on prospects, telling the best slugger in the National League, "We finished 8th with you, and we can finish 8th without you." It was the year that Ron Necciai struck out 27 batters and pitched a no-hitter for their Class D farm team, and then struck out 24 in a 2-hitter in his next start, only to be immediately called up to the Pirates, and go 1-6 with a 7.08 ERA in 55 innings, and never appeared in the major leagues again.

It was the year of which catcher Joe Garagiola said, "In an 8-team League, we should have finished 9th." Garagiola built his broadcasting career on telling stories on 3 subjects: Growing up in St. Louis across the street from Yogi Berra, playing on the Cardinals with Stan Musial, and the ineptitude of the early 1950s Pirates.

"Roy" Face made his major league debut on April 16, 1953, and he got shelled, allowing 3 runs on 4 hits, getting only 1 out. It was a wild game at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, and the Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 14-12. Wearing Number 26 and using a sidearm righthanded delivery, Face went 6-8 that season, mostly in relief.

He spent the 1954 season with the Pirates' Class AA team, the New Orleans Pelicans. The Pirates wanted him to learn an off-speed pitch. The one he chose was forkball, in which the pitcher holds the ball in the middle with his index and middle fingers. It was a precursor to the split-fingered fastball, first used by Bullet Joe Bush with the 1910s Boston Red Sox. Face learned it from Joe Page, the once-great Yankee reliever, who was playing out the string with the Pirates.

Face was called back up for 1955, and became the best relief pitcher in the National League. He led the NL in games pitched in 1956 and 1960; in games finished in 1958, 1960, 1961 and 1962; and, though it wouldn't be an official statistic until 1969, in saves in 1958, 1961 and 1962. He made the NL All-Star Team in 1959, 1960 and 1961.

In 1959, he had one of the greatest seasons any pitcher has had in the post-1920 Lively Ball Era. He went 18-1, his .947 winning percentage still a record for any pitcher with at least 13 decisions. His only loss was to the Los Angeles Dodgers on September 11. His ERA was 2.70, and he had 10 saves. He finished 7th in the voting for NL Most Valuable Player.

In 1960, he was a less-impressive 10-8, but helped the Pirates win the Pennant for the 1st time in 33 years. Against the Yankees in the World Series, he saved Games 1, 4 and 5, becoming the 1st pitcher to save 3 games in a single Series. But he pitched 3 innings in Game 7, blowing a save. Nevertheless, the Pirates won, 10-9, on Bill Mazeroski's home run in the bottom of the 9th inning, for their 1st World Championship in 35 years.

In 1961, Face went 6-12, but saved 17. In 1962, he set a major league record with 28 saves. He struggled a bit over the next 2 seasons, but rebounded over the next 3. In 1967, he surpassed Warren Spahn with the most games pitched in NL history.

Late in the 1968 season, his contract was purchased by the Detroit Tigers. However, at age 40, he made only 2 appearances, on September 2 and 3, and did not appear again. He was not included on the World Series roster, though the Tigers did go on to win. The Tigers released him just before the next season started. He was signed by the expansion Montreal Expos, appearing in 44 games, going 4-2 with 5 saves, but was released after his appearance on August 15, 1969, the weekend of Woodstock.

He never appeared in another major league game, although he pitched in 8 games for the Hawaii Islanders of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League in 1970. He retired with 846 games in NL play, a record which stood until a later Pirate reliever, Kent Tekulve, surpassed him in 1986. His record was 104-95, with a 3.48 ERA, and 191 saves, then 2nd only to the still-active Hoyt Wilhelm. As an NL record, it stood until 1982, surpassed by Bruce Sutter.

Although he has not been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Pirates have not retired his Number 26, they have elected him to their team Hall of Fame.

As generations of men in his family had before him, he worked as a carpenter in the off-season. For many years, he was the carpentry foreman at a State psychiatric hospital near his home in the Pittsburgh suburb of North Versailles, Pennsylvania.

He died this past Thursday, February 12, 2026, at home in North Versailles. He was 97 years old. He was survived by his daughters Michelle and Valerie, his son Elroy Jr., and his sister Jacqueline. He was predeceased by his wife, the former Roberta Williams, known as Bo Face.

With his death, there are now 4 surviving players from the 1960 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates: Bill Mazeroski, Bob Skinner, Vernon Law and Bennie Daniels.

February 15, 1726: Abraham Clark, New Jersey Declaration Signer

February 15, 1726, 300 years ago: Abraham Clark is born in Elizabethtown, in the Province of New Jersey. In 1855, Elizabethtown was incorporated as the City of Elizabeth, the seat of the newly-created Union County.

Like George Washington, Clark was taught to be a surveyor. Like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, he became a lawyer. He became known as "the poor man's councilor," as he offered to defend poor men who could not afford a lawyer. He married Sarah Hatfield, and they had 10 children. Alas, as New Jersey was the last State in the North to abolish slavery, Clark was a slaveholder. (There was partial abolition in 1804, but full abolition only came with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865.)

Clark was elected as Clerk of the Provincial Assembly, and then as High Sheriff of Essex County. In 1776, with New Jersey's delegates to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia divided on the issue of independence, new delegates were elected: Clark, John Hart, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson and Richard Stockton.

On July 2, 1776, they all voted in favor of independence. On July 4, 1776, the day the Declaration of Independence was officially approved, Clark wrote a letter to Colonel Elias Dayton, saying, "It is gone so far, that we must now be a free independent State, or a conquered country... We can die here but once."

Clark's signature on the Declaration

(Dayton, 1737-1807, was a fellow Elizabeth native, a merchant, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General. His son, Jonathan, became the youngest signer of the Constitution of the United States.)

Clark remained in the Continental Congress through 1778, when he was elected as Essex County's Member of the New Jersey Legislative Council. He had 2 sons fighting in the war, and they were captured by the British, and incarcerated on the prison ship HMS Jersey, docked at Wallabout Bay, which later became the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

He served in Congress again from 1780 to 1783, and from 1786 to 1788. At the Annapolis Convention of 1786, Clark was one of New Jersey's 3 representatives, and formally motioned for the Constitutional Convention, although he was not a delegate to it.

He ran for the U.S. Senate for the 1st Congress in 1788, but lost. He ran for the U.S. House of Representatives for the 2nd Congress in 1790, and won. He was still serving when he died on September 15, 1794, in Rahway, New Jersey, at the age of 68.

He is buried at Rahway Cemetery. The adjoining Township of Clark is named for him, and so is Abraham Clark High School in the neighboring Borough of Roselle, where he lived. His original house burned down, but in 1941, a replica was built on the site, at 101 West 9th Avenue.

February 14, 1976: Dorothy Hamill Wins a Gold Medal

February 14, 1976, 50 years ago: Dorothy Hamill wins the Gold Medal in ladies' figure skating at the Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, in the Austrian Alps.

A 19-year-old native of the New York suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut, she had won the Silver Medal at the World Championships in 1974 and 1975, and the Gold Medal a few weeks earlier. Still, in spite of previous U.S. Gold Medalists Tenley Albright, Carol Heiss and Peggy Fleming, she was not considered the favorite in Innsbruck. But she won, and became "America's Sweetheart."

Hamill was credited with developing a new skating move, a "camel spin" that turned into a "sit spin," which became known as the "Hamill camel." The bobbed hairstyle that she wore during her Olympic performance was created by stylist Yusuke Suga, and started a fad, known as the "short and sassy" look, leading to a contract with Clairol hair products.

The following year, the film Star Wars premiered, starring Mark Hamill. He and Dorothy are not related, and it appears they have never even met. 

She starred in the Ice Capades, and as late as 1993, a poll showed her tied with Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton as the most popular athlete in America, ahead of Michael Jordan, Joe Montana and Wayne Gretzky.

She has married 3 times, including to singer Dean Paul Martin (son of singer-actor Dean Martin), and had a daughter with her 2nd husband. As of 2025, she still appears in skating shows.