Whoever lives next in the house that Bill Mazeroski built will get to hit some of the same balls he did.

Billiard balls, that is.

The basement pool table is one of the few pieces of furniture that will be included when bids are placed for the Hempfield ranch house that the baseball Hall of Famer and former Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman and his wife, Milene, called home until this past fall.

“My dad taught me how to play pool there,” Mazeroski’s youngest son, David, 49, said Sunday evening in a phone interview from his Souderton home. “We used to have some family games, and a couple of my dad’s buddies would stop by.

“We had a pingpong table that would sit on top of that table. We would be down there for hours.”

Close to 100 people explored the Mazeroski family’s former home Sunday afternoon during a three-hour open house hosted by Mark and Jeanine Ferry of Mark L. Ferry Auctioneers of Unity, which plans to auction the 1,700-square-foot house and surrounding 19.6 acres March 22. A second open house is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. March 17.

Dave Staub of Youngwood and Joan Oplinger of Hempfield, who attended the open house with her husband, Ralph, are looking to downsize and counted the home’s connection to Mazeroski an added bonus.

Staub said living in his current two-story dwelling is taking a toll on his knees. “I’m looking for a ranch,” he said, describing the former Mazeroski abode as “a nice house.”

“I used to look at him running on TV when I was a kid,” Staub said of Mazeroski. Staub had hoped for the outside chance of getting an autograph from the former Pirate, but Mazeroski, 83, and his wife have moved east to be close to son David and his family.

Ferry auctioned off much of Mazeroski’s collection of sports memorabilia Jan. 1 to prepare for selling the house.

“It’s a neat house,” said Joan Oplinger, who added that viewing the Mazeroski home seemed a good fit with her family’s connection to another Pirates great, from the club’s early 20th century seasons.

“My great-grandmother and Honus Wagner were first cousins,” she explained.

Organic farmer Don McCauley of Greensburg, who used to live next to the Mazeroskis and still owns property in the neighborhood, stopped by to check out the interior of the home where his son, Don, would often play as a child.

“It’s dated, but it’s been pretty well taken care of,” he said.

The home’s vintage style appealed to Hempfield resident Doug Mirolli. “I like the mid-20th-century modern architecture,” he said, citing the brick in the entryway as a highlight.

The Mazeroskis moved into the custom-built home just a few years after Bill hit a historic home run over the left-field wall of Forbes Field on Oct. 13, 1960, lifting the Pirates to a World Series win over the New York Yankees.

Mazeroski, his wife and their oldest son, Darren, now 58 and living in Florida, were featured in an early 1960s West Penn Power ad campaign touting the home’s all-electric functions, powered by cables in the ceiling.

The home’s central air conditioning was installed in the 1990s, and the climate control extends to an enclosed sun room added in 2002.

Before then, David Mazeroski recalled, “The basement was always the coolest room in the house. We had a television down there and we watched a lot of football games in the ’70s, when the Steelers were real good.”

His fondest memories are of outdoor activities on the spacious property, including building forts in the woods, playing catch with his father and learning other skills including casting a fishing line.

Whoever takes charge of the next chapter in the home’s history, he said, “I wish them as much happiness as we had growing up there.”

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