It was a Thursday afternoon, Oct. 13, 1994, the 3 o’clock hour. I stood aside the bricked remnant of old Forbes Field on the University of Pittsburgh campus next to the law school and “Forbes Quad” building. Inside the latter is the old home plate of Forbes encased in glass. You can stroll into that building and stand where Bill Mazeroski, on Oct. 13, 1960, at 3:36 p.m. belted a pitch from the New York Yankees’ Ralph Terry over 400 feet. The ball sailed over the head of Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, dramatically securing the World Series for the Pirates.
It has been called the greatest home run in baseball history. The only walk-off homer to win a World Series Game 7. It was stroked against the mighty Yankees, a team with the likes of Berra, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford and Casey Stengel.
Maz’s blast was a shot heard ’round the world. The crowd of 36,000-plus erupted. The hit made Mazeroski famous, all the way to “baseball immortality” in the Hall of Fame.
The moment was so special that every Oct. 13 henceforth, even after Forbes Field was shut down after the 1970 season, a contingent of the faithful annually gathered at that spot to relive the moment. Someone always had an audio recording of the game, called by legendary Pirates announcer Bob “The Gunner” Prince and Yankees announcer Mel Allen. The faithful ritualistically huddled together, listened and cheered when Prince made his call.
I was born six years after that game, though I had relatives there. I have an artist’s rendering of the moment hanging at my Grove City College office, plus a framed photo of Forbes at home. The field was one of those sacred shrines of baseball destroyed to make room for the monstrous cookie-cutter stadiums of the 1970s, a period of wretched architecture — many mercifully dynamited after only a few decades of existence, replaced by a blessed renaissance of traditional, old-fashioned ballparks.
Personally, these reflections are special to me. My career as a writer and pundit began with commentary on Forbes Field and pushing for the idea of a baseball-only ballpark in Pittsburgh. My first articles for the Tribune-Review were on that subject — a two-part series on Oct. 30-31, 1993, titled, “City should make pitch for new ballpark.”
Those articles generated so much interest that longtime Trib editorial page editor Paul Koloski asked for more. It culminated in (I had to look this up) a July 10, 1994, piece called, “If you rebuild it, they will come,” which actually called for rebuilding Forbes Field altogether, and maybe even naming it Mazeroski Field. My big idea: Other cities were building new baseball-only parks, such as Baltimore’s splendid Camden Yards, but none dared to rebuild an old one.
Well, that idea made a splash. I wrote pieces for other Pittsburgh publications and did my first talk shows with the likes of WTAE’s Phil Musick and Lynn Cullen, KDKA’s Fred Honsberger and Bob Pompeani, and with Stan Savran’s KBL Sportsbeat.
Though Forbes Field wasn’t rebuilt, Pittsburgh ended up with the beautiful PNC Park on the North Shore. Everyone loves the place. Bill Mazeroski, I’m sure, loved it.
It is to Maz that I dedicate these thoughts today. The gentle, humble soul who loved this region that loved him has passed away at 89. He left behind a memory and legacy as solid as that brick wall that still stands in Oakland to this day.
