Mike LaValliere, Bob Walk remember former Pirates pitching coach Ray Miller's fun side

Ray Miller taught Bob Walk and Mike LaValliere much about pitching, relationships and how to deal with umpires.

But Miller, the former Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitching coach, also knew about something else that those two teammates remembered Wednesday when they heard their mentor had died.

“Ray certainly appreciated a good prank and the fun part of the game,” said LaValliere, a former Pirates catcher. “That’s one of the things that’s missing from the game nowadays.”

It wasn’t funny at the moment it happened, but the day Miller stabbed himself between the eyes with second baseman Chico Lind’s knife shouted volumes about the team’s respect for the man.

LaValliere said players had a portable basketball hoop in their clubhouse at Three Rivers Stadium, and they conducted tournaments before games.

Lind, however, became so annoyed when the ball bounced near his locker that he used to cut it with a knife.

One day, Miller grabbed the knife. “Chico, stop. We can’t afford you getting hurt,” Miller said.

“Ray went to cut (the ball),” LaValliere said, “and he stabbed himself right between the eyes. We’re all shocked. Blood is squirting everywhere.”

As it turned out, it was a relatively minor wound, nothing that could keep Miller from performing his duties that night.

“He refused stitches, being an old-school guy,” LaValliere said.

“Once we found out he was OK, we all had a pretty good laugh, and just for Ray’s sake, we all wore a band-aid with some ketchup while we played the game.”

Another time, Miller bled a little more on his players’ behalf. Walk and LaValliere love to tell the story.

In Montreal, the scoreboard operator used to flash a cartoonish picture of a chicken onto a big screen — accompanied by a clucking noise — every time the opposing pitcher would throw over to first base.

“Walkie and I decided we were going to see how many chickens we would get up there in one at-bat,” LaValliere said.

After eight chickens, Walk remembers, “They almost didn’t have anymore room.”

“We’re having a blast,” LaValliere said. “It was a legit base stealer (Herm Winningham, as he recalled), so it wasn’t a complete farce.”

Finally, Miller, who was not part of the prank, decides to go to the mound to scold his guys.

“Ray says not in so polite terms, ‘What are you guys doing? Jimmy (Leyland, the manager) is going crazy,’” LaValliere said.

They answered, “We’re trying to see how many chickens we can get up there.”

“Ray bites his lip. I think he may have even have drawn blood. He just does an about-face and goes back to the dugout.

“There’s Leyland looking up at him,” Walk said. “I saw Leyland laugh. He doesn’t care, so I threw over a couple more times.”

They ended up throwing over 13 times. The record was 14, but they didn’t know it.

“I guarantee you, if we had known the record was 14, we would have thrown over 15,” LaValliere said.

Winningham never did steal the base. “He was too tired from diving back to first.”

But Walk also remembers Miller for his attention to detail. He had “boxes and boxes” of index cards with hitters’ tendencies on them. Also, he made a passage in a little book every time a pitcher would throw a nine-inning complete game or nine-inning shutout.

“I looked at it one time. There were a lot of Hall of Famers in that book,” Walk said.

Walk met Miller in 1983 when he was his manager in winter ball in Puerto Rico.

“I knew right then he was somebody the guys didn’t want to mess with,” he said. “He was almost like an older brother. I never had an older brother, but he’s what I would imagine one would be like.

“He was a wonderful man. I’ve always missed him. It’s too bad he’s gone now.

“He was really a great person, besides being a good pitching coach. He was somebody everybody who ever played for him, whether it was a manager or otherwise, respected.

“He really understood the game and he understood people.”