September 1, 1971: The Pittsburgh Pirates make history -- by accident.
They host their cross-State rivals, the Philadelphia Phillies, at Three Rivers Stadium. Under normal circumstances, the Pirates, defending Champions of the National League Eastern Division, and entering this game with a 4 1/2-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals -- the hopeless Phillies are 22 1/2 games back -- would take the field with this lineup:
9, 2nd base, Bill Mazeroski
20, 3rd base, Richie Hebner
21, right field, Roberto Clemente
8, left field, Willie Stargell
16, center field, Al Oliver
35, catcher, Manuel "Manny" Sanguillén
7, 1st base, Bob Robertson
2, shortstop, Jacinto "Jackie" Hernández
And that day's starting pitcher.
Clemente, Mazeroski and Stargell have been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Oliver and Sanguillén were All-Stars. And Robertson and Hebner had some power: Later in the decade, the Pirates would be nicknamed "The Lumber Company," before an aging but still slugging "Pops" Stargell proclaimed them "The Family." So this was a very effective lineup.
But there were injuries. Hebner did not play between August 21 and September 4; Robertson, between August 30 and September 4. And Mazeroski had gotten hurt the day before, and would be out until September 5.
This was not an "injury crisis." The Pirates had a deep bench. And manager Danny Murtaugh would use it on this Wednesday night, in front of a crowd of 11,278, who had no idea as they filed into Three Rivers, on the north bank of the Ohio River across from downtown Pittsburgh, that they were going to witness history.
Indeed, Murtagh, a 53-year-old white man from Chester, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, who had managed a Pirate team including Clemente and Mazeroski to win the 1960 World Series, didn't realize it himself as he was making out this lineup:
6 2B Reinaldo "Rennie" Stennett
15 CF Gene Clines
21 RF Roberto Clemente
8 LF Willie Stargell
35 C Manny Sanguillén
30 3B Dave Cash
16 1B Al Oliver
2 SS Jackie Hernández
17 P Dock Ellis ("Dock" was his real name, not a nickname)
Still a pretty good lineup, aside from Ellis, who, like most pitchers, was not a good hitter. Hernández was the only weak spot. Each of the top 6 men in the lineup entered the game batting .300 or better.
But as the Pirate players took the field at 8:05 PM, they looked around, and it dawned on them what had happened: They were all minorities. Clemente, the heart and soul of the team, was a dark-skinned Puerto Rican. Sanguillén was a dark-skinned Cuban. Hernández was a comparatively light-skinned Cuban, but still wouldn't have been accepted as "white" before Jackie Robinson. Stennett was a dark-skinned Panamanian. And Stargell, Oliver, Clines, Cash and Ellis were all African-Americans.
Murtaugh, having long since put aside whatever prejudices he had had, and treating his players equally, had put out the 1st all-black-and/or-Hispanic lineup in baseball history. At first, no one was sure whether this was the 1st time it had been done, but no one could remember it happening before. Research later determined that it hadn't.
Did the lineup work? At first, it wasn't clear that it would. The Phils scored 2 runs in the top of the 1st, but the Bucs scored 5 in the bottom of the 1st. In the 2nd, the Phils scored 4, to take a 6-5 lead, but the Pirates came back to take an 8-6 lead, thanks in part to a home run by Sanguillén. And that was just in the 1st 2 innings.
Stennett, Clines, Clemente, Stargell and Sanguillén each got 2 hits. Clemente, Stargell and Sanguillén each had 2 RBIs. Pitching was an issue: Ellis did not have good stuff, and left the game in the 2nd inning. He was replaced by Bob Moose, who was white. In the 3rd, he was replaced by Bob Veale, black. In the 4th, he was replaced by Luke Walker, white, who pitched the rest of the way, and was credited as the winning pitcher. Final score: Pirates 10, Phillies 7. In other words, Murtaugh's unintentionally-historic lineup got the job done.
By September 5, the injured starters had returned. The Pirates won the NL East by 7 games over the Cardinals. In the NL Championship Series, they beat the San Francisco Giants, 3 games to 1, to win their 1st Pennant in 11 years. They fell behind the Baltimore Orioles 3 games to 1, but, with Clemente getting a hit in every game, including 2 home runs, with 4 RBIs, and stellar defensive play, the Pirates came back to win the World Series in 7 games. With this 2nd World Series win, Murtaugh, like Clemente, Mazeroski and Stargell, secured his election to the Hall of Fame.
In 2009, baseball historian Bruce Markusen published The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates. He argued that, by being fully-integrated -- at their peak, nearly half the roster, 12 out of 25, was black and/or Hispanic -- the '71 Pirates paved the way for the well-integrated teams that would dominate the decade: The Oakland Athletics, the Cincinnati Reds, and, later, the New York Yankees.
And 2 teams that had long resisted integration would get it done, and have their best periods for a while: The Boston Red Sox were the last team in MLB to integrate, yet the won the American League Pennant in 1975, with near-misses for the AL Eastern Division in 1972, '74, '77 and '78; while the Phillies, the last team in the NL to integrate, won 3 straight NL East titles from 1976 to '78, won the World Series in 1980, made the Playoffs again in '81, and won another Pennant in '83.
Here's why it was a big deal: As pitcher Jim Bouton noted in Ball Four, his diary of the 1969 season, the defending World Champions were the Detroit Tigers, and yet they had only 3 black players on their roster: Willie Horton, one of the top sluggers of that generation; Gates Brown, recognized as the best pinch-hitter in the game; and Earl Wilson, who had been the 1st black pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the AL, and was good enough to be the ace on some teams, but was behind Denny McLain and Mickey Lolich on the Tigers.
Bouton, white, realized that, in order to be black and in the major leagues, you had to be a genuine star. If you were an average player, they weren't going to take a chance on you. But the '68 Tigers had Don Wert as their starting 3rd baseman, and he batted just .200; while Ray Oyler, Bouton's teammate on the 1969 Seattle Pilots, had been the main shortstop for the '68 Tigers, and he batted just .135. Even for "The Year of the Pitcher," that was pathetic. So to take that hole out of their lineup, once the future Hall-of-Famer Al Kaline returned from injury to right field, his replacement, Mickey Stanley, was moved to shortstop. He batted .259. There were black shortstops and 3rd basemen who could hit as well as Stanley, and better than Oyler and Wert, but the Tigers made no effort to acquire them.
But after the '71 Pirates, teams finally accepted that they couldn't win without black talent in numbers, whether their 1st language was English or Spanish.
*
September 1, 1971, as I said, was a Wednesday. These other games were played in Major League Baseball that day:
* The New York Yankees lost to the Washington Senators, 2-0 at Yankee Stadium. Bill Gogolewski pitched a 4-0 hit shutout to beat Steve Kline, who got 1 of the hits. Thurman Munson did not, going 0-for-4.
* The New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-1 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Tom Seaver outpitched Bob Gibson. Bud Harrelson went 3-for-5, and Ken Boswell went 2-for-3 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Lou Brock went 0-for-4. Joe Torre went 1-for-4 with an RBI.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Boston Red Sox, 8-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4 with a walk. Frank Robinson did not play. Instead, Merv Rettenmund played right field, and hit a home run. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4 with an RBI.
* The San Diego Padres beat the Cincinnati Reds, 3-1 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Pete Rose went 0-for-4. Johnny Bench went 0-for-3 with a walk.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-3 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Al Kaline went 1-for-4.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Montreal Expos, 5-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Fergie Jenkins went the distance for the win, and helped his own cause with 2 home runs. Ernie Banks, entering his final month as a major league player, did not play.
* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the Minnesota Twins, 2-0 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Carlos May singled home the winning run in the top of the 11th inning. Harmon Killebrew went 1-for-4 with a walk. Rod Carew went 0-for-3 with a walk.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Houston Astros, 9-2 at the Astrodome in Houston.
* The Oakland Athletics beat the California Angels, 7-0 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Chuck Dobson pitched a 7-hit shutout. Reggie Jackson went 3-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs.
* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Atlanta Braves, 4-0 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. John Cumberland pitched a 4-hit shutout. Willie Mays did not play. Hank Aaron went 0-for-4.
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