Why Game 5 of the 1979 World Series still means so much to Pittsburgh

Mike DeCourcy

Why Game 5 of the 1979 World Series still means so much to Pittsburgh image

Sometime after the Pirates had dropped their third game of the 1979 World Series, which is as many as a team is permitted to lose and still have an opportunity to win the championship, manager Chuck Tanner presented to the assembled players in the Three Rivers Stadium clubhouse his shocking selection as the starting pitcher in Game 5: left-hander Jim Rooker.

The only rookie in the room was Steve Nicosia, a right-handed-hitting catcher who would be in the lineup for that game because the Orioles were set to throw their ace, lefty Mike Flanagan. Even at 23, Nicosia recognized the best way to process this news: with humor. He’d struck an average of just eight home runs per year in six seasons in the minors. Handling pitchers is how he got to the bigs. 

“Our pitching was kind of hurting a little bit. We’d used a bunch of pitchers, and we were down 3-1. Obviously, Baltimore was a great hitting team,” Nicosia told Sporting News. “So when Tanner announced that Rook was going to be the Game 5 starter, I stood up in the clubhouse and I said, ‘Oh, s—, everybody pack your hunting gear. This season’s over with.’

“Everybody just got a real kick out of that, coming from a young guy. That’s the way our team was. We were down 3-1, but we were loose.”

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The team that forever will be known through baseball history as “The Fam-a-lee” almost was lost to baseball history. That changed 40 years ago today, in a game that began late on a gray Sunday afternoon, in a stadium that never would be called a “ballpark," in a city whose reign as the world’s steelmaking capital was withering but whose sports teams were reveling in a decade that led to Pittsburgh being proclaimed as the “City of Champions.”

Game 5 of the 1979 World Series was not the most exciting in the history of the event, but it was notable for a number of reasons: It turned around what had been a Baltimore rout and became the first of three consecutive Pirates victories as they clinched their club’s fifth title; it remains the only World Series game I’ve ever attended; and, somewhat related to that fact and most significant of all, it was the last World Series game ever played in the city of Pittsburgh.

Pirates optimists, of whom there apparently are many at work in the organization, would correct the language in that last clause to declare Game 5 only was the “most recent” Series game to be played in Pittsburgh. But there have been 29 losing seasons since, and the team has not come within a country mile of the Fall Classic since former Pirate Sid Bream slid home with the Braves’ game-winning run in Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series.

A lot can fade from memory in 40 years. My recollection of that day is limited to basic facts such as where we sat (right field upper deck, 600 level at Three Rivers Stadium); my companion for the afternoon (my brother Patrick); and the atmosphere of doom engendered by the selection of Rooker as the Pirates’ starting pitcher. And, of course, that the Rooker decision turned out to be shockingly brilliant and the Bucs wound up winning. Really, that’s all I’ve got left.

Fortunately, there were others involved as participants, journalists or spectators who remember well that last truly triumphant day of Pirates baseball. These are their memories.

Prelude

After a furious division race won by two games over the Montreal Expos, a result that was not secured until the final day of the regular season, the Pirates swept the Cincinnati Reds in three games in the NLCS. The celebration of that victory, which assured a trip to the World Series, included wives of the Pirates players dancing on top of the dugout to the disco hit “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, which had become the team’s anthem during that sustained battle with the Expos.

BERT BLYLEVEN, Hall of Fame pitcher who went 12-5 in 37 starts: “I don’t know who played it first; maybe Willie Stargell. But we always had music in the clubhouse. Chuck Tanner allowed that. Sometimes during the season, especially toward the end — it was a tight race to the end — we might lose a close ballgame and there’d be music playing lightly. And sometimes Willie would go over and just turn the music up louder and just say, ‘Hey guys, it’s over with. Tomorrow is a new day. Let’s go.’ ”

LANNY FRATTARE, Pirates play-by-play voice, 1976-2008: “We all knew, and Chuck said this repeatedly, he had a lot of free spirits in that clubhouse, but he didn’t have to worry about the clubhouse because Willie Stargell took care of that. I don’t remember when the song ‘We Are Family’ first started coming out. I don’t remember at what point Willie and the crew decided this should be the theme song of the team. The song was really supposed to be just a clubhouse thing. But, as you can expect, and it’s understandable, the PR department and front office would jump on this theme song and play it in the ballpark and everybody would get tied into the song.”

The Pirates appeared to be in fine shape when they split a pair of one-run games as the World Series opened at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, even though they blew the first game by botching multiple plays in the field. That those games occurred after Game 1 was snowed out was an even greater blessing, because the condensed schedule, with only one off day remaining, would not allow the Orioles to throw Flanagan three times.

After the first two games in Pittsburgh, though, it seemed likely Flanagan only would be needed once more. The Orioles scored 17 runs and smacked 25 hits against six different pitchers. They hammered gifted lefty John Candelaria in Game 3 and, most ominously, rallied for six runs in the eighth inning against relievers Don Robinson and Kent Tekulve in Game 4. The Pirates had been in position to even the series in that game, carrying a 6-3 lead into the eighth, but bullpen's struggles cost them the lead and then the game.

DAN DONOVAN, Pittsburgh Press Pirates beat writer, 1978-81: “The Baltimore press dubbed Earl Weaver a genius because he saved his left-handed hitters for Tekulve. And I always wondered what a non-genius would have done. Isn’t that what any manager would do? It just killed me. I just never understood that. I think everybody thought it was over after it was 3-1.”

STAN SAVRAN, Pittsburgh radio and television host since 1976: “I used to string for CBS Radio and a guy named Win Elliot. They hired me for the World Series for the games in Pittsburgh to kind of be like his producer. So at the end of Game 4 —they stunningly lost that game to go down 3-1 — I’m standing in the runway right at the precipice of the dugout. And I remember Dave Parker walking by and he just said, ‘OK, f— ‘em.’ I don’t know if that was the beginning of their comeback or not.”

ED BOUCHETTE, Greensburg (Pa.) Tribune-Review sports writer, 1976-83. “I remember after the game, Ed Ott was sitting there down 3-1, he’s saying the Pirates have the superior team, saying they ‘overestimated’ the Orioles. I’m going: This guy’s crazy. I wrote that in the Trib. It seemed to be just a handful of us around him. It wasn’t a big crowd. It was Ed Ott; you know what I mean?”

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Gameday

After arriving at Three Rivers to begin his preparations for Game 5, Tanner called a hospital in nearby Greenville, where his mother had been recovering from a stroke that occurred two weeks earlier. He wanted an update on her condition before focusing on the game. This is how Tanner learned his mother had died. This awful news began to circulate among those around the team: players, the front office, the media.

FRATTARE: “I walked into Chuck’s office with Jim Fregosi. He was the manager of the Angels, and he had played for the Pirates in ’78. We walked into Chuck’s office together and we offered our condolences. And Chuck said to us, ‘Thanks very much for your condolences, but I want you to know my mother just went to get us help.’ Knowing Chuck, he really believed it. There was nothing phony about Chuck. He believed it in his heart, and his faith in God.’ “

BLYLEVEN: “Of course, we were all in distress because of that. Chuck, realizing what was on the line, basically we had a meeting before, we gave him our condolences, and he said, ‘Let’s win one for my mother.’ "

Among the obstacles blocking that goal, the decision to start Rooker seemed even more daunting than the presence of Flanagan in the opposing lineup.

Rooker had been a quality big league pitcher through his first 11 seasons. But this was his 12th season, which bore little resemblance to what came before. He’d averaged 30 starts and 13 wins over the previous five years, but he had two stints on the disabled list in ’79, went 4-7 and posted his worst ERA as a starting pitcher. He threw only 103 innings and, for only the second time as a starter, gave up more than a base hit per inning.

Game 1 starter Bruce Kison, who’d gone 13-7 with a 3.17 ERA, developed a problem with his forearm in that defeat, perhaps because of the extreme cold. He gave up five runs and lasted less than an inning. Rooker relieved and gave up only two hits in nearly four innings, and Tanner told pitching coach Harvey Haddix to inform Rooker he’d be on the mound for Game 5 if Kison couldn’t go.

PAT DeCOURCY, Elizabeth Forward High School class of 1980: “I was excited to be at the World Series. I remember before the game the atmosphere was good; I thought the fans were pretty fired up. But I definitely remember when we saw Rooker was pitching I thought, ‘Oh, wow, I don’t know if this is going to be good. I’m not so sure.’ I didn’t have anything against him. It was just, make-or-break, this is it.” 

DONOVAN: As we found out, he probably could have moved up Blyleven to pitch that game. He was the scheduled Game 6 starter, and Blyleven was one of those guys who had a good arm, could pitch anytime he wanted. But instead he chose Rooker.”

ROOKER: “Other than the World Series, that’s the worst year I had with the Pirates. It wasn’t so much injuries, even though they did put me on the disabled list a couple of times. It wasn’t because I was injured; at least, I didn’t think so. I argued a couple times, with Tony Bartirome, our trainer, and Chuck, that I shouldn’t be put on the list. But they have the upper hand in that. But by the time the end of the year rolled around, I didn’t pitch that many innings. I was healthy and felt a lot stronger, probably to an advantage, as opposed to guys who pitched most of the year.”

NICOSIA: “You couldn’t give the ball to a more gutty, crafty guy. That’s the guy you want in a foxhole, when the game is on the line. It was a great choice, and I think everybody had full confidence Rook was going to take us to the promised land. In all honesty, I think Baltimore underestimated how good a pitcher he was. There had been rumblings that he had a sore arm, he wasn’t throwing very hard.”

ROOKER: “It just lit me up. I can’t explain it any other way, other than to say I was so excited because I had pitched out of the bullpen already in Game 1 and felt great, was ready to go. When he gave me the news, I can’t explain how excited I was to get the chance. About the only thing I can compare it to is if you’re 16 years old and you’re expecting this brand-new bicycle for Christmas, and when you come to the Christmas tree that morning your father hands you the keys to a brand-new Corvette.”

NICOSIA: “We got the scouting report. Of course, we had played four other games, and I had caught two of those games, Games 1 and 3, and I felt like I knew the hitters pretty well. When we sat down to go over Game 5, Rook and I kind of looked at each other and they had that we were going to throw all the right-handers … pitch everybody away. And we were just shaking our heads. We were like, ‘We’re going to bust these guys inside.’ We just decided to change on our own. We worked really well together. I don’t even know if Rook shook a pitch off in those five innings.”

Rooker began the game against the Orioles’ Kiko Garcia, who was hitting .600 in the Series and had a combined six RBIs in his team’s Game 3 and 4 victories. 

On a 2-2 count, after the crowd made its concern about Rooker obvious when that second ball flew outside and high, far away from the outside corner, and after Garcia had fouled off multiple pitches, Rooker jammed him with a fastball. Garcia blooped it into the space between the mound and second base. Infielders Tim Foli and Phil Garner were never going to get there in time, but Rooker retreated and somehow caught the ball over his shoulder. A tone was set there.

ROOKER: “I don’t think any other pitcher that I know of, before or since, could have made the play that I made. The fact I was a former outfielder was a big difference in making the play. When I jammed him, I knew that Garner and Foli didn’t have a chance to get to that ball, and it was going to hit the turf like a wedge and just stop. He was going to be on first with nobody out, and you never know what’s going to happen after that. I followed through with my left foot and pushed off and spun around and caught the ball to make the out.”

From there, Rooker retired the next nine batters in succession. When he came up to bat in the bottom of the third, fans who’d been rattled by those first few errant pitches applauded loudly. 

After walking Benny Ayala with one out in the fourth, Rooker struck out Ken Singleton, who watched a fastball sear across the inside corner, and then got Eddie Murray to pop out meekly to second. The Pirates heard afterward that Murray returned to the dugout angrily exclaiming, “Sore arm, my ass!”

It's not well remembered that Rooker was not the winning pitcher in Game 5, nor even that the Pirates were behind 1-0 when he left the game in the bottom of the fifth for a pinch-hitter. He gave up one hit, a double to Gary Roenicke that turned into the game’s first run when Rich Dauer grounded into a double play. As much as baseball is defined by numbers, even then in the days before analytics, what made Rooker a folk hero to Pirates players and their fans was the fire he showed in getting them through the start of that game.

DONOVAN: “It was a heck of a decision to make. If anybody made a crucial decision in the series, it was Tanner.”

SAVRAN: “To me, it might have been the most heroic pitching performance that I’ve ever seen. They were down to him — and I like Rook a lot personally, he’s a great guy — but at that time in his career he was pitching with chewing gum, bailing wire, getting by on guile and whatever. To me, that was the story of the series. It’s something that I’ll always remember.”

In relief of Rooker, Tanner called on Blyleven, with a curve ball considered to be among the best in the history of the game. He allowed five baserunners in the final four innings but not a single run. 

ROOKER: “I knew he was going to shut them down. Because they had a predominantly right-hand-batting lineup, and if Bert’s got his act together, they’re not going to hit him.”

BLYLEVEN: “Everybody was available, and they picked me. It wasn’t a surprise when I got the call. As a starter, though, you throw 15 minutes to get ready for a ballgame. In the bullpen, when the phone call came, you get up and you’re ready in five minutes. You had to get ready quick.”

As Blyleven blew through the Orioles, the Pirates’ bats at last were reanimated. They did not hit Flanagan hard, but they hit him often, a series of jabs that did not produce a run despite two baserunners in the fifth. They finally broke through in the bottom of the sixth.

Foli led off the inning by drawing a walk. All-Star Dave Parker lined a single through the middle of the infield, just to the right of the second-base bag. Slugger Bill Robinson bunted to advance the runners to second and third, which positioned Stargell to drive in the tying run with a sacrifice fly to center. Third baseman Bill Madlock drove in Parker by lining a single to center field. 

ROOKER: “From that point on, their ass was ours. Because we knew if they had to bring Don Stanhouse in, which they did, he couldn’t get us out. We knew we had them from that point on. Our guys were so confident.”

The Pirates would not need any more runs, but they added two more in the seventh and three more in the eighth (off Stanhouse) by taking advantage of the Three Rivers artificial surface with hard grounders that scooted through the infield or hits that bounced through the gaps.

Carrying a 7-1 lead into the ninth, Blyleven allowed a couple of singles that provided a small amount of hope, then shut the door by forcing pinch hitter Terry Crowley to fly out to left.

BLYLEVEN: “Howard Cosell was doing some of the announcing. I think before Game 2 he had a sitdown with me. You know how Howard was. He said to me, ‘They say you can’t win the big one.’ And I was never in a World Series. This was my first time. I said, ‘I don’t know what a big one is, but hopefully I’ll pitch well and keep us in the game.’ Which I was able to do in Game 2, I think for six innings. ... That (comment) kind of threw me a curve. But my postseason speaks for itself, Howard Cosell.”

Epilogue

The challenge of winning the series, even with the deficit closed to 3-2 in games, seemed mountainous as the Pirates and Orioles returned to Baltimore for the final two games.

PHILIP BEARD, author of “Swing” a novel that features the 1971 Pirates World Series: “The offense just exploded after Game 4. And you’ve got the best pitching staff in the game, and the Pirates outpitched them the last two games. It was amazing. The bats just came from everywhere. In Game 5, Tim Foli had three RBIs, and he was not somebody who was necessarily a member of the Lumber Company.”

NICOSIA: “I’ve got to tell you, when we were down 3-1, I think everybody in our clubhouse — it was embarrassing for us. Don’t take anything wrong, nothing against Baltimore, they were great. But we just felt like in four games we just gave the games away. We just felt after four games we hadn’t played worth a darn, and we were still in it. We felt like we could win three games — that was not going to be a problem for us.”

ROOKER: “I’ll give Baltimore all the credit in the world. They had a good team. We had, man for man, a better team. And the best team won.”

In Game 6, Candelaria shut out the Orioles for six innings, and Tekulve bounced back from that terrible outing three days earlier to allow just a single hit over three innings. The Pirates scraped up four runs against Jim Palmer and forced a Game 7. 

Jim Bibby started that one for the Bucs, but Tanner would have used nine pitchers in nine innings if necessary. Bibby went four innings and gave up the game’s first run, but Stargell wiped that off the board with a home run in the sixth that scored Bill Robinson, who gave him an awkward hug as Stargell crossed home plate. Tekulve had to pitch out of a jam in the eighth, getting Murray to fly out with the lead run on first, but two Pirates’ runs in the top of the ninth allowed Tekulve to comfortably close out a 4-1 victory.

He celebrated by embracing Nicosia, and the field soon was flooded with Pirates players and those who wished to be close to them.

There has been nothing like it since.

The team won division titles in 1990, 1991 and 1992 and went to the seventh game in the league championship series in the latter two. Having lost my father in the summer of 1990, I vowed when each of those Octobers arrived to take my father-in-law, Frank, to a World Series game. It never happened before we lost him, as well, in 1999. It still has not.

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SAVRAN: “In 1992, when they lost that Game 7 to Atlanta, that was the singular worst moment in Pittsburgh sports history. There was a pall over the city. I’ll never forget that, because people knew they were going to break up the club.”

GARY MORGAN, marketing executive, Pirates fan since the 1980s: “I’m right on the border of too young and too old at the same time. At the time of the 1992 series against the Braves, the Penguins were just champions, so it felt like the City of Champions was coming back. That’s what all our parents had told us about. I’m still a fan because you just hope it happens organically, like the blind squirrel finding a nut. And I love the game of baseball.”

DeCOURCY, retiring chief financial officer, Allegheny Technologies: “The only game I can compare Game 5 to is the Reds-Pirates one-game playoff in 2013. The ‘Cueto Game.’ The fans were even more into it and vocal at that game. It was incredible. Because it had been 20 years since we did anything. What I didn’t know back in ’79 was the game was going to change dramatically, it was going to be $150 million-, $200 million-dollar-payrolls, and that we were going to end up with ownership structure that would never support something like that and would destine us to be losers most of the time.”

Mike DeCourcy

Mike DeCourcy Photo

Mike DeCourcy has been the college basketball columnist at The Sporting News since 1995. Starting with newspapers in Pittsburgh, Memphis and Cincinnati, he has written about the game for 35 years and covered 32 Final Fours. He is a member of the United States Basketball Writers Hall of Fame and is a studio analyst at the Big Ten Network and NCAA Tournament Bracket analyst for Fox Sports. He also writes frequently for TSN about soccer and the NFL. Mike was born in Pittsburgh, raised there during the City of Champions decade and graduated from Point Park University.