We went to our third Pirates game of the summer on June 21st. This was a Tuesday night game, in the middle of a 3-game intra-league series with the Baltimore Orioles, the favorite team of Tim’s Dad. This night the Pirates were celebrating the 40th anniversary of their World Series victory over the Orioles, back in 1971. The loss in this World Series is a sore spot for Tim’s Dad, as the Orioles were heavily favored that year, featuring multiple hall of famers and 4 pitchers with 20 wins (which is unheard of). An interesting coincidence of that series was that it occurred at the time when Tim’s parents got married! Dad and his best men watched the O’s win one of the games on the day of the wedding.
The Pirates are keen on giving away things to fans, and for this game there was a clear theme. Every fan got a mug featuring a picture of the ’71 team and the scores from the games.
Many Pirates from the ’71 team were in attendance. Before the game, they had the players line up across the field and they each announced.
After the cheer for the wife and son of Roberto Clemente, the next loudest cheer was for hall of famer Bill Mazeroski. They mis-spoke when announcing him, though, saying he was the best defensive second baseman of all time.
When the Orioles lineup for the game was announced, they were pictured in the style of the 1971 Topps baseball cards and surrounded by images of Orioles cards from that year.
They game started off well for the Pirates as they were up 5-0 after 3 innings. The Pirates starter Guthrie stayed strong through 7 innings and the Orioles fought back to 5-3 off of two home runs, including a major blast to center by Adam Jones.
The Pirates tacked on several more runs in the late innings, much to the delight of the 30-thousand-plus fans in the stands, for a final winning score of 9-3. Sorry, Dad!
Once we got home, Tim decided to take out the Orioles’ frustrations and maybe exorcise the demons from the ’71 loss by SMASHING the stein on the concrete floor!
Ok, ok….Tim had too many things in his hands and didn’t notice that the box was upside-down and opening…and the stein just fell out. Not a big deal – now we’ve only got one that we don’t know what to do with.
This is pretty neat! Enjoyed reading your post. Can’t believe it has been 40 years!!