Players, but Not City, Escape Indictments in Pittsburgh

A waiter, taking a break the other night at Alex Tambellini’s downtown restaurant, sat at the bar and talked to a diner at a nearby table.

“We got the worst hockey team,” the waiter said of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who lost about $2.5 million last season and may be sold and moved to another city.

“Yeah, but we got voted the No. 1 city,” the patron answered, referring to a Rand McNally survey that was published in March.

“We got the worst baseball team,” the waiter said, ignoring what the customer had said and referring to the Pirates, a comfortable last in the National League East and a team that reportedly lost $6 million last season.

“But we’re still the No. 1 city,” the diner insisted. “Rand McNally said so.”

“Rand McNally lied,” the waiter said.

Proud Pittsburghers, like the waiter at Tambellini’s, as loyal to their town as they are to their Steelers, four-time winners of the Super Bowl, found additional reasons to question their city when the first official shoe dropped Friday in a grand-jury investigation into drug use by baseball players--members of the Pirates as well as teams in other cities.

Six indictments charged seven men--all but one from Pittsburgh--on 165 counts of violating federal narcotics laws.

No ballplayers were mentioned in the indictments--in fact, baseball wasn’t even mentioned--but Gary Ogg, an attorney for Dale Martin Shiffman, one of the accused drug dealers, zeroed in on the situation Friday afternoon while arguing unsuccessfully that his client be released on bond.

Ogg got a government witness, FBI undercover agent Wells Morrison, to say that the players had been given immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.

“Various ballplayers have been witnesses in this,” Ogg said. “The evidence is based on what they’ve said to save their careers and their lives. There have to be scapegoats for something, and that someone has to take the brunt of this and (Shiffman) is the one.”

The players known to have testified in an investigation that started two years ago include Rod Scurry, Lee Mazzilli and Al Holland of the Pirates; Dave Parker of the Cincinnati Reds; Dale Berra of the New York Yankees; Lee Lacy of the Baltimore Orioles; Jeff Leonard of the San Francisco Giants; Tim Raines of the Montreal Expos; Enos Cabell of the Houston Astros; Lonnie Smith of the St. Louis Cardinals, and Keith Hernandez of the New York Mets. Their being called to testify is not an indication that they are suspected of wrongdoing.

Parker, Berra and Lacy used to play for the Pirates. Scurry, Raines and Smith are admitted cocaine users who have undergone rehabilitation.

After winning consecutive batting titles in 1977 and ‘78, Parker tailed off after having knee surgery in ’80 and was signed as a free agent by the Reds after the ’83 season.

Shelby Greer, among those indicted Friday, is a friend of Parker and was frequently seen in the Pirate clubhouse at Three Rivers Stadium in recent years.

One Pirate official, asking that his name not be used, said the club believed that Parker had problems other than his knee.

“In the outfield, balls would hit him in the stomach,” the Pirate official said. “He said that he lost them in the lights. But why would that be? He sure hadn’t grown any, and he didn’t lose the balls in the lights before.”

The team thought that it was peculiar one day when Parker scored the winning run. He crossed the plate, put his batting helmet on the plate and then jumped on it.

A Pirate official said that he had been sitting in a Chicago hotel bar with Lacy a few years ago when three women approached them.

“Where’s Parker?” one of the women asked.

They were told that Parker was in his room.

“Well, we wanted to find him to get some coke,” one of the women said.

A Pirate source said that when the team tried to trade Berra after last season, every club but one was not interested. Other teams were concerned about his erratic play in 1984, when his average dropped to .222 and he committed 30 errors at shortstop.

“The Yankees were the only team that would take a chance on him,” the source said.

When Berra went to the Yankees in a five-player deal, the New York club was managed by his father, Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra.

On May 23, the Pirates fired Harding (Pete) Peterson, their general manager, and replaced him with Joe L. Brown, who had preceded Peterson in the job. The team’s sorry record doubtlessly contributed to the change, and club President Dan Galbreath said that the team needed new leadership, but a Pirate source said this week that the alleged drug problems in the clubhouse might also have played a part in Peterson’s dismissal.

Peterson said that he has no knowledge of drug usage in the clubhouse but had tightened up security there at the suggestion of the baseball commissioner’s office.

The Pirates have been averaging only about 10,550 fans a game, easily the lowest attendance in the league, and the club has been for sale for several months.

“I don’t think the drug rumors have had anything to do with not being able to find a buyer,” said Galbreath, who is still negotiating with at least two groups. “The people I’ve talked to are interested in the ballclub. It’s a shame that Pittsburgh has had to take the brunt of this investigation, just because the grand jury is seated there. Pittsburgh is not singly involved. This is a broader issue than just the Pirates, and just baseball.”

Another Pirate official, Vice President Joe O’Toole, bemoans the timing of the investigation.

“I’ll be glad when it’s over,” O’Toole said. “It’s all you keep hearing, and something we don’t need, heaped on top of all the other problems we’re having on the field. It’s not only the Pirates, but it’s just something you have to live with.”

Art Rooney, a Pittsburgh native and the 84-year-old owner of the Steelers, lives near Three Rivers Stadium and is a frequent spectator at Pirate games.

“There’s no doubt that this drug investigation hurts,” Rooney said. “It’s not good for the team or the town. It reminds me of what David Lawrence (a former Pittsburgh mayor and governor of Pennsylvania) used to tell me when the steel unions would go on one of their strikes. He felt it was unfair to the city because it put us in a negative spotlight. There’d be all those labor stories with a Pittsburgh dateline, and now we’re going to keep getting that attention with this drug thing.”

Rooney is a frequent visitor to the Pirate clubhouse and knows many of the players personally.

“I like to loaf there,” Rooney said, using an indigenous Pittsburgh expression. “I was surprised and shocked to hear that any drug stuff might have been going on. Of course, it was never a requirement that you had to be in the state of grace to talk to me.”

One of Greer’s favorite hangouts was Houlihan’s Old Place, a trendy Pittsburgh bar. The other night, the brother of a former bartender there said, “Some of the biggest drug deals took place right here.”

Here, Friday in the United States Courthouse, the 29-year-old Greer was portrayed as a gambler and drug pusher whose business just grew and grew. Besides eight counts of cocaine distribution against Greer in the indictment, the FBI’s Robert Craig said that there were hundreds of other deals. “But it was difficult to establish definite times and places (through witnesses and Greer’s own confession) because of the regularity of the sales,” Craig added.

Craig said that for two years, 1983 and ‘84, Greer would fly to Florida every other week, buy cocaine and bring it back to Pittsburgh.

“He started out with a quarter of a pound and then got up to buying a pound at a time,” Craig said.

According to Craig, the street value of a pound of cocaine is more than $45,000.

Despite such top-dollar transactions, Greer’s attorney, John Zagari, described his client as a poor man.

“Financially, he’s very limited,” Zagari said. “His $15,000-automobile has been seized. The house where he’s been living in Philadelphia is in his fiancee’s name.”

At a detention hearing, a federal magistrate, Ila Jeanne Semsenich, ruled that Greer could be released from custody if he paid a $5,000 deposit on a $50,000 bond.

“Five thousand dollars is not a lot of money, but to my client it’s a very significant amount,” Zagari said.

Greer was finally released, pending his arraignment here next Friday, for a $50,000 unsecured bond, providing he reports daily to a federal agency in Philadelphia.

Next Friday, when Greer and the others return for their arraignments, Pittsburgh’s dateline will provide another negative spotlight.

It’s a story that’s shaken a proud city and, like Shelby Greer’s alleged drug business, it can only grow by the time there’s a trial.