Once the Pirates Got Thrift and Thrifty, Fortunes Improved

Joe L. Brown stuck his head into Manager Jim Leyland’s office here Saturday night after another Pirate win. Another Pirate win. Sounds strange, but it’s true. It was Pittsburgh’s 16th win in 22 games this season--and, counting the end of last season, it gave the Pirates 43 of their last 60. Pitt’s team is no longer the pits.

“Outsmarted ‘em again, Skip,” said Brown, who was general manager of the Pirates for more than 20 years, and now serves on the board of directors.

“Guess so, Joe,” said Leyland, looking up from dinner.

“Nothing to this game when you’ve got guys who can play it,” Brown said.

“Yes, sir,” the manager agreed, though he really didn’t.

Leyland was willing to go along with a light-hearted mood that followed another victory, but he did not want to go too far with it. “We’re a better team than we’ve been since I’ve been here,” said the man whose first band of Pirates, in 1986, lost 98 games. “We’re a good team now. But, how good? Who knows?”

Good point. We do not know exactly what to expect from these Pirates, who begin a three-game series tonight at Dodger Stadium. When a team’s average player is 26.1 years old, and when a franchise has not had a winning record since 1983, expectations should not run too high. The Pirates haven’t even had an 85-win season since they went 98-64 and won the World Series in 1979. From that time on, they have been up three rivers without a paddle.

It was 1985 when they finally decided to do something about it. On their way to a humiliating season record of 57-104, the Pirates turned over Harding Peterson’s GM duties on an interim basis to Joe Brown, who had held that job from 1956-76. Brown needed a baseball guy with guts and good sense. He thought of Sydnor W. Thrift, Jr., who once ran the Kansas City Royals’ scouting system, but had settled back into a comfortable life in a Virginia realty business.

Syd Thrift agreed, with some hesitation, to take the job on Nov. 7, 1985, barely a month after the 104th defeat. Thirteen days later, he hired Leyland, a longtime minor league manager and major league coach who had apprenticed for a chance. Together, they went to work.

They decided to get rid of, well, not the dead wood, but the old wood. Out went Bill Madlock, George Hendrick, Jim Morrison. They decided to bid a farewell to arms. Out went John Candelaria, Rick Rhoden, Rick Reuschel, Jose DeLeon. They decided to deal players who were popular and in peak form, because other teams wanted them. Out went Tony Pena, Johnny Ray, Don Robinson. “Supply and demand,” Thrift said.

The fans in the stands would have complained, if there had been any fans in the stands. The total attendance at Three Rivers Stadium for the 1985 season was 735,900. The Pirates were drawing in 81 games what football’s Steelers could draw in a dozen.

Thrift knew what had to be done, and had nerve enough to do it. The roster needed to be weeded. So, he held something of a fire sale, just as Charlie O. Finley once tried to do back when Thrift was the Oakland owner’s right-hand man. Only, instead of money this time, Thrift took talent. Back in 1976, Finley wanted to sell A’s players Vida Blue, Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to two teams for $2.5 million in cash, but the baseball commissioner wouldn’t let him. Ten years later, instead of cash, Thrift took it out in trade.

As a bonus, down went the Pirate payroll. “It went from $11 million to $4 million in two years,” Thrift said. “And, the team was better.”

The Bucs of today do not make the big bucks. Only the Texas Rangers have a smaller average salary. But, the Pirates do make the big plays. They have punch, speed and pitching. They have a third baseman with Willie Stargell’s pop, a second baseman who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, outfielders with range and power and a throw-in catcher whom St. Louis never should have thrown out. And, Pittsburgh’s young pitching staff is the envy of the National League. Not as experienced as New York’s, maybe, but tough enough to make the Mets sweat throughout the East Division race.

Better yet, being a Pirate no longer means having to say you’re sorry. Until a week ago Saturday, nobody had seen the Pirates on the national television Game of the Week for four seasons, and nobody from the Pirates truly wanted to be seen, particularly in those Frederick’s of Pennsylvania uniforms they used to wear.

Andy Van Slyke, the outfielder, said guys used to go in and out of Pittsburgh so quickly, instead of sewing their names on their uniforms, the Pirates just slapped on Velcro patches. These days, though, players are happy to stay and play, and Van Slyke says, “The guys we have now aren’t ashamed to put on the Pirate uniform.”

Some of these guys are real characters. That includes Van Slyke, who is “Norman Bates” to his friends, and it includes pitcher Mike (Iceman) Dunne, second baseman Jose (Chico) Lind, catcher Mike (Spanky) LaValliere, outfielders Mike (Rambo) Diaz and Darnell (Shoes) Coles, and infielders Rafael (Pac Man) Belliard and Al (ESPN) Pedrique, not to forget nicknames to be named later, such as Barry (U.S.) Bonds. These guys have more monikers than the top-gun jet pilots at Miramar.

Unlike the championship “We Are Family” Pirates of a decade ago, who were loud, rowdy, loyal mates but also occasional cut-throats, this band is a bunch of sweethearts. As families go, the old Pirates were the Bunkers, but these Pirates are the Huxtables. Everybody likes them, not least of whom is Leyland, who says, “I’m not around them every minute, so I can’t be sure, but when I am around them, all I can say is to have a better bunch of guys, it’s impossible.”

Some of them have good hearts. Relief pitcher Jim Gott, for instance, has purchased 1,500 tickets that will be distributed to drug and alcohol abuse agencies, and helped see to it that beer was banned from the clubhouse. Then there was the touching story of Bryan Averso, 6, of New Castle, Pa., who recently died of leukemia after befriending some of the players. Diaz and Coles were pallbearers, and Bryan was buried in a suit that Diaz bought for him, while wearing two Pirate wristbands. “He was like a son to me,” Diaz said.

The nicest Pirate of all could be Roberto Martin Antonio (Bobby) Bonilla, the slugging third baseman whom Thrift got back after the Pirates stupidly let him get away. How he turned out so nice, having been brought up in New York’s heartless and dangerous South Bronx, is anybody’s guess, but Bonilla is a polite young man who calls everybody “sir,” and that is what everybody will be calling him if he keeps on pounding home runs into the upper decks.

Bonilla was an outfielder for a while, but got distracted. “You tend to doze off out there,” he says. “At third base, you’re in the game.” Still, Leyland benched him briefly because his concentration lapsed, so now Bonilla keeps alert by jogging in place at third base, while on defense. Either that, or he’s working on his home run trot.

It is good that the Pirates are such good people, although that is not what makes them such good players. As Joe Brown said: “You could hire 24 orphans and get good people. Evers didn’t talk to Tinker. Ruth didn’t talk to Gehrig. But, they still played great baseball together. Our young guys are good because they have ability. The fact that they’re such nice kids is just a nice little something extra.”

How nice are the Pirates?

They have this one young pitcher who, even though he had only won six big league games before this season, seemed to be in great demand. One wild rumor even had him going to the Dodgers, straight up for Pedro Guerrero. Syd Thrift likes him so much, he said he wouldn’t trade him for any hot young arm, not even New York’s hard-throwing Randy Myers. He likes his boy that much.

The boy’s name is Smiley.

Now, this is a nice ballclub.