He Brought Pirates and Fans Back

When a team is going bad, the thing to do is, go out and comb the bushes, try to find the heavy hitter or the junk pitcher the opposition has overlooked, somebody who can save the franchise, return the club to past glories and future triumphs.

Usually, what you look for in these cases is another Babe Ruth or, in this case, another Roberto Clemente.

Certainly, the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1985 qualified as a piece of distressed baseball real estate. The franchise sank as low as one can--last place. Attendance dwindled to the vanishing point--the lowest in the stadium’s history, 735,000.

There was talk of moving the franchise. Any direction would do, including straight down. This was because--as if the situation weren’t bad enough--the team was awash with drug scandals that made the Pittsburgh locker room look like Needle Park. Or night court.

The team that was once the hallowed home of the Waner brothers, Honus Wagner, Pie Traynor, Arky Vaughan, Gus Suhr, Roberto Clemente, Wilver Stargell and Kiki Cuyler occupied the same warm spot in the hearts of the fans as an opium den. The Pirates not only needed players, they needed prayers.

So, they went out and got a guy who couldn’t hit, run, throw or field, who had never hit or thrown a major league curveball, who was slow, had no power, a suspect arm--and, besides, he was 56 years old.

You could see why 25 franchises had passed on him.

No, Sydnor W. Thrift is not the mythical hero of a George Plimpton fantasy novel. He’s real enough, all right, all 6 feet 4 inches and 250 pounds of him.

He’s as unlikely a savior of a baseball franchise as you’re likely to find. The Pirates found him running a real estate office in northern Virginia, marketing fixer-uppers for suburban Washington, to give you an idea.

But Syd Thrift brought something more important than a home run stroke or a 90-m.p.h. sinker, he brought a baseball talent that transcends even those. Syd Thrift is, apparently, one of those lucky people who, like the late Branch Rickey, can spot a good baseball player from a bad one with a look. I always felt that Rickey’s edge was, he could spot a player from the window of a moving train. Syd Thrift may not be able to do that. But from the window of a parked car, he’d be tough.

Syd Thrift took a Pittsburgh team that was one step short of being put on a bus and made it into a pennant force again. How he did it has a lot of people shaking their heads, but lots of peo1886151968Stanky got on base, either. Except, he kept doing it.

So did Syd Thrift.

For instance, one of the first things he did after his return to baseball from a nine-year absence was to acquire a young player named Bobby Bonilla. Thrift had seen Bonilla only briefly at a European clinic he attended six years ago and he immediately recommended the Pirates sign him. No other major league team was interested.

The Pirates let Bonilla go. But the first thing Thrift did when he took over the club was get him back. Perhaps you noticed Bonilla was the National League’s starting third baseman in Tuesday’s All-Star game. Or that he is hitting more than .300 with 17 homers and may make the town forget Pie Traynor before he is through.

Thrift swapped right-handed pitcher Jose DeLeon and traded catcher Tony Pena to the St. Louis Cardinals for what seemed like a journeyman outfielder or a bunch of cigar coupons.

The town was all but at his door with a rope and burning fagots. Pena was widely perceived to be the team’s only bona fide big leaguer. Certainly, he was its most popular.

The cigar coupons turned out to be Andy Van Slyke (21 homers last season), catcher Mike LaValliere and pitcher Mike Dunne, who dueled Dwight Gooden on equal terms in his debut last season.

Syd was acting on confident principles, but the suspicion grew that his last name might be less a name than a description. To be sure, he reduced the Pirate payroll from a veteran-swollen $11 million to $7 million and then to $5 million, lowest in the big leagues. “I had to. We were losing $8 million to $10 million a year,” Syd explains.

Thrift is personally in the well-worn, good-ol’-boy mold. He kind of shambles when he walks. When he talks, you can smell the magnolias. He looks and sounds at first like someone you might want to sell the Brooklyn Bridge or a hot watch to but, an hour later, you might find yourself going home with something that will turn green on your arm. Syd ends up doing the selling.

Syd learned to spot players the hard way--as a scout. This is the other side of baseball’s moon, out of the lights and the organ music and the cameras, in which you drive thousands of miles across the countryside looking for the ore to fill the mills of the game. You don’t get much credit and less money but you learn to recognize major league talent on the hoof, and the game needs you like umpires. Syd got good enough at it to head up Ewing Kauffman’s innovative baseball academy in Florida, which sent a whole generation of pennant winners and contenders up to Kansas City.

It’s like riding a bicycle. The knack never leaves you. Syd walked out of his real estate office into a front office without losing stride. He got the Pirates back in Pittsburgh (attendance has been over a million the last two years). Now, he’d like to get them back in the World Series. As another Pennsylvanian has said, thrift is the surest way to success. If the Pirates win, baseball will drink to that.