Their Methods Were Madness, but They Achieved Same Ends

Before the National League East champion “Killer B’s,” before the teams of “Lumber and Lightning” and “We are Fam-i-lee,” there were the Pittsburgh Pirates of the mid-1960s, successful in their own right.

And different.

“We charted pitches,” Steve Blass, a pitcher then and a broadcaster for the team now, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“But it wasn’t how it’s done now. We used to have colors to show where a guy hit the ball so we’d know the tendencies. The Astros called up Rusty Staub, and somebody asked (pitcher) Bob Veale, who had the charts, where Staub hit. Veale said, ‘Fourth.’

“Then there was the time the other team called up a Latin player. We had Jose Pagan. Somebody thought Jose might know something about the player, how he hit, that stuff. So they said, ‘Jose, do you know this guy?’ Jose said, ‘Yes. He’s a real nice kid.’

“We weren’t real scientific.”

Add Pirates: “We used to have a policy that if you were the next day’s starting pitcher, you would do your running and then go home,” Blass said.

“One day, Richie Hebner was messing with me, so after I ran, I took his clothes and left. He lived at a boarding house and he had to go home wearing his uniform. He’d gone zero for four that night. He said his landlady booed the hell out of him.”

Trivia time: Howard Johnson of the New York Mets is seeking to become the first switch-hitter to lead the National League in runs batted in. Who are the three who did it in the American League?

Who dat?President Bush made a recent trip to New Orleans as part of Gov. Buddy Roemer’s re-election campaign and stood before a ballroom full of Republican boosters. They had paid up to $5,000 to hear him speak, and the President knew exactly how to get the voters on his side:

Talk about the 5-0 Saints.

“We started to taxi up in that magnificent new Air Force One, and there’s a red carpet out to greet me,” Bush said. “Then I found out it was for Jim Mora.”

Weather or not: Some would say that Andy Van Slyke, an outfielder with the Pirates, already has a job people would envy. But he had other aspirations, part time at least.

He is a self-proclaimed weather nut who, according to his wife, stays up late to watch the Weather Channel, although Van Slyke says that is an exaggeration. He likes it enough, however, that he gave the forecast for a Pittsburgh station one night on the TV news after a game.

In describing the next day’s weather, he said conditions were more conducive to watching the Pirates play at Three Rivers Stadium than staying home to watch the Steelers on television. His advice: “Forget the Steelers.”

While giving the national forecast, Van Slyke said: “Let’s forget Cleveland. Nobody cares about Cleveland.”

Things were going so well that Van Slyke decided to stick around and help give the sports report.

Money player: Hensley Meulens opened the season as the New York Yankees’ starting left fielder but lost the job to Mel Hall in early May. Meulens had expected about 400 at-bats as a rookie but has only 279. He is batting about .230 and will play winter league ball in the Dominican Republic.

So, Newsday’s Jon Heyman asked, did Meulens get anything out of this year?

“Yeah,” he said, “$120,000.”

Trivia answer: Mickey Mantle in 1956, Eddie Murray in 1981 and Ruben Sierra in 1989.

Quotebook: Bubba Smith, on Miami Dolphin Coach Don Shula, Smith’s former coach with the Baltimore Colts: “If a nuclear bomb were to be dropped, the only two things I bet would survive would be AstroTurf and Don Shula.”