[ifspuds]

I'm going to try to get back to this thread more regularly starting with the upcoming 1974 season, but in the meantime, here's a little piece I wrote after the Pirates won the 1973 World Series.

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The Unlikely Champions
by Langford Thomason
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I have written this column no fewer than fourteen times already, and each time I'm forced to admit that there just aren't any fancy words to describe the 1973 World Series.

Magical? Yes.

Nervewracking? Absolutely.

Liable to put the faint of heart into mortal danger? Without question.

Possibly the perfect cap to what has become one of baseball history's greatest runs by any team, any time? Well... that depends on who you ask.

"Is this the end? Not if I have anything to say about it," said third baseman Ben Trome, who like many of his clubhouse mates, has been around for every brilliant moment and bitter disappointment since that first breakthrough year of 1966. "Look around this room. Every single person in here wants to be right back here again next year. People say we're getting old, but let me tell you... nothing makes you feel younger than winning."

Ask Levi Sellers, the proud ace of so many Pirates teams both horrible and fantastic, now in the twilight of his career and relegated to bullpen duty. Lest you forget, it was Sellers who entered game 5 with runners on first and second and no outs and the Pirates nursing a 2-run lead. Sellers got out of the jam in classic fashion, long fly balls that dropped harmlessly into the gloves of his outfielders and a near double-play that scored California's final run. Ask him if it's the end and you get a different story. "I'm tired," he'll tell you. "Something like this makes it a lot easier to go home, if that's what it comes down to."

He might be the only Pirate to feel that way though.

Here's Asa Booker, whose inexplicable error turned a likely Pirate win in game 2 into a bitter defeat, who found redemption a half-inning later with the game-tying RBI single, who struggled so mightily in the NLCS after such a sublime September. Booker, the quiet pillar of strength around which this franchise has reversed its fortunes, who staved off Father Time's insistent prodding to notch his 3000th hit this season. "I've never been so excited to see a new season on the horizon," said the future Hall of Famer. "Spring training can't get here soon enough. I feel like I'm 25 again."

Which is saying something, since most of us feel about 20 years older after the roller coaster ride that was the 1973 World Series. Understand this: every game of the World Series except the final one saw at least 3 ties or lead changes. Every game was either decided in the 7th inning or later, including two extra inning gems, or was within a run of being tied. Twice the Pirates scored at least 2 runs in their last at-bat to send the game into extra innings, including a three-run rally in the bottom of the 9th in game 3, staring a potential 3-0 deficit in the face.

Perennial post-season darling Bash Mahoney put it succinctly, "After game 3, we knew we were going to win it."

"After that bottom of the 9th," said manager Vic Gorin, "I seriously started listening for ambulances coming to the park to take away people that had fainted. I was worried for George (Baldwin, Pirates general manager)'s ticker."

Baldwin, who pulled off the trades that brought Jerome Gabbert, Dennis Gill and Chuck Hart, all of whom performed brilliantly in the Series, had no need to worry about his heart, which gave him such trouble last year. His team had plenty of heart they'd have been happy to loan him.