“Hey, Kraut Head: I’m Comin'”

In a 1944 interview with Chet Smith, the long-time sports editor of The Pittsburgh Press, Honus Wagner was asked to name his greatest day in baseball. Wagner went back to the final game of the 1909 World Series between the Pirates and the Detroit Tigers and the moment that Ty Cobb, leading off first base, yelled, “Hey, Kraut Head, I’m comin’ down on the next pitch.”

When Cobb took off for second base, Wagner caught the throw from Pirates catcher George Gibson and jammed the baseball into Cobb’s face: “I guess I wasn’t too easy about it, ’cause it took three stitches to close up his lip.”

The interview was part of a series, initiated by John F. Carmichael of the Chicago Daily News, that had baseball writers ask past stars of the game to recall their greatest day in baseball. It wasn’t surprising that Honus Wagner picked the Pirates’ 8–0 win in the seventh and deciding game of the 1909 World Series against the Tigers because it gave Pittsburgh its first World Series championship.

The 1909 World Series was also vindication for Wagner after the press branded him a coward for his poor performance in the 1903 World Series loss to the American League Boston Pilgrims, later to become the Red Sox. In the ’09 Series, he outhit and outperformed Cobb, including a two-run triple in the seventh game, as well as that tag of Cobb.

The series of interviews initiated by Carmichael was published in 1945, with the title, My Greatest Day in Baseball. It included 47 interviews, beginning with Babe Ruth, who picked the day he allegedly called his home run against the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series, and ending with Rogers Hornsby, who selected the seventh and deciding game of the 1926 World Series, when Grover Cleveland Alexander struck out the Yankees’ Tony Lazzeri to preserve the Cardinals’ first World Series victory.

Also in the collection was an interview with Pirates pitcher Babe Adams, who also picked game seven of the 1909 World Series for his greatest day in baseball. While Wagner was a tough, veteran player in 1909, Adams was a green, 21-year-old rookie and didn’t expect to pitch in the World Series against the Tigers: “I was enjoying myself, kidding on the bench, free as a bird.” But Pirates player-manager Fred Clarke, on a hunch, picked Adams to start the first game of the series. Pittsburgh’s “Babe” went on to win three games, including a shutout in game seven. As for the hot-headed Cobb, he had only one hit in the three games pitched by Adams.

The Wagner and Adams interviews in My Greatest Day in Baseball, as well as those of Pirates greats in subsequent oral histories, have brought early baseball history to life for generations of Pirates fans. Lawrence S. Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times, for example, has the recollections of Tommy Leach and George Gibson, teammates of Wagner and Adams on the 1909 World Series champion Pirates, as well as that of Paul Waner, who played in the 1927 World Series against the New York Yankees, along with his brother, Lloyd.

Waner recalled that in the bottom of the ninth of the fourth game, with the Yankees already up 3–0 in the Series, the Yankees loaded the bases with nobody out and the score tied at 3–3. Pirates pitcher Johnny Miljus struck out Lou Gehrig and Bob Meusel, but, facing Tony Lazerri, he threw a wild pitch that allowed the winning run to score and ended the Series.

Waner claimed that “the one thing I remember best about the Series was that I didn’t seem to actually realize I was playing in a World Series until it was over.” Out in right field, he was stunned: “And that instant, as the run that beat us crossed the plate, it suddenly struck me that I’d played in a World Series. It’s an odd thing, isn’t it? I didn’t think, ‘It’s over and we lost.’ I thought, ‘Gee. it’s over and I played in a World Series.'”

In Donald Honig’s The October Heroes, Paul’s brother Lloyd also recalled playing in the 1927 World Series and Johnny Miljus’ wild pitch. Like his brother Paul, he just stood out in center field: “Couldn’t believe it, I guess. It’s no way to end a ballgame, much less a World Series game, on a doggone wild pitch.”

Lloyd claimed that the Pirates weren’t intimidated by the Yankees, though they were swept in four games. Of all the Yankees he played against, he most admired Babe Ruth, who hit the only two home runs in the 1927 Series. But it wasn’t the “Sultan of Swat” that Lloyd most remembered. It was Babe Ruth, who in 1935 was playing in his last games with the Boston Braves: “He was old, he was fat, he couldn’t run, and he had lost a lot of his ability up at the plate.” But, on May 25, 1935, Ruth did something that no player in the history of baseball had ever done.

After hitting two home runs, the first into the right field stands and the second into the second deck, Ruth hit his third home run of the game and the last of his fabled career, over the right-field roof at mammoth Forbes Field. It was the first home run in the history of Forbes Field to clear the right-field roof. There were about 10,000 fans at Forbes Field, but Lloyd Waner had the best view of Ruth’s epic home run: “It was hit farther than any ball I had ever seen. It went over the roof. I was standing in center field, watching it go. You would have thought it had a little engine in it. It became a dot in the sky and then disappeared. My, did he hit it.”

Paul and Lloyd Waner were teammates for the first time in 1927, and, when the Pirates played their way into the World Series, thought that even though they lost to the Yankees, it was a “cinch” that they would be playing in another World Series. But the Waner brothers, despite playing together for over a decade, would never play in the World Series.

The Pirates wouldn’t play in another World Series for 33 years, and, once again, the opponents would be a star-studded, heavily favored Yankees team. In Rich Westcott’s Splendor on the Diamond, Elroy Face, one of the heroes of the Pirates’ 1960 World Series victory, remembered saving three of the Pirates’ wins and thought he could have saved the seventh and deciding game if Murtaugh had let him pitch in the ninth inning with the Pirates leading, 9–7. Of course, if Murtaugh had let Face pitch the ninth inning, and Face had saved the game, Bill Mazeroski never would have batted in the bottom of the ninth and hit the most dramatic home run in World Series history.

Roy Face, who passed away recently, was one of the greatest relief pitchers in baseball history and believed that he deserved to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. When asked about the Hall of Fame, he angrily replied, “Hell yes, I think I should be in the Hall of Fame.” He blamed the sportswriters who vote: “Many of them never saw me play. … I think I should be considered one of the premier relief pitchers in baseball, but it’s sort of a letdown that I’m not in the Hall of Fame.”

As the Pirates move through the 2026 season, they have now gone 46 years since they last played in a World Series. While Pirates fans can always hope that this is the year that the Pirates return to the World Series, most are just hoping that they have a winning season after the past dismal years. But, while they wait, they can always read those oral histories and look forward to the next time such World Series memories are made.