Sports Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

A. G. Spalding once claimed that baseball likely began with the simple act of a boy tossing a ball into the air. The poet Donald Hall, who wrote a book about Pirates maverick pitcher Dock Ellis saw this simple act evolving into “sons playing catch with fathers” and eventually into a game “on a diamond …

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Sports

Seeing Reds: The Pirates’ 1970s Rivals

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

Early in the 1974 season, with the Pirates struggling after finishing April at 6-12, Dock Ellis took the mound against the Cincinnati Reds. In spring training, Ellis vowed that he would hit the first five Reds batters because the Pirates had lost their aggressiveness and self-respect ever since their painful loss to the Reds in …

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Sports

Pittsburgh Hopes to Finally Get a Team Worthy of its Ballpark

by Brian O'Neill

Editor’s note: This piece was written and originally published prior to the Pirates getting off to the second-best start of the 30 Major League Baseball teams. Sixteen. That’s how many teams have won the World Series since PNC Park opened in 2001. Another five have gotten to the big autumn show and lost. That’s 21 …

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Sports

Baseball’s First Great Jewish Star

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

On April 15, 1947, Hank Greenberg played in his first game in a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform. He doubled in the only run of the game as the Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs 1-0 at Wrigley Field. A few hours earlier Jackie Robinson had trotted onto the infield at Ebbets Field and integrated baseball. Greenberg, baseball’s first …

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Sports

Baseball’s Best Book

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

When Ty Cobb died in 1961, Lawrence Ritter thought that “someone should do something, and do it quickly, to record for the future, the remembrances of a sport that has played such a significant role in American life.” He decided that he would take a tape recorder and, traveling around the country, talk to as …

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Sports

Paul Giamatti’s Father, Bart Giamatti

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

A few weeks ago, the CBS Sunday Morning program featured a lengthy story on actor Paul Giamatti. He had recently won a Golden Globe award for his role in The Holdovers. He was also one of the favorites to win an Academy Award, though he lost to Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer. Giamatti started his career …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

Radio Rich

by Bill Christine

One night in Pittsburgh, in the middle of a Pirates game, Radio Rich, puffing on his pipe, came up to me in the press box and asked why the San Francisco Giants named their venue Candlestick Park. “Because,” I said, “they built it on Candlestick Point.” Radio looked askance. “Any other reasons?” he said. His real …

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Sports

The American League’s Jackie Robinson

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

Black History Month recognizes and honors the greatness of African-Americans who triumphed over prejudice and hatred and brought about major changes in American culture and society. In baseball, the player most honored during Black History Month is Jackie Robinson, who integrated the Major Leagues when he jogged onto the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on …

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Sports

Pie Traynor and Dale Dodrill: Lest We Forget

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

When Pittsburgh sportswriters go back into the past, they tend to focus on the glory years of Roberto Clemente and Willis Stargell and of the Super Bowl dynasty, but there are players from earlier eras that richly deserve our remembrance of the glory of their times. There are four statues at PNC Park honoring Pirate …

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Books Sports

From Basket Ball to the NBA

by Fred Shaw

While the debate over Pittsburgh’s status as a basketball town continues on barstools and radio waves across the region, what’s been settled by Claude Johnson, Carnegie Mellon University grad and author of The Black Fives: The Epic Story of Basketball’s Forgotten Era, is the important role that a black player from Homestead, once a “basket …

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Sports

A Victim of the Life He Led

by Clayton Trutor

Pittsburgh is unquestionably one of the great fighting cities in the United States. The city and its surrounding boroughs have produced world champions Billy Conn, Michael Moorer, Paul Spadafora, and a whole host of other world-class pugilists. Experts in the fight business place two-time world champion Harry Greb on top of Pittsburgh’s pugilistic slag pile. …

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Sports

Have a Duke: Baseball and Beer

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

While baseball fans are happy with the pitch clock because it has, on average, cut 30 minutes off this season’s games, there has been an unanticipated problem. If fans are spending less time at the ballpark, they’re consuming less food and drink. Major league teams have been particularly concerned about the declining consumption of beer. …

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Sports

The School of Social Work Basketball Dynasty

by David M. Feehan

When people think of University of Pittsburgh athletes, the first person to come to mind is probably Kenny Pickett. Some may recall Aaron Donald, or Larry Fitzgerald. But Michael Whitelock? It may be hard to believe, but the School of Social Work once produced a basketball dynasty. Not only that, but there have been several …

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Sports

Pittsburgh’s Golden Era of Slow-Pitch Softball

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

Pittsburgh’s slow-pitch softball home-run king, Paul Tomasovich passed away March 5 at the age of 89. Described in his obituary as “the man, the myth, the legend,” he was fabled in the 1960s for his tape-measure home runs. His obituary mentions two of the most remembered Herculean home runs hit by Tomasovich. In a game …

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Sports

Ralph Kiner, Frank Thomas and Greenberg Gardens

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

At the end of the 1946 season, the Detroit Tigers placed Hank Greenberg on waivers. That season, he had led the American League in home runs and RBIs, but the Tigers they felt they couldn’t afford Greenberg’s $75,000 salary. The 35-year-old Greenberg cleared waivers in the American League, and the Pittsburgh Pirates, under new ownership, …

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Sports

When Wampum High School was Small Yet Big

by Bruce Zewe

In the well-trod regions of the sportswriting firmament, there is a progression in cliches used to describe successful coaches. It starts with “winning” and escalates to “renowned” and culminates with — ultima gloria — “legendary.” With justification, sportswriters in Lawrence County, which borders Pennsylvania and Ohio about 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, reflexively apply the …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

Our Football Fascination: Here’s The Thing

by Jerry Thompson

As the Chiefs and Eagles prepare to battle in the next Super Bowl, with all the attendant passion, pain and pageantry, let’s take a time out for a moment of reflection. Not on the game’s socio-political or human health dynamics, or other impositions on the fans’ enjoyment, but with a dive to the heart of …

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Sports

To Run or Not to Run in the Pittsburgh Marathon

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, there were four movie houses on my working-class South Side, so I saw plenty of movies. I loved then all — the war movies, the romantic adventures, the musical comedies, the biblical epics, the baseball biographies, the hour-long oaters starring Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, but my favorites, …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

Remembering Roberto Clemente

by Michael Lowenstein

When you are seven, everyone on your team is a hero. Some may be greater than others, but they all are heroes. And not just the players. I do not know if the Pirates have a traveling secretary today. If they do, I do not know who it is. I do not know what a …

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People Sports

A Final Chat with Franco

by Douglas Heuck

My wife and I were at a party Friday night at the History Center, and after a cocktail, chit chat and getting our picture taken with Santa, we were going to check out the John Kane painting exhibit before the seated dinner. As we were making our escape from the crowd, however, I saw Franco …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

Is Pittsburgh Still a Baseball Town?

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

There has been a great deal written about the demise of baseball as America’s game. After the excitement of last season’s NFL playoff games and the drama of the Super Bowl, sports commentators, lamenting painfully slow and dull baseball games dominated by batters swinging with uppercuts and striking out at a record pace, decided to …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

When Jim Thorpe Almost Became a Pittsburgh Pirate

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

In the 1912 summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe won the demanding five-event pentathlon and the grueling ten-event decathlon and was roundly declared the greatest athlete in the world. He added to his stature that fall by becoming a football All-American after leading Carlisle to a stunning upset over a powerful Army team that …

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