The Great Roberto Clemente
After the integration of the major leagues with Jackie Robinson suiting up for the Brooklyn Dodgers and then Larry Doby with the Cleveland Indians, big league teams moved at different paces on their own integration paths. The Boston Red Sox became the last team to integrate in 1959 when Pumpsie Green made the team. In twelve short seasons, baseball had gone from zero black ballplayers to at least one on every team.
The Pittsburgh Pirates were in the middle of the pack as to when they became integrated. Bringing Curt Roberts north with them in 1954, they became tied with the St. Louis Cardinals as the ninth major league team to welcome a black player. Branch Rickey, then the Pirates general manager, had moved to bring Roberts to Pittsburgh because he needed him. He didn’t really care about the color of his skin. Of course Rickey was somewhat old hat at this in 1954, having been the impetus for baseball’s integration some seven years earlier. By this time it was clear, Rickey knew that the teams that ignored talent simply because of skin color were going to suffer.
The Pirates selected Roberto Clemente as a minor league draftee before the 1955 season. He joined the Pirates with Lino Donoso and Roman Mejiás, all dark skinned Latinos, in 1955. And from the mid 1950s to the early 1970s, the Pirates developed an average of two black or dark skinned Latino players each season from within. In addition to their home grown talent, the Pirates augmented their team with another dozen or so players from other teams through that same time span quickly making the Pirates one of the most completely integrated teams in baseball.
Beginning in the early 1960s and into the 1970s the Pirates featured lineups with Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Donn Clendenon, Bob Veale, Manny Mota, Maury Wills, José Pagán, Matty Alou, Manny Sanguillén, Al Oliver, Dock Ellis, Dave Cash, Gene Clines, Mudcat Grant, Rennie Stennett, Vic Davalillo, Jackie Hernández, and Ramón Hernández. Notably the Pirates have never had any issues in their clubhouse due to their racial or ethnic diversity. They were, during this time period, known as a fun-loving and free-swinging team that could flat-out hit the hell out of the ball.
By the early seventies, the Pirates would regularly field teams with five black players and if Dock Ellis or Bob Veale were pitching that game, it was sometimes six. But on September 1, 1971 something different happened. On that night against the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pirates fielded a lineup with all nine positions filled by either African American or dark skinned Latinos.
Only 11,278 fans were in attendance at Three Rivers Stadium as Rennie Stennett led off and played second base with Gene Clines batting second in center field and Roberto Clemente in right field batting third. Willie Stargell hit cleanup and played left field, Manny Sanguillén was next at catcher, and Dave Cash was spelling Richie Hebner at third while batting sixth. Al Oliver played first base and hit seventh, Jackie Hernández hit eighth and played shortstop and Dock Ellis was the pitcher, batting ninth.
When Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh posted the lineup in the clubhouse before the game, only a couple of players even noticed what Murtaugh had done. Gene Clines noted later his experience that night by saying, "I got to the ballpark early that day, which I normally did, and the lineup was up, and I’m looking for one name, and that’s mine, so I see that I’m playing, and the clubhouse kid — I can’t remember his name, and I’ve been thinking about this for years – he said, ‘Looks like the Homestead Grays are playing tonight.’ It didn’t dawn on me exactly what he was saying, and it wasn’t until the national anthem that I was thinking about what this kid had said earlier in the day.
"So we’re out there, the anthem is playing, and I’ve still got this thought in my mind, I’m standing at attention looking at the flag, all these thoughts are racing through my mind, then I looked to my right and saw Clemente, looked to my left and saw Stargell, and I’m saying, ‘Oh my God.’ I finally understood." The game began with the Phillies scoring two runs in the top of the first inning before the Bucs quelled their rally and came to bat themselves.
And come to bat they did. Philadelphia pitcher Woodie Fryman allowed an infield single to Rennie Stennett before Gene Clines hit a dribbler back to the pitcher for the first out, with Stennett moving up to second on the play. Next up was the Pirates leader, Roberto Clemente, who lined a single to center field that scored Stennett. Willie Stargell, who was the National League home run leader, followed with a double to the gap in right-center field that allowed Clemente to come home. Manny Sanguillén moved Stargell over to third base with a single and then Dave Cash brought Stargell home with a single to left field. Sanguillén moved to second base on the play, and the Pirates now led 3-2.
Next for the Pirates was Al Oliver who doubled to the left-center field gap, scoring Sanguillén. Woodie Fryman was pulled from the game after Oliver’s at bat. He retired only one Pirates batter. Bucky Brandon came on to pitch for the Phillies and allowed a sacrifice fly to center field that scored Cash. Dock Ellis then struck out in his at bat to end the Pirates first, but the Pirates had scored five times and led Philadelphia 5-2.
The Phillies and the Pirates both scored again and again before Pittsburgh ultimately won the game 10-7. But the Pirates had taken integration to a whole new level. Dock Ellis said this about the Pirates history making day, "(w)hat's going on here? Who made up this line-up? Murtaugh didn't know what he had done. He really didn't. Somebody was probably hurt and needed a day off, and that's what he came up with. And it didn't even dawn on him. I would bet my life he didn't know what he had done. Somebody probably had to tell him after the game.” Murtaugh who never really said why he made the lineup that way, did say “(w)hen it comes to making out the lineup, I’m color-blind and my athletes know it.”
Afterwards the Pirates general manager, Joe L. Brown said, "[I] was always proud of the fact that we never paid any attention to color in our organization. I don't think any club in the history of baseball had as many blacks on their roster at one time like we did at one time, and consistently over a period of years. One time thirteen out of twenty five on the list were black. That had never happened before, and to my knowledge has never happened since."
In the years since that warm September evening at the forks of the Ohio River, the game’s participants have had time to reflect on what that day meant. Pirates first baseman Bob Robertson, who is white and was not in that day’s lineup said "(it was) far too late. This should have happened many years before '71, but I don’t think the racial divide was as bad then as supposedly it is now. And I’m sure at that time it affected a lot of people to see all nine black players out there, playing against another team. But, as the Pirates, they played as one — being out there together as a unit. And maybe someday in this country of ours, we can get together as a unit."
Gene Clines said, "(a)t the time that it happened, my only thought process was about winning the game that night, and it wasn’t until probably two years later when I recognized the significance of what had happened, but if there was one team that would do that at the time, it would have been the Pirates." Years later, after Murtaugh’s death, Dave Cash said, "I heard a lot of remarks for the late Danny Murtaugh. I remember him saying he didn't realize who was out there, he just wanted to put the best team on the field and with the Pirate family it didn't matter what color you were. We were about winning. That was the most important thing. In 1970 when we got in the playoffs and lost, we tasted that defeat and didn't want it to happen in the next year. So in '71, we took care of business!" Recently Al Oliver reminisced of that day saying, “I wish that it would be brought up more, and it should be, it wasn’t maybe as big as Jackie Robinson breaking into the major leagues [in 1947], but it should be up there as far as baseball history is concerned. I think it’s a day that really should be celebrated.”
Of course Al Oliver is right. This was a major milestone in baseball history, yet the day isn’t celebrated at all. Rather, it is just a mere footnote in the chronicles of major league baseball.
