Bill Mazeroski, Hall of Fame second baseman who won eight Gold Glove Awards for his continued work on the field and in the hearts of countless people. pittsburgh pirates a fan of his historic walk-off home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, has died at the age of 89.
Pirates chairman Bob Nutting said: “Maz was a one-of-a-kind, true Pirates legend… His name will always be associated with the greatest home run in baseball history and the 1960 World Series championship, but I will remember him most for the person he was: humble, kind and proud to be a Pirate.”
The Pirates said Mazeroski died Friday. No cause of death was given.
‘Defensive Magician’
Elected to the Hall by the Veterans Committee in 2001, he was, in some ways, no superstar. Mazeroski had the lowest batting average, on-base percentage and lowest base total of any second baseman at Cooperstown. He hit only .260 lifetime, with 138 homers and 27 stolen bases in 17 years, and his on-base percentage was .299. He never batted .300, never got close to 100 runs or scored 100 runs and only finished in the top 10 for Most Valuable Player once.
His best qualities were both tangible and beyond the box score. His Hall of Fame plaque praises him as a “defensive magician” with “hard work” and a “cool work ethic.” A 10-time All-Star, he set a major league record with 1,706 double plays, earning him the nickname “No Hands” because of how quickly he fielded grounders and relayed them. He led the National League nine times in assists for a second baseman, and statistician Bill James has cited him as the game’s greatest defensive player ever at his position.
“I think the defense belongs in the Hall of Fame,” Mazeroski said during his Hall of Fame induction speech. “Defense deserves just as much credit as pitching, and I’m proud to be known as a defensive player.”
A house to last for ages
But the defining moment of his career occurred in the batter’s box, when the square-jawed, tobacco-chewing Mazeroski, the son of a West Virginia coal miner, fulfilled the dream of many kids who dreamed of playing professional ball.
The Pirates had not reached the World Series since 1927, when they were swept by the Flood. New York YankeesAnd faced the Yankees again in 1960. While New York was led by Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, Pittsburgh had few major names other than young Roberto Clemente. It relied on hitters ranging from shortstop Dick Groat to outfielder Bob Skinner and starting pitchers Vernon Law and Bob Friend. Mazeroski, who turned 24 that September, finished the season with a .273 average and usually batted eighth.
The series told one story in the runs column and another in wins and losses. The Yankees defeated the Pirates 55–27 and 38–3 in the three games they won. Mazeroski’s counterpart in New York, Bobby Richardson, scored a record 12 runs and was named series MVP – even though he was on the losing team. Yankees ace Whitey Ford struck out the Pirates twice during a then-record 33⅔ consecutive scoreless World Series innings.
The Pirates’ first three wins weren’t so spectacular, but they were wins – and Mazeroski helped. He hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning off the Yankees’ Jim Coates in Game 1, a 6–4 Pirates victory, and a two-run double in the second inning off Art Dittmar in Game 5, a 5–2 Pittsburgh victory. In Game 7, he saved his big hit until last.
The approximately 36,000 fans at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, and many more fans tuned in on radio and television, agonized through one of the wildest and most emotional conclusions of the World Series. The lead changed back and forth as Pittsburgh scored the first four runs, but the Yankees rallied in the middle innings and led 7–4 in the eighth. Pittsburgh took the lead with five runs in the bottom of the eighth, helped in part by a double-play grounder that took a bad hop and hit Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek in the neck. But the Yankees quickly bounced back and tied the score at 9 in the ninth.
The bottom of the ninth has been relived by two teams and generations of fans, not always by choice. The New York pitcher was Ralph Terry, a right-hander whom manager Casey Stengel had brought in during the previous inning and later admitted that his arm was tired. Mazeroski, a right-handed hitter who grounded into a double play in his previous appearance, was at first.
Terry started with a fastball that was called high for a ball. After chatting briefly with catcher Johnny Blanchard, who reminded him to keep his pitches down, he called Mazeroski a slider that did not slide. Mazeroski got under it and belted it to left, the ball bouncing off the high, ivy-covered brick wall, Yankees left fielder Yogi Berra circling under it, then turning away in defeat. It seemed as if the entire town erupted, as if everyone rallied behind him, as if he was every underdog yearning to defeat the hated Yankees. Mazeroski ran around the bases, smiling and waving his cap, joined by celebrants from the stands, who ran onto the field and followed him to home plate, where he was embraced by his teammates.
“I was just looking to get on base,” he told The New York Times in 1985.
espn called it The largest home run in major league history. It was the first time that a World Series ended on a homer, generating lasting waves of celebration and disappointment. Pirates followers memorized the date, Saturday, October 13, 1960, and the local time of Mazeroski’s hit, 3:36 p.m. Forbes Field was torn down in the 1970s, but a decade later fans began gathering every October 13 at the park’s only remnant, the center-field wall, and listened to the original broadcast.
Meanwhile, Mantle cried on the plane home in 1960, insisting that the better team had lost. Ford would remain angry with Stengel for many years – fired five days after the series – for using him in Games 3 and 6 and making him unavailable to start for the third time. Singer Bing Crosby, co-owner of the Pirates, was so afraid that he would ruin his team that he listened to the game with friends across the Atlantic Ocean in Paris.
His widow Kathryn Crosby told the Times in 2010, “We were in this beautiful apartment, listening on shortwave, and when it came closer Bing had opened a bottle of Scotch and was tapping it on the mantle.”
a team player
Mazeroski was a Pirate throughout his time in the majors and a team man off the field. His wife, Mylene Nicholson, was a front office employee whom he met through Pittsburgh manager Danny Murtaugh. They were married in 1958, had two sons, and remained together until his death in 2024.
William Stanley Mazeroski was born in Wheeling, West Virginia during the Great Depression, grew up in eastern Ohio, and lived for some time in a one-room house without electricity or indoor plumbing. His father, Louis Mazeroski, hoped to become a ballplayer himself and encouraged his son’s love of the game, even practicing with him by throwing Bill Fields tennis balls against a brick wall.
Although a star in basketball and football, he favored baseball and was good enough to be drafted by the Pirates in 1954 at age 17. Mazeroski was the shortstop for a team with several prospects at that position, and he had moved up to second by his rookie year, 1956. Even as a part-time player late in his career, he was a leader and steadying presence on a 1971 team that included Clemente and Willie Stargell and lost to the baltimore orioles In the World Series.
After his final season, 1972, Mazeroski briefly coached for the Pirates and seattle mariners and was an infield instructor for Pittsburgh during spring training. In 1987, the Pirates retired their uniform number, 9. The 50th anniversary of his Game 7 heroics was marked in 2010 with the unveiling on Bill Mazeroski Way of a 14-foot, 2,000-pound statue of one of Pittsburgh’s greatest, on top of the world, rounding the bases.
