In the eighth inning of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, Casey Stengel replaced relief pitcher Bobby Shantz with Jim Coates. The New York Yankees manager believed he had no choice.
The mighty Yankees were six outs from another World Series championship, but the upstart Pittsburgh Pirates were rallying from a 7-4 deficit in front of 36,683 people at Forbes Field.
“He didn’t want to come out of that game,” Bobby Shantz Jr. said, repeating what his father has told the family for years. “The guys who were coming up, he thought he could get them out.”
Those “guys” later became his teammates.
Surrounded by family, Shantz celebrates his 99th birthday Thursday as the oldest living Pirates player and the third-oldest surviving major leaguer, according to the Society of American Baseball Research.
“Our very best wishes go out to Bobby Shantz and his entire family as they celebrate his 99th birthday,” Pirates team historian Jim Trdinich said. “He only spent one season with the Pirates (1961) but made it a memorable one by winning a Gold Glove award, just one of three pitchers in team history to win one.”
For that historic moment in 1960, however, he was still a Yankee. And if not for a bad-hop groundball, Shantz might have been the winning pitcher against the Pirates in that fateful Game 7. Perhaps, Bill Mazeroski never comes to the plate to hit the series-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth.
Shantz had pitched nearly flawless baseball from the third inning through the seventh, retiring all 15 Pirates batters with the help of a double play. It was his longest outing of the season.
“I think Casey would have left me in the game,” he said, “if it wasn’t for that bad hop. I had been getting them out pretty steadily.”
But in the eighth, Gino Cimoli led off with a single, and Bill Virdon’s groundball took a bad hop and hit Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek in the Adam’s Apple. After Dick Groat’s RBI single, Stengel pulled Shantz for Jim Coates.
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Later in the inning, Coates failed to cover first base on Roberto Clemente’s weak two-out roller down the first-base line that might have been the final out of the inning.
The next batter, Hal Smith, hit a three-run homer. Suddenly, the Pirates led 9-7 on the way to a 10-9 triumph and their first World Series title in 35 years.
“He still can’t believe they lost that World Series,” Shantz Jr. said.
Coates replacing Shantz was an unfortunate turn of events for the Yankees. Covering first base was the type of play Shantz, an eight-time Gold Glove winner and the first pitcher to win the award, usually made without incident, according to the Society of American Baseball Research. From the award’s inception in 1957 until he retired in 1964, Shantz never failed to win a Gold Glove.
After the World Series, the Yankees left Shantz unprotected in the 1961 expansion draft, and he was selected by the Washington Senators and traded to the Pirates for three players.
In 1961, Shantz was 6-3 with a 3.32 ERA (mostly in relief) before the Pirates exposed him to another expansion draft in 1962. He was chosen by the Houston Colt 45s (now the Astros) and played three more seasons before retiring at the age of 39.
Shantz Jr. said the family plans a quiet birthday celebration Thursday at his home in Ambler, outside Philadelphia. There will be about 20 people there, including his wife, Shirley, three sons — Bobby, Danny and Teddy, who was named after Ted Williams — daughter Kathy and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Bobby Jr. said Shantz still watches “quite a few games … the Phillies and Yankees. He said those guys throw so hard now, it hurts his arm.”
Shantz’s specialty was a curveball, but he taught his sons to throw a knuckler. At Pottstown High School, he was a punter for the football team and a diver on the swim team. The baseball field at the high school is named in Shantz’s honor, and he has spoken to the team many times, even bringing some former teammates with him.
“The lasting impression he made on people far exceeds what he did, physically, as a baseball player,” said John Armato, director of community relations for the Pottstown School District.
Shantz played 16 years in the majors for seven teams from 1949-64.
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“It wasn’t easy to last that long,” Shantz said. “But I wouldn’t do anything differently. The more I pitched the better my arm would feel.”
A three-time All-Star, he was American League MVP for the Philadelphia A’s in 1952 when he was 24-7 with an ERA of 2.48 and 27 complete games. He pitched in the All-Star Game that year, striking out the side in the fifth inning, including future Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson and Stan Musial.
Once regarded as too short to pitch in the big leagues, Shantz stood less than 5-feet tall upon graduation from high school, before growing into a 5-6 1/2, 139-pound left-hander with good control and a sharp curveball.
Phillies scout Jocko Collins had watched Shantz pitch in sandlot games and liked what he saw. But he thought Shantz wasn’t tall enough.
“He thought I had one heck of a curveball but was just too small,” Shantz said in an article in the Society of American Baseball Research. “When he met me years later, he apologized. ‘I sure made a mistake with you, Shantzy,’ he said. I told him I didn’t blame him, that I had doubts myself.”
A starter early in his career until injuries forced him into the bullpen, Shantz was traded by the A’s (after they moved to Kansas City) to the Yankees in a 13-player deal in 1957. He started Game 2 of the 1957 World Series against the Milwaukee Braves.
“He has had a great life,” Shantz Jr. said, “and he loved to play baseball. He loved every minute of it.”
Jerry DiPaola is a TribLive reporter covering Pitt athletics since 2011. A Pittsburgh native, he joined the Trib in 1993, first as a copy editor and page designer in the sports department and later as the Pittsburgh Steelers reporter from 1994-2004. He can be reached at jdipaola@triblive.com.