On a June evening in 1956, more than 5,000 people crowded into the newly opened Heights Plaza Shopping Center in Harrison to get a glimpse at future legends.
At a June 21, 1956, event celebrating the Har-Brack High School WPIAL baseball champion team, four Pittsburgh Pirates players — fresh off a six-game losing streak — autographed a whole range of items. One of them was a tiny leather lace-up baby shoe.
That shoe belongs to now-70-year-old Dave Williams, night editor for TribLive. This week marks the 70th anniversary of that 1956 event. And Williams still has those signatures.
The players present that night were pitcher Bob Friend, pitcher Nellie King, outfielder Bill Verdon, and a young right fielder who signed the shoe as “Bob Clemente.”
Also present was the famous Pirates radio broadcaster, Bob Prince.
“They’re all on the bottom of the shoe, and Bob Prince’s signature is just behind the ankle on the upper part,” Williams said.
The Heights Plaza Shopping Center opened on Nov. 10, 1955, an early entry in the region’s wave of outdoor retail destinations. It boasted a variety of stores, including a Horne’s, G.C. Murphy Co., A&P and many more. At the time, Williams said, it was revolutionary for the local area’s shopping — but also detrimental to other business districts.
“Our family shopped there all the time,” said Williams, who grew up in the Compton neighborhood of Harrison Township. “When I was a young boy, we didn’t have a car. … We would take a bus, but most times, obviously when I got older, we walked to the plaza.”
But it wasn’t all good news for the locales where these centers popped up.
“That started the decline of towns like Tarentum that had a very good business district, and I’m sure other places. Tarentum had a thriving downtown; that is certainly not the case now,” Williams said.
It’s been a roller coaster ride at the Heights Plaza for the past seven decades, with trends moving away from outdoor shopping plazas — and, recently, away from brick-and-mortar shopping in general. But in 1956, thousands showed up to see the WPIAL champion baseball team and players from the down-on-their-luck Bucs.
Williams, as a months-old infant, was brought to the event by his mother. Family myth passed down from the years said that he was passed, as a baby, to the players who signed his shoe, but Williams doesn’t believe it.
“I cannot believe that’s the case, that I was passed over and they signed a wiggly seven-month-old’s shoe very nicely. I’m sure what happened was they took my shoe off and probably handed it over people’s heads, unless my mom was at the front of the line at some point.
“They had to be laughing like crazy,” he added.
Perhaps that evening was a good luck turning point. Despite a 1956 season record of 66-88, it would take only four years for the team to win a World Series. Friend, Clemente and Virdon all played on that 1960 champion team.
King played with the Pirates until 1957, then began a broadcasting career in 1959 and eventually started to work with Prince. Virdon played with the Pirates until his playing career retirement in 1965, going on to be a coach and manager for the Pirates and other MLB teams. Friend played with the Pirates through 1965, then played a final season split between the New York Yankees and New York Mets. And Roberto “Bob” Clemente had a legendary career with the Pirates up until his tragic death in 1972.
Williams said that his family were definitely Pirates fans, both in 1956 and throughout his childhood.
“Certainly, from my age of recollection. People in those days were much more baseball fans — and certainly Pirates fans — than they were Steelers fans,” he said.
Though Williams described the present-day Heights Plaza as “very declined” — many stores have left in recent years, and the property went up for sale late last year — he said that he still visits, and he still recollects the glory days of the brand-new center and its lasting memories.
“It was a thriving place, it was one of the first built,” he said. “They had a sign with a clock on it and a fountain where the colors would change. I think it was a kind of classy place.”