He won 17 of those games alone in 1977, on the way to his second of four Cy Young awards. Two local architectural firms, George M. Ewing Co. and Stonorov and Haws, were hired by the city to come up with a stadium design that could work for both the Phillies and Eagles. The Phillies next struck gold in 1972 when they traded Rick Wise, their best pitcher, to the St. Louis Cardinals straight up for southpaw Steve Carlton. Veterans Stadium rang up quite a bit of mileage over its one-third-century reign in Philadelphia. The Ballparks: Shibe Park In baseballs landscape of horse buggies and wooden carts, Shibe Park emerged as the Model T of ballparks, a sparkling trendsetter that introduced steel and concrete to the games vernacular, beget rooftop entrepreneurs long before Wrigley and brought the game out of its lumbered, fire-cursed squalor. Too easy? The plastic seats were arranged in an array of warm colors; brown on the field level, red in the lower upper-deck seats and bleachers, orange halfway up and yellow for the dreaded 700 Level; Phillies tickets purchased by fans matched the seat color they would sit in. Connect them with straight lines of chords, and you have the shape of the stadium.. October 10, 1979 | 00:00:29. Stargell, who would've celebrated his 77th birthday today, clubbed eight homers, six doubles and 21 RBIs off the right-hander during his career. Those not content with ordinary seats had their own options. (May 22, 1999), the Dodgers' Mike Piazza (Sept. 21, 1997), and the Pittsburgh Pirates' Willie Stargell (twice, Aug. 5, . He played both left field and first base during his career. Stargell used to deposit blasts into the public pool located over the right-field fence, sending people scattering for cover.At his home ballparks, Stargell wasone of a fewto reach the upper deck at Three Rivers Stadium. var pfHeaderImgUrl = '';var pfHeaderTagline = '';var pfdisableClickToDel = 0;var pfHideImages = 0;var pfImageDisplayStyle = 'right';var pfDisablePDF = 0;var pfDisableEmail = 0;var pfDisablePrint = 0;var pfCustomCSS = 'https://www.baseball-almanac.com/css/print.css';var pfBtVersion='2';(function(){var js,pf;pf=document.createElement('script');pf.type='text/javascript';pf.src='//cdn.printfriendly.com/printfriendly.js';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(pf)})(); Wilver Dornel Stargell was a Major League Baseball player who spent his entire twenty-one year Hall of Fame career with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1962-1982). Baseball Almanac is pleased to present an unprecedented collection of baseball related quotations spoken by Willie Stargell and about Willie Stargell. This was in 98 or 99. The Phillie Phanatic chimed in, dumping two bags labeled with dollar signs onto the field between innings. "Sometimes I hit him (Steve Carlton) like I used to hit (Sandy) Koufax, and that's like drinking coffee with a fork. Reels. Stargell also owned the longest shot ever hit in Montreal's Olympic Stadium. It was 16-0 after just two innings; Von Hayes hit both of the Phillies two home runs on the dayeach coming in the first inning. Worried about too big a seating capacity, the Phillies originally wanted to tarp 10,000 upper-deck seats in center field. In 1971, Willie Stargell hit the longest home run in stadium history. Veterans Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, at the northeast corner of Broad Street and Pattison Avenue, part of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex.The seating capacities were 65,358 for football, and 56,371 for baseball. The city listened and went back to the drawing board. Despite his Hall-of-Fame level of play, Schmidt absorbed a love-hate affair with Phillies fans who rode him whenever he failed to perform at peak MVP form. 18 - Willie Stargell hit seven home runs that cleared the roof in Forbes Field. The Vet opened with a 200-foot-long bar that served up to 500 patrons, with all seats facing the field. He takes their dignity." Michael Clair The stadium was known for rowdy fans, iconic sporting events, and several other events between its opening day on April 10th, 1971, and the final game on September 28th, 2003. With him batting cleanup, the Pirates won World Series championships in 1971 and . LADF. Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, who led the Pittsburgh Pirates to two World Series victories with his tape-measure home runs and patriarchal leadership, died Monday . He hit two balls out of Dodger Stadium and did his share of damage at both Forbes Field and Three Rivers . The Sporting News took note of the Vets coordinated geometry and concluded that the venue is the model stadium if a mathematician became baseball commissioner.. Willie, or "Pops," as he was affectionately known, was an American professional baseball player.Willie Stargell is the ex-husband of Dee Stargell. For all of their raucous, biting charm, Phillies fans had nothing on those of the Eaglesparticularly as the Vet grew older. Remarkably, the longest home run ever hit at Veterans Stadium came just 3 months into its 33 year history. Subscribe | MyAccount. Today's Paper. Willie Stargell was a feared power hitter and a leader on the field and in the clubhouse during his 21 seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates. . Looking like the future Joe Robbie/Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, the rectangular structure diagonally beveled at each corner was so disliked by the Phillies that they refused to sign any new lease and, with its current lease at Connie Mack Stadium soon expiringand the ballparks new owners whom the team sold it to anxious to tear it downRobert Carpenter began to publicly muse New Jersey all over again. 30 - Willie Stargell hit thirty home runs before the 1971 All-Star Game and 1973 All-Star Game (in case you wondered why he went those two particular seasons). The 2006 movie Invincible, with Mark Wahlberg playing the role of unlikely Eagles player Vince Papale, has many scenes set at the Vetbut because the facility had been torn down a few years earlier, CGI was used to digitally recreate the venue. The team was angered and threatened to leave Philadelphia when the city considered welcoming an American Football League franchise into the new stadium before it was completed. Willie Stargell Last Modified: 2023-03-24 00:57:02 Category American baseball player MLB MVP Born in 1940 died in 2001 People from Potawatomi County (Oklahoma) outfielder infielder left-handed Pittsburgh Pirates/retirement, transfer one club man American Baseball Hall of Fame inductee MLB retired player MLB Home Run King Debuted in 1962 15 Copy quote. They are fam-i-lee. The city denied the motion because it would cost upwards of $300,000. Rad is short for radius. he hit the longest ball in Veterans Stadium history, 535 feet. His 1978 blast up north again garnered gold seating. MLB.com also offers extensive historical information and footage, online ticket sales, official baseball merchandise, authenticated memorabilia and collectibles and fantasy games. He hit the longest home run ever at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium into the upper deck in right field. Though they ultimately did not, they still voluntarily pitched in for some needed fixing up. In another wacky event between games of a doubleheader, local celebrities and ex-Phillies were conned into riding ostriches in a race around the field. Some (perhaps) joked that when Luzinski was in a rut, the kids would boo him. Only four home runs have ever been hit . Every time he hit a home run, Willie's restaurant in Pittsburgh's Hill District threw out a free chicken to everyone present. Future Hall-of-Fame pitcher Jim Bunning, back with the Phillies after four years, took the ball and pitched 7.1 sharp innings in a 4-1 victory over the Montreal Expos. 25 - Willie Stargell had twenty-five total bases during the 1979 World Series, the record for Most Total Bases in a 7-Game Series still to this day. But there was a sense of can do after all the years of cant do back at the old park, as pride of place and a corporate refresh undergone brought an adapted attitude that unchained the Phillies from the defeatist mindset of previous eras. As the 21st Century dawned and it became apparent that multi-purpose stadiums were becoming an unwanted fad of the past, both the Phillies and Eagles began clamoring for separate new facilities to replace the Vet, each feeding their own interests. The Philadelphia Phillies served as the model for this type of evolution when they moved from decrepit Connie Mack Stadium (nee Shibe Park) into behemoth, modern Veterans Stadium in 1971. Nobody liked it. A Vietnam veteran named Tom Garvey somehow managed to live in an empty concession stand at the Vet from 1979-81 without anyone knowing about it. All but the Mack statue were created by Joe Brown. Willie Stargell - 1963 - 506 feet The first home run ever to be hit out of Dodger Stadium was also the longest. Robert Gordon, who penned a book on the 1993 pennant-winning Phillies, wrote that it was the greatest high-wire act seen at the Vet until the arrival of closer Mitch Wild Thing Williams. 10/2/79: Willie Stargell's three-run home run in the top of the 11th gives the Pirates a 5-2 lead over the Reds in Game 1 of the NLCSCheck out http://m.mlb.com/video for our full archive of videos, and subscribe on YouTube for the best, exclusive MLB content: http://youtube.com/MLB About MLB.com:Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig announced on January 19, 2000, that the 30 Major League club owners voted unanimously to centralize all of Baseball's internet operations into an independent technology company. The mark was tied several times after Pops set the record, until Albert Pujols broke it when he went deep 14 times in 2006. Forty years ago today, Willie Stargell did something that no one else had ever done before and no one else had ever done since. The original model for Veterans Stadium shows something completely different from the final product; a horizontal structure with beveled corners, similar to the future Joe Robbie/Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. When court adjourned for the first time, one fan was dragged in and accused of throwing a cup of ice on the field; he defended himself by placing the blame on his 10-year-old son. While it rescued Philadelphia sports from ancient times, the Vet forged a populace to pine for a future where baseball and football could, once again, be separated from one another. For this new round of designs, the Phillies and Eagles were more actively involved; despite the extra cooks in the kitchen, the process became smoother and more amicable. There will be silence for the next 10 minutes.. When the last round of turf was planted at the Vet in 2001, the divots and cutouts that surrounded the baseball infield proved so hazardous for football players that a preseason game between the Eagles and Baltimore Ravens was cancelled shortly before kickoff. Anything but death, war and politics, opined Lou Schienfeld, an exec helping to build a next-door arena with a cool name (the Spectrum), no public funding and a faster shovel-to-open door timeframe (18 months, as opposed to the Vets 42). Copyright 1999- The original seats have been replaced by new blue ones, and the upper deck penthouse suites, added in 1986 to keep the football Eagles in town, rim the top. Demolished: February 11, 2001 My kneecaps were missing, Davis recalled. April 9, 2020 5 AM PT. That it stood for generations while two tenants largely stank up the joint was a testament to its perseverance. Vertical concrete supports, spaced out 30 feet from one another, gave the exterior a confident grace, visually complementing a fluid, consistent pattern of spectator ramps; the supports also worked to hold a small overhang encircling the stadiums upper deck, topped by a ring of lights as opposed to overbearing towers of bulbs. tesla competitor analysis; mike trout career stats projection; willie stargell home run veterans stadium; itextsharp pdfreader documentation. On the other end, there were those looking for a more lighthearted and provincial tone; the top choice among local residents and columnists was the Philadium, while others with a deeper, National Lampoon-ish sense of humor suggested titles such as Losers Paradise, the Topless Terrace (because it had no dome) and Swamp Hollow, because the Vet was built on a former swamp. Stargell's performance stood out above all, and he was the unanimous choice of the nine-man committee as the Most Valuable Player of the World Series.10 In addition to batting .400 with 7 RBIs, Stargell set a World Series record with seven extra-base hits four doubles and three home runs (the Pirates' only home runs in the seven games . Richie Hebner scored the first run and Willie Stargell hit the first Pirates home run in the stadium's history. The Opening Day result, played before 55,352, would not be typical for the Phillies nor Bunning in 1971. There were five statues outside of Veterans Stadium: One of eternal Philadelphia As manager Connie Mack (brought over from Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium), two generic sculptures of ballplayersone sliding, the other admiring a long driveand two football sculptures also showing nameless players in action. By the mid-1980s, the amount of drunken hostility among Eagles fans grew so disturbing that the team begged the NFL not to schedule late afternoon (4:00) games so that tailgating fans would have less time to get liquored up. Mike Ryans dizzying catch of the ball thrown out of a helicopter was just the first of many wild stunts intended to fire up Phillies fansor leave them covering their eyes in anticipation of a stunt that could easily go awry. First MLB home run hit in Jarry Park: Mack Jones, Montreal Expos, 4/14/1969 Last MLB home run hit in Jarry Park : Greg Luzinski, Philadelphia Phillies, 9/26/1976 Player who hit the most home runs . He particularly paid immediate dividends in Philadelphia during his first season as, somehow, he won 27 games for a Phillies team that finished 58-97. Willie Stargell was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1988. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 2022-23 Upper Deck Series 2 For Calder Lot of 5 Cards # Different at the best online prices at eBay! An interior view of the Vet, shortly before the start of the Phillies last game played there on September 28, 2003. Perhaps the most visible changes at the Vet were the installation of the football skyboxes atop the upper level in 1986 and, nine years later, the complete replacement of seats from the original Fall-like rainbow hues to a global deep blue. Pops had three doubles and two home runs that day. Even the players had started to turn on the stadium; perennial Phillies All-Star third baseman Scott Rolen called the Vet a terrible place with an atmosphere that was just not good.. Too many people already think of Philadelphia as a cemetery with lights, he said. "You could hear it when it when it hit [the upper deck]. A statement from a local church group asked: Can you imagine what will happen when this group of beer drinkers pours onto the highways of Delaware Township and Camden County?. On December 30, 2000, they got their wish: Rather than throw nearly $100 million to prop up an aging Vet, the city approved side-by-side facilities for both teams, to open in 2004. Free shipping for many products! It passed, but not without inducing sweat; the tally was 50.8-49.2%. MLB.com features a stable of club beat reporters and award-winning national columnists, the largest contingent of baseball reporters under one roof, who deliver over 100 original articles every day. 19 Willie Stargell hit his 535-foot home run into the second deck of Olympic Stadium on May 20, 1978, off Wayne Twitchell. (Jerry Reuss). It had been hoped that the Vets modern omnipresence would pacify Philadelphias infamously scornful sports fans. That same year, fellow Pirate Willie Stargell was the target of a bomb threat. Willie Stargell, May 20, 1978, Olympic Stadium, Montreal, 535 feet Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson said Stargell had "power enough to hit home runs in any park, including Yellowstone." Only four other players at the time of his retirement had at least four three-homer games: Johnny Mize (6 times), Ernie Banks (4 times), Lou Gehrig (4 times) and Ralph Kiner (4 times). As a parting gift, the As sold Connie Mack Stadium to the Phillies, who wanted it like a hot potatobut they had no choice, given that any other buyer would possibly tear down and redevelop the property, leaving the National League team of 70 years homeless. Six days after the Vets formal dedication, the Phillies finally took the field for their first game at the new venue on a chilly, gusty day. In 1971 Pops became the first of only three players to hit a home run into the 600 level at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Initial thoughts focused on a 50,000-seat facility west of downtown in Fairmount Park, along the Schuylkill River; that would ultimately be vetoed by Philadelphias powerful planning commission board. This is the sixth home run to be hit out of Dodger Stadium, . Philadelphia was emblematic of American Northeast cities in the decade following World War II: Rotting, rusting and unable to contain white flight to the suburbs. In the end, the hawks won. Who was Willie Stargell? April 9, 2001 / 8:32 AM / AP. On April 17, 1964, the New York Mets opened brand new Shea Stadium against the Pirates. Football coach/broadcaster Jon Gruden, brought on as the Eagles offensive coordinator in 1995, recalls one of his first days on the job when, while working in the team offices at the Vet, a cat and two rats fell through the ceiling and crashed upon his desk. ), 17 Army-Navy football games, college baseball tourneys featuring local schools such as Temple and Villanova, two pro soccer teams, a slow-pitch softball team, occasional appearances by minor league ballclubs, high school football, wrestling, Billy Graham, and Jehovahs Witnesses. Of the 28 victories posted by the Phillies at the Vet that seasonthe fewest gathered up by the team in 33 years at the venueexactly half (14) were recorded by Carlton, who won his first of four Cy Young Awards over an 11-year stretch. He hit seven of the 18 balls that soared above the Forbes Field bleachers. There was new blood on the roster (Greg Luzinski and Willie Montanez, with Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton to follow), in the booth with first-year Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas, and on the clothing rack with a new pinstriped jersey with a thick, soccer-style shoulder stripe and the introduction of the modern, swirling P team logo featuring a baseball cleverly entwined within the middle. The final baseball game at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh on Sunday drew 55,351 fans, the largest regular-season crowd in the history of the stadium. "He doesn't just hit pitchers, he takes away their dignity." Community. It's a Micro size geocache, with difficulty of 1.5, terrain of 1.5. A more ambitious idea to build a multi-purpose stadium on stilts over the railroad tracks at the Penn Railroad 30th Street station, as part of a larger development featuring an arena, hotel, retail and dining, was also rejected by the city because it couldnt obtain Federal subsidies required in the budget. Pitcher Wayne Twitchell compared it to a "tracer bullet." Willie Stargell played 21 seasons. And of the 18 balls to clear the 86-foot high right-field roof at Forbes Field (1909-70), the lefty had seven of them. (FlickrAndrew Evans). Nevertheless, the Pirates lost to the Cincinnati Reds 3-2. (Don Wingfield/National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum) Related Hall of Famers To the top Willie Stargell Inducted: 1988 Position: Left Fielder Hoyt Wilhelm Inducted: 1985 Pitcher Apps. The first home run was a 507-foot rocket off Alan Foster on August 5, 1969, that landed initially in the middle of the tin roof covering the pavilion in right-field, then bounced over and out of the ballpark it is the longest home run hit at Dodger Stadium. Willie Stargell, June 25, 1971 Willie Stargell was no stranger to momentous home runs. He detailed his time at the Vet in a book entitled The Secret Apartment. Two months later, the Steelers played their first game at Three Rivers, a 19-7 loss to the Houston Oilers. Two years later, Drew made his Vet debutin the uniform of the Cardinals, one bearing someone elses name as he was so petrified by the reaction hed get. The American League, originally founded in 1901, consists of the following teams: Baltimore Orioles; Boston Red Sox; Chicago White Sox; Cleveland Indians; Detroit Tigers; Houston Astros; Kansas City Royals; Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; Minnesota Twins; New York Yankees; Oakland Athletics; Seattle Mariners; Tampa Bay Rays; Texas Rangers; and Toronto Blue Jays. Only two other players would hit a home run into the 600 level, the upper deck, at the Vet (before it closed), Butch Huskey (Section 638) & Ruben Rivera (Section 638). Shop. The "Vet" opened on April 10, 1971 at the corner of Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt rounds the bases after one of his 265 home runs hit at the Vet. 6 - Willie Stargell hit four home runs into the upper deck of right field at Three Rivers Stadium including the longest home run in the history of the Stadium. What do you get when you combine a block party and a baseball league? Three weeks before the Phillies played their first game next door at brand new Citizens Bank Park, the demolition button was pushed and the Vet came tumbling down. By 1986, even visiting players and fans were getting into the roguish Vet spirit; Cincinnati Reds pitcher John Denny beat up a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter, while later in the year fans of the visiting New York Mets went wild, doing damage to concessions stands and seats. There would have to be some buying out of private property to make the space availableleading to the inevitable haggling between buyer and seller over the value of the landwhile the city had to twist the arms of the Eagles, hardly desperate to leave its current home at the 70,000-seat, football-friendly Franklin Field on the University of Pennsylvania campus. (FlickrPaul Altobelli). A shot of Stargell's home run to win the 1979 World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates Consider the time and the age of wonder. In 1971, he hit a 535-foot home run, the longest in Veterans Stadium history. Willie Stargell was born on Wednesday, March 6, 1940, in Earlsboro, Oklahoma. The only other two players who have hit a home run out of Dodger Stadium since 1973, Mark McGwire and Mike Piazza. Stargell hit an estimated 470 foot home run off Andy Messersmith that cleared the right-field pavilion. Back at Connie Mack Stadium, Phillies players dealt with a hostile fan experience, but African-Americans had it far worse. Contact us at This Great Game. Unlike Phil and Phyllis, the Phanatic had an attitude and, like the San Diego Chicken before it, playfully needled with opposing players and managers. There was a water fountain display behind the outfield fencebeating Kansas Citys Royals/Kauffman Stadium to the punch by a couple of years. (Starting catcher Tim McCarver wanted no part of the stunt and deferred to Ryan.) A replica of the Liberty Bell was placed in straightaway center at the base of the upper deck; it would later be moved up to the top, separating a pair of new scoreboards. Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton in The Pittsburgh Pirates Encyclopedia (David Finoli, Sports Publishing, LLC, 05/01/2003, Page 256) once said, "He doesn't just hit pitchers. 81 - Willie Stargell was ranked eighty-first by The Sporting News when they released their list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players in the history of baseball. Though the Phillies struggled in the first few years at the Vet, there was a strong sense that it was a matter of time before fortunes turned. Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) was formed and charged with developing, building and managing the most comprehensive baseball experience available on the internet. Hehit the longest ballin Veterans Stadium history -- a majestic, 450-foot bomb that the Phillies marked with a gold star and newspapers compared to a Jack Nicklaus tee shot. The most recent home run to be hit out of Dodger Stadium was this 478-footer by (then) Miami Marlins slugger and Southern California native Giancarlo Stanton on May 12 . PITTSBURGH (AP) - Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, the thunderous home run hitter who carried the Pittsburgh Pirates into two World Series with his power and helped win them with his. The first player to ever hit a ball out of Dodger Stadium is Pittsburgh Pirates legend Willie Stargell. A resurgent, 39-year-old Willie Stargell provides leadership and a little more, stepping it up for the Pittsburgh Pirates and guiding a World Series comeback against the Baltimore Orioles. In the build-up (or build-down) to the Vets March 2004 implosion, a worker poses with a graphic denoting the spot where the stadiums longest home runhit by the Pittsburgh Pirates Willie Stargell on June 25, 1971landed in the upper deck behind right-center field. Fans. So he took the field wearing a shoulder-length wig and racing glasses, leading some of the boos to turn to cheers; at least those fans appreciated Schmidts sense of humor, if not his honesty. Sign in/Sign up; 11 - Willie Stargell went deep eleven times in April 1971, tying him with six other players for the National League record of home runs in the month of April. Both Carlton and Schmidt dominate the leaderboards among those who played at the Vet. That's when the Pittsburgh. Attendance during this time surged, from the 1.5 million range to close to three million by the end of the 1970s. Carltons superstar equal at the plate would also evolve in the Vets early years. One disc jockey failed the ostrich jockey test as she was thrown off the animal, which ran amok around the fieldwhile another was spooked and took its rider (retired Phillie and future Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn) for the ride of his life. Willie's restaurant in the Hill District of Pittsburgh gave away a free chicken to all present in the restaurant every time he hit a home run. Such trends not only hurt the Phillies reputation, but their place in the NL standings. But the upkeep couldnt keep pace with the Vets gradual deterioration. A "star" was placed were the ball landed. All of this necessitated the use of artificial turf at the Vet; throughout its 33-year history, six different carpets were used, each costing between $1-2 million. Reels Stargell's solo home run . Willie Stargell weighed 188 lbs (85 kg) when playing. Bob Forsch had the most wins, with 15. Philadelphia had hoped for a 1970 opening for the Vet, but a construction strike and a bribery scandal involving the stadium manager pushed it back a year. That performance through the first three months led to his first All-Star appearance in five years. Philadelphia finished last in the six-team NL Eastern Division with a 67-95 record, while Bunning won only two of eight decisions at the Vet after Opening Day with a rough 7.54 earned run average. He also received his second NL Player of the Month award. 200 - Willie Stargell was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988, 199 legends had been enshrined before him, Pops went in alone that year making him Hall of Famer number two-hundred. It's located in Pennsylvania, United States. Shortly after a 10-year provision making the Eagles exclusive football tenants expired in the early 1980s, the United States Football League was allowed to place a team in the Vet, so long as it didnt play past August; the USFL Stars played two seasons (1983-84) before moving to Baltimoreand team employees, like out-of-control rock stars at a hotel, trashed their offices at the Vet as they departed. "CHICKEN ON THE HILL" A home run for Willie Stargell, begun by the fact that Stargell owned a chicken restaurant in Pittsburgh's Hill District and that whenever he homered, the person at the counter would get free chicken. STARGELL, WILVER DORNELL (1940-2001). As you can see from this fantastic aerial (taken that same month/year) that was a bomb!