Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Favorite Players - Pirates Edition

My next team (in no particular order) is the Pittsburgh Pirates. My last little league team was the Pirates, so I have a special place in my heart for the Buccos.


How can anyone not love Roberto Clemente? No list of Pirates favorites would be legit without Clemente. Same "no-brainer" category as Tony Gwynn.


Willie Stargell was the first (non-Padres) player I remember being a fan of. I got the chance to meet him in the late '80s. He was friendly and ridiculously generous with his time and signature. Somewhere I have a 1983 Fleer card autographed by him. It will be donated to the 83 Fleer Project as soon as I find it. The '79 World Series was the first World Series that I remember watching. We are Family, me and Pops.


Mike LaValliere... Come on! Spanky! Gotta love him! If Bonds didn't have such a rag arm, Bream was OUT!!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

love the floating heads

gcrl said...

you are right about clemente.

the 79 series was the first one i remember not including the dodgers, as i started watching in 77. i do recall that the final game of the series pre-empted a very special episode of '8 is enough' (the one where adam rich burns down the house). i hated that earl weaver was making so many pitching changes!

Jeffrey Wolfe said...

Seeing Spanky LaValliere on there with the old Pops and Clemente is pure genuius.

Steve Gierman said...

I loved Spanky when he was on the White Sox! I remember seeing him hit an inside the park home run with the Sox, but I can't find evidence to support that.

Jeffrey Wolfe said...

My favorite memory of Spanky as a White Sox was a segment on Fox when he showed that he spray painted his bald spot with that fake hair stuff. I miss him.