Around Town: Once upon a time, Pirates knew how to sign young talent
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
By Brian O’Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As we begin what nearly everyone expects to be the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 18th consecutive losing season, as we lament a system where the home team tries to compete with a fraction of the payroll of the monster ball clubs, it’s easy to forget it didn’t always take millions to sign a star.
Sometimes the owner just had to spring for cigars, candy and roses.
I just finished reading “Kiss It Good-Bye: The Mystery, the Mormon, and the Moral of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates.” The author, John Moody, a Bethel Park native who went on to become a foreign correspondent, recounts that magical championship season mostly from the viewpoint of his boyhood hero, pitcher Vernon Law.
Mr. Law, also known as “Deacon,” is a devout Mormon who grew up steeped in that faith in rural Idaho. And this humble young man had quite a right arm.
The year was 1948. Bing Crosby, the crooner, owned a small piece of the Pirates then. One of his hunting-and-fishing buddies, a future U.S. senator from Idaho named Herman Welker, told Der Bingle about this Law kid who could flat fling a horsehide.