It was spring training, 1975. The last game Steve Blass pitched in as a Pirate.
He had struggled for years after suddenly developing control problems in 1973. He and the Pirates were giving it one last go that spring to see if something would change.
This start would indicate that it wouldn’t.
“I was awful as usual,” Blass told me. “I had been awful for two years. It was my last shot and there wasn’t any change. I was still awful. I was throwing the ball all over the place.”
Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh came out of the dugout in the second inning, not to take Blass out, but to argue with the home plate umpire.
Spring training games are normally low-stress environments for coaches and players. Murtaugh got so heated he was tossed from the game.
“I realized not far after that he did that as a gesture to me,” Blass said. “No manager gets thrown out of a spring training game. It doesn’t happen, unless there’s a reason. The reason for Danny to do that was because he cared about me. That’s how he let me know.”
That’s who Murtaugh was as a manager. He knew when to pick his spots, how to show the players he cared and, most importantly, how to help his team win.
“He was like a baseball dad to me.”
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In baseball history, 65 different managers have recorded at least 1,000 wins. Baseball Reference lists 69 managers who had a .540 career winning percentage or better. There have been 25 different managers who won multiple World Series. Murtaugh meets all three qualifications: 1,115 wins, a .540 winning percentage and World Series wins in 1960 and 1971.
He is one of just eight managers in baseball history who meets all that criteria. Six of them are in the Hall of Fame: Joe McCarthy, Walter Alston, John McGraw, Sparky Anderson, Miller Huggins and Billy Southworth. Another is Terry Francona, who is as safe a bet as any active manager to join them. Murtaugh is the only retired manager of the bunch who is not a Hall of Famer.
That could potentially change Sunday, as Murtaugh is one of 10 candidates who is up for enshrinement via the Golden Days Committee. If 12 of the 16 members on that committee vote for Murtaugh Sunday, he will be posthumously elected as part of the 2022 Hall of Fame class.
“In my opinion, he should go into the Hall,” Al Oliver, another former Pirate under Murtaugh, told me. “It’s time for the voting committee to realize there is such a thing as character.”
Oliver who is just one of the players who are speaking on Murtaugh’s behalf, 45 years after his passing, to finally enshrine him into Cooperstown.
“Speaking as a former major leaguer who played under a variety of managers, I encourage the committee to elect Murtaugh and enshrine him in Cooperstown,” Milt May wrote in an Op Ed for the Daily Times.
“Danny Murtaugh was the man who made me a big-league player, and I loved and respected him,” Manny Sanguillén wrote in his Op Ed for the Washington Examiner. “People like Danny don’t come around every day.”
“I urge the committee to elect him and send him to Cooperstown,” Dave Cash put in his Op Ed for the Delaware Valley Journal.
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Murtaugh managed the Pirates for 15 years, but over four different stints because of health concerns. The first came from 1957, when the club was emerging from one of the worst stretches in franchise history, to 1964. He finished the 1967 season as an interim, and then managed two years in 1970 and 1971. He returned one more time midseason in 1973 and hung it up for good after the 1976 season.
Even with the breaks, it was always the same Murtaugh.
“That was his most crowning achievement,” Oliver said. “He was consistent, as a person, as a manager.”
“He was very easy to play for,” Oliver continued. “He was quiet. He never had a lot of rules, and the reason he didn’t have a lot of rules is because he had talent. A lot of times when a manager has a lot of talent, they make the mistake of starting to manage when they just need to let the players play. That was his trump suite. He allowed the players to play.”
Murtaugh would often let an assistant coach do the talking, opting to hang back and observe how the game was progressing.
“People made the mistake of thinking he wasn’t in the game,” Blass said. “That was a mistake. He was always in the game. He just didn’t have to verbalize a lot, unless there was a situation that demanded it.”
So what would he do in-game? Well, if he liked you, he’d spit chewing tobacco on your shoes.
“It was a way to show us that he cared about us,” Oliver said. “You don’t crack on people you don’t like.”
And as Oliver would recall, he was accurate.
If you didn’t like it?
“If I spit on your shoes and you give me a lot of trouble, then the AAA manager will spit on your shoes,” Blass recalled Murtaugh explaining. “And if you give him trouble, the AA manager will spit on your shoes.”
It was a joke. Yeah, the rookie or newcomer might have a bit of culture shock seeing that’s how the manager will let you know he likes you. That’s part of the joke too.
“He took the game seriously, but he didn’t take himself seriously,” Oliver said.
He may have been quiet and a joke cracker, but history had a way of finding Murtaugh. His 1960 Pirates overcame the heavily favored Yankees in seven games, marking one of the biggest World Series upsets of all-time. This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Pirates’ 1971 World Series and the first all-minority lineup in Pirates history.
The intentionality of that lineup has been debated. In Cash’s Op Ed, he wrote about how Murtaugh tried to do something similar in a spring training game in 1963. According to Dick Allen, the local Chamber of Commerce in Asheville, N.C. threatened to cancel the game, blocking Murtaugh from setting history back then.
Instead, in 1971, he put lefty Al Oliver at first base against a left-handed starter, giving him the flexibility to field a historic lineup. After the game, he said he put together the best starting lineup he could.
But did he know the significance?
“I wish I had the opportunity to ask him,” Oliver said. “...The one thing I can say is it didn’t make any difference because of our ability.
“Maybe, what I like to think is, maybe the man was color blind.”
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There’s a chance that Murtaugh could one day be enshrined in Cooperstown if he doesn’t make it this year, but it wouldn’t be for a while. The Golden Era committee will not vote again until 2026, and there’s no guarantee that Murtaugh would be included on that ballot. This is the third time this committee has voted, and the first time Murtaugh’s candidacy has been considered.
The Pirates retired Murtaugh’s number in 1977. At the time, it was just the fifth number they had taken out of circulation, alongside Honus Wagner, Billy Meyer, Pie Traynor and Roberto Clemente.He would manage Clemente, Willie Stargell and Bill Mazeroski, and play alongside Ralph Kiner, all of whom have their numbers retired by the club.
It’s a recognition that you can’t tell the story of the Pittsburgh Pirates without Danny Murtaugh.
“I couldn’t see him managing any other team but the Pirates,” Oliver said. “We fit his personality, and vice-versa.”
