Friday in VarsityXtra
‘People don’t realize he was as good as they get.’ Bob Gorinski turned down Paterno to sign with the Twins.
Bob Gorinski is little more than a footnote in WPIAL history these days. He deserves to be so much more.
This month marks the golden anniversary of the first WPIAL player taken in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft. But what happened 50 years ago only tells half the story of one of the greatest two-sport athletes in the history of Western Pennsylvania high school sports.
Bob Gorinski, Mount Pleasant High School class of 1970, grew up in the tiny community of Calumet in Westmoreland County. He came from a blue-collar family and worked part time as a high school senior, pumping gas at a service station. And as athletes go, Gorinski’s tank was on full.
The names of Joe Namath, Dan Marino, Tom Clements and Joe Montana often come up as a few of the greatest Western Pa. two-sport athletes from yesteryear. A little more than a decade ago, Terrelle Pryor was being called one of the all-time greats. But none of those athletes had anything on Gorinski in terms of high school accomplishments or marvelous ability.
Gorinski isn’t as well known as the aforementioned, but this says everything about his athleticism: He was heavily recruited and signed to play running back at Penn State, only to turn away from Joe Paterno and the Nittany Lions a few months later to sign with the Minnesota Twins, after they made him the 22nd overall pick in the 1970 MLB draft.
“I saw Terrelle Pryor play football and basketball and Bob is right on the same level as an athlete,” said Dennis Miscik, who was two years behind Gorinski at Mount Pleasant.
Miscik was a sophomore on the 1970 Mount Pleasant baseball team that won a WPIAL title, with Gorinski as the team leader and his father, Clarence, the team’s coach. Miscik also spent many years as Mount Pleasant’s baseball coach, assistant football coach and athletic director.
“When you’re an All-American in high school football and a firstround draft pick in baseball, tell me who has done that?” Miscik said. “How many can you think of? None. Put that in your newspaper column. I don’t want to say Bob is forgotten, but people don’t realize he was as good as they get.”
Gorinski was 6 feet 3, 215 pounds as a Mount Pleasant senior, rather large for a running back who still had speed to run by defenders, and was so agile that he played shortstop on the baseball team. In football, Gorinski was allstate and ran for 3,350 career yards, a highly-impressive statistic for that era.
Mount Pleasant hasn’t forgotten one of their favorite sons. A painting of Gorinski still hangs on a wall at the entrance to Mount Pleasant’s gymnasium. But outside of Mount Pleasant, Big Shot Bob doesn’t seem to get props. Gorinski is 68, and lives with his wife, Denise, in Acme, part of the Mount Pleasant Area School District.
“I’ve wondered about that WPIAL Hall of Fame,” Gorinski said. “I mean, I think my stats and accomplishments are pretty good.
As you get older, you think sometimes it would be nice to be remembered somewhere. But I’m not in any Halls of Fame anywhere.”
Bob Gumbita is Mount Pleasant’s school principal and has been an assistant football coach for 30 years.
“What Bobby Gorinski proved to these Mount Pleasant kids is that, even from a small area, anything is possible,” Gumbita said.
High school days
Mount Pleasant played in the WPIAL’s largest classification during Gorinski’s years and his 3,350 career yards stood as a school record for 44 years.
“His talents were unique,” Miscik said. “He was 6-3, 215 pounds, could run the 100 in 11.0 and had the body of an inside linebacker. He had some qualities that many
people didn’t have, even on the professional level.”
Gorinski’s senior baseball season was most memorable. He hit .528 with seven home runs as Mount Pleasant, under the direction of Gorinski’s father, won a WPIAL title. The Vikings defeated Bethel Park, 42, in the title game before 1,500 fans at Forbes Field, one week after Gorinski was drafted. Gorinski was 3 for 4 in the contest and smacked a double off the scoreboard in left field.
Gorinski had a torrid run through the playoffs, hitting .625 (10 for 16) and one of the most memorable games was when Mount Pleasant defeated North Hills, 2-1, in the semifinals. Gorinski drove in both runs, the second coming when Chip Lang was North Hills’ pitcher. Lang was a second-round draft pick of the Montreal Expos in 1970.
“You know, I was just telling my wife the other day that out of all the sports I played, that period of time was probably the best in my life,” Gorinski said. “You could go back to January of that year when I was recruited for football. I was flying all over the country, seeing places I’ve never seen and meeting big-time coaches. Once baseball started, things just kept rolling along and building up.”
Sorry, Joe and Woody
Gorinski was so good as a football running back that he was recruited by colleges across the country and eventually signed with Penn State. Ohio State finished second. Notre Dame, Michigan, Miami, North Carolina State, Maryland and Pitt were his other top choices and he visited all of them.
“I had to call (Ohio State coach) Woody Hayes and tell him it was Penn State. That was tough,” Gorinski said. “He didn’t get mad, but he told me I was making a mistake because Ohio State is the football program you want.”
After the Twins drafted Gorinski, he had another tough choice: Go to Penn State or sign with the Twins? Gorinski was in the same Penn State football recruiting class as John Cappelletti, a running back who won the Heisman Trophy in 1973. What if Gorinski had chosen football?
“I know I could’ve competed,” Gorinski said.
Gorinski inked a contract with the Twins and got a signing bonus of more than $60,000, the highest in Twins history. He had to break the news to Paterno.
“He said I was making a mistake and I should go to get a college education, and maybe play some baseball after that,” Gorinski said. “A few months later, he did write me a nice letter.
“At the time, I liked baseball probably better than football. If I was drafted in the 10th or 15th round, I wouldn’t have done it. But to go in the first round, I figured there was a pretty good chance of getting to the majors.”
Minor details
Gorinski did some impressive things in minor league baseball. Converted to the outfield, hit at least 20 home runs in five of his first seven minor-league seasons, including 28 homers and 110 RBIs in the Class AAA Pacific Coast League in 1976. But he never got a call to the big leagues until 1977.
Gorinski played only one season in the majors. He was used mostly as a pinch-hitter, had only 118 atbats and hit.195 with three homers and 22 RBIs.
Gorinski spent the 1978 season in Class AAA and then was traded to the Chicago Cubs, who released him in the middle of the 1979 Class AAA season. Gorinski hooked on with the Mets, but they released him after the season.
Gorinski had enough of the baseball life and started working in Westmoreland County for PepsiCola Co.
“I had a wife, a kid, a house and my baseball salary kept getting cut,” Gorinski said.
He eventually worked 16 years for the Latrobe Brewing Co. before retiring.
Gorinski and his wife of 48 years have two sons — Bob Jr., 43, who lives in Mechanicsburg, and Tyler, 33, who also lives in Acme. Tyler Gorinski was a standout running backlinebacker at Mount Pleasant in the early 2000s.
“My dad is humble and doesn’t brag, but he deserves to be recognized,” Tyler Gorinski said. “A friend of mine just had a cookout a few weeks ago. There were guys sitting around telling Bob Gorinski stories.”
There are a lot of them.