Game 7 Gang never gets tired of Pirates’ 1960 World Series win
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At 3: 30 on an October afternoon, shadows at PNC Park are as long as those cast by the New York Yankees on the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates that day in Oakland.
Just when the Buccos had eked out a two- run lead, the Bronx Bombers tied it up in the top of the ninth inning.
“The Yankees rampaged back with two runs on three hits,” NBC radio announcer Chuck Thompson says over a roaring crowd on the PNC Park field speakers.
But there is no crowd in the North Shore ballpark. Only two dozen people standing or sitting in lawn chairs on the warning track in center field, listening to a baseball game played 60 years ago. Everyone here knows what happens next, but some still look anxious.
Not Thompson. He’s so busy raving about Mickey Mantle that he barely mentions Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry throwing ball one to Pirates second- baseman Bill Mazeroski. What happens next knocks the seasoned sportscaster — and baseball fans for 60 years — off his game. He names the wrong pitcher.
“Art Ditmar throws. Here’s a swing and a high fly ball going deep to left! This may do it! Back to the wall goes Berra! It’s over the fence! Home run! The Pirates win!”
Cheers and clapping followed that moment last Tuesday at PNC Park and all cameras were trained on four guys in black caps that said “Game 7 Gang”: John Urso, Dan Schultz, Steve Neumeyer and Joe Landolina. Along with Herb Soltman and George Skornickel, they’ve listened to this broadcast for the past 25 years on Oct. 13, usually by what’s left of the Forbes Field wall on the University of Pittsburgh campus. It never gets old.
“The students walk by shaking their heads. They can’t understand why these old farts are jumping around. I still get goose bumps,” said John, 85, of McCandless.
Though they appreciated the Pirates’ invitation to listen at PNC Park, gang members would have rather been in Oakland. They had to cancel their annual 1960 World Series celebration because of COVID- 19. Hundreds of people, some of them in their 60s, 70s and 80s, gathering for several hours outdoors is too risky these days. Dozens of people showed up in Oakland anyway, and someone played the NBC radio recording.
Herb, the gang’s leader, listened alone Tuesday in his Mt. Lebanon condominium. As much as he wanted to be with his friends, a recent hospital stay kept him home. But it couldn’t hold up the power of his memories. That vaulted 25- year- old Herb over the railing and onto Forbes Field to join the joyous throng around Maz at home plate. Herb’s grandmother watched in astonishment from seats behind the Pirates dugout. He later asked her what she thought of the game.
“‘ Herbert’ — she called me Herbert — ‘ that was most exciting!’” was her reply.
Herb, a lifelong Pirates fan, said Maz was his favorite player even before the World Series. Watching him come through with the only walk- off homer to win a seventh and deciding game in the World Series was among the best moments of both of their lives.
“I never touched ground from second to home. I just floated in,” Maz told biographer John T. Bird in his book “Twin Killing. “Probably the first and only time I showed my emotions on the field.”
The Wheeling, W. Va., native grew up a Cleveland Indians fan in Rush Run, Ohio. The Yankees had broken his heart many times.
“They’d find ways to beat you all the time,” he said.
Maz didn’t know it was a homer until he saw the umpire’s signal and heard the crowd, the one that roars and whistles for 35 seconds on the NBC broadcast. Thompson doesn’t say a word.
“It struck me that the ball had gone out of the park, and I went crazy,” Maz said years later. “It was over. We beat the Yankees!”
Maz played 12 more years for the Pirates and helped win another World Series in 1971. Herb continues to root for the Bucs, though they have given him little to celebrate since the 1970s, when Forbes Field was torn down.
Herb was drawn back to that spot in the early 1990s, when he met a kindred soul, Saul Finkelstein. On Oct. 13, 1985, the 25th anniversary of the 1960 World Series, Saul sat near the 457- foot marker on the Forbes Field wall by Schenley Plaza, listening to the radio broadcast on a cassette player. After local sports author Jim O’Brien wrote about it, Herb and others who would become Game 7 Gang members joined him.
“Nobody knew each other,” said Dan Schultz, 51, of Plum. “Saul had the radio and Herb knew every pitch. I said, ‘ What are you guys doing?’”
Like many of the fans who take part in the annual tradition, Dan wasn’t even born in 1960. Neither was Herb’s daughter, Laurie Soltman, 53, of Rochester, N. Y., who worked on the Pirates broadcasting side for several years.
“I know it through my dad’s memories,” she said. “When you’re working for the Pirates, you absorb some of the history.”
The first girl to play in Mt. Lebanon Little League is proud that her father has worked to build a grass- roots tradition like no other.
“They created something really special, a model for other towns to find things to rally around, Laurie said. “It brings him joy and other people joy.”
Herb has told Maz, who appeared along with other 1960 Pirates at the 40th and 50th anniversary celebrations, how much joy he brought to baseball fans. One time, Herb showed him.
“I was introducing him and I turned to him. I don’t know why, but I hugged him,” Herb said.
We should all be so lucky.