Mike Schmidt and the Saga of 500

 

I was there.

            To say I was there seems a fun and profound thing to say.

            At least in some instances.

            I supposed I could site situations where being there wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The Battle of Gettysburg. The bombing of Pearl Harbor. Vietnam. 9/11. The Challenger explosion. The Oklahoma City bombing. The board meeting for New Coke. Any Foo Fighters concert. Trump’s inauguration.

            Wait?

            Was anyone there for that?

            Again, not great things to say that I was there for.

            Yet there are people in photos on those days.

            Someone was there.

            Someone paid to see Dave Grohl perform.

            It seems a better phrase to use when accentuating the positive. Triumphs from mankind are pretty cool. Triumphs for individuals too. Witnessing when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball. Being there when Apollo 11 launched. When Hank Aaron blasted himself above Babe Ruth in the record books. Watching Serena Williams do anything.

I was there.

But I don’t know so much that I appreciated it.

At least not at the time.

It was a warmish spring afternoon in April of 1987, as I remember it. It was our first Pirates game of the year. Back when I was a kid, I tolerated football season. I suffered hockey and basketball. I waited with bated breath for the coming of February. And despite the Pirates being a bad team for the last few years (I’d just turned 13 so it seemed like we’d been bad my whole life), there was a twinge of promise going into the 1987 season.

A small twinge.

Like microscopic in scope.

But still a twinge.

Jim Leyland was only in his second season of a pretty damned fine managerial career. We expected Barry Bonds to blossom. New (or newish) names like Bobby Bonilla and Doug Drabek were kicking around the old cement doughnut on the North Side. Though we were still skeptical of the Tony Pena trade, us fans wanted to see what Mike LaValliere, Mike Dunne, and this Andy Van Slyke could do.

            Plus going to the ballpark for the first time in a season is always exciting.

            Even in a place as maligned as Three Rivers Stadium was.

            Even in the cheap seats where you knew it was a home run or a big catch by fan reaction and not actually seeing it yourself.

            You couldn’t see the Jumbotron from the cheap seats either.

            Maybe that’s why I didn’t appreciate being there.

            The Pirates had battled that April day. Down 5-0 to the Phillies by the fifth inning, We’d come back to lead the game 6-5 in the ninth. My man, Johnny Ray, had delivered on a 3-run homer in the eighth inning, although I probably didn’t see it from where I was. But I remember him coming out of the dugout as the fans roared. He was my favorite player at the time. Johnny Ray was a rare bright spot to cheer for in 1980s Pittsburgh baseball.

            Johnny Ray would be a Pirate forever, I thought.

            Johnny Ray was playing for the Angels by August.

            But in that moment, he was the big guy. The hero. For me. For everyone. Everyone in Three Rivers Stadium on April 18, 1987 was a Johnny Ray fan. Even though the Phillies had gotten off to a slow start, were playing underwhelming baseball early in the season, that game was going to be a big win for the Pirates. We were going to win, right? Carrying a 6-5 lead into the top of the ninth?

            Of course, we were going to win.

            But then he had to come up to bat.

            Full disclosure, I’m not a Mike Schmidt fan. At least I wasn’t back then. Mike Schmidt was great. Probably one of the best third basemen to play the game. He was a soon-to-be Hall of Famer for as long as I knew of him. But Mike Schmidt was a Pirates killer. Schmidt was a rival. A superstar jerk from the wrong side of the state. He was a Phillie. I hated the Phillies back when I was a kid. Any team in the old NL East. The Phillies. The Cardinals. The Expos. The Cubs. The Mets. I hated them all.

            Especially the Mets.

            Muck the Fets we used to say.

            God how I miss the old NL East.

            As a result, of my animosity I didn’t collect Mike Schmidt cards. Passed by them in packs like I would commons. Then gave him the requisite star card cursory glance when I was done going through the pack. I did with Schmidt’s cards what I did with all of the star cards for guys who played on teams that I didn’t like. I sorted them and put them in box separate from my favorites. Yeah, I had Mike Schmidt cards. 

            But so what? Stick him with the Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry cards, and look at them never.

            I was a Pirates fan.

            My “good” box was very small in 1987.

            I didn’t want Mike Schmidt to come up to bat that afternoon at Three Rivers Stadium. Not in the situation he was coming up in. Two outs and two men on for the Phillies, Don Robinson was on the mound being…well…Don Robinson. At least that’s what I thought of him in those days. He wasn’t the “caveman” in Pittsburgh in 1987. Donny was on his way out. My images of Don Robinson were of him always looking back, back, back, as another home run ball left the stadium and he’d blown another game again.

            I wanted Jim Leyland to pull Don Robinson.

            We deserved to win that game.

            When Leyland came to the mound, I thought bye bye Donny.

            Leyland didn’t pull Don Robinson.

            And there was goddamned Mike Schmidt at the plate.

            And Leyland probably didn’t pull Robinson for good reasons. Despite my mistrust of the guy, Don Robinson actually had some success against Mike Schmidt. According to the folks at SABR, in their batter to pitcher meetings going all the way back to 1978, Donny Robinson had actually got the better of Michael Jack Schmidt. Schmidt was 7-57 against Don Robinson. That’s a .122 batting average for you folks playing at home. Pretty good odds. There was a method to Leyland’s madness, leaving Don Robinson in the game.

            Unless you consider the fact that 4 of those 7 hits were home runs.

            Don Robinson got to quick work being Don Robinson. He pitched three straight balls to Mike Schmidt. Maybe he was trying to walk him. Get Schmidt on base and take his chances with the next guy. Who knew what Don Robinson was thinking? Maybe that he didn’t want to play in Pittsburgh anymore. Couldn’t blame him for that.

            Instead, Don Robinson tired to battle back against his 3-0 deficit. He threw Mike Schmidt a fastball. Right at the knees. Right over the plate. Big mistake. Schmidy went yard. The ball sailed over the left field fence. Mike Schmidt rounded the bases clapping his hands and pumping his arms, just like he’s won the World Series. He had…kind of. And history had been made that afternoon in Pittsburgh.

            That home run was the 500^th of Mike Schmidt’s career.

            A milestone.

            A Hall of Famer punch-card moment.

            I was there.

            But I didn’t care.

            All I cared about was that we were losing in the top of the ninth inning. We were down 8-6. I sat in my seat stewing as the Benedict Arnold’s around me stood up to applaud Mike Schmidt and his stupid 500^th home run. Screw that, I thought. I’m not standing for some guy who creamed the Pirates. Who always seemed to cream us. Sitting out in the cheap seats, I didn’t even see the damned home run anyway. Wouldn’t see it until the evening news sports segment.

            To add insult to injury former Pirate great, Kent Tekulve came out to shut Buccos down in the bottom of the ninth.

            Kent Tekulve who NEVER looked right in a Phillies uniform.

            I didn’t even keep the ticket from that game.

            That’s how hard I took Pirates loses back then.

            There’s a door somewhere in the suburb of Pittsburgh that became permanently dented after Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS.

            All I knew that day was that we lost.

            I’ve been intentionally using a word throughout this little walk down memory lane. That word is “we.” As in the collective. I and the group that would include me. Me and You. You and I. You, me, and that asshole right there. All 19.000 of us at Three Rivers Stadium that day.

            We.

            When I was a kid, I used we (and its derivatives) when talking about my sports teams, especially the Pirates. We lost. We won. We traded that guy. We got that guy. We’re in last place. We’re in first. We’re going to the playoffs. We lost the playoffs. We lost the playoffs again. We lost the playoffs yet again. We suck.

            You get the idea.

            It seems funny to me now. We. I never use that term when talking about sports teams that I watch as an adult. I know a lot of fans still do. But it started to seem odd to me to speak that way. Like how was I part of a we? I didn’t play for the Pirates. Jim Leyland didn’t call me in from the bullpen or put me in to pinch hit. No one called me on team photo day. It wasn’t a matter of circumstance that I was sitting in the stands instead of the dugout. I was a fan. I’d paid money for the privilege.

            There was no we.

I don’t remember when that change from the assumed collective happened. Maybe I stopped saying we when sports became less important in my life. Post-1992, when the Pirates had broken my heart that final time in the 1992 NCLS. I was done with them. Done collecting cards. There were girls and books, movies and music. Other we’s to explore.

I was happy to see the Pirates become a they.

We became them. Estranged. I couldn’t watch 1993 Pirates baseball after three consecutive playoff loses. In fact, I didn’t really watch the Pirates again until 1997 and that fluke almost-playoff year with a losing record. When my NL East had become an NL Central, and I was supposed to suddenly start hating the Astros and the Reds.

(quick aside…why are the goddamned Brewers in the National League and the goddamned Astros in the American League…MLB make things right by God and put them back where they belong)

It was easy for the Pirates to become a they in 1997.

It’s better for US that they stay a they in my life.

As for Mike Schmidt?

I collect his cards now. 

Same with guys like Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry. 

It brings me back a lot good memories to collect those guys, along with players like Andy Van Slyke (who panned out in case you didn’t know), Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla. It’s fun to collect those players. Look at their cards from throughout their careers. 

With Schmidt it’s a history lesson because he played a lot of his career before I was watching the game. With the others, it’s reliving history. Thinking about old games that you went to. Those rivalries. Gooden calling the Pirates “little leaguers.” Fans at Three Rivers chanting Daaaaryllll, Daaaarylll, to try and rattle Staw whenever he came to bat. A time when those teams meant everything to me. Those games a catalog of my life.

Back when we were really a we.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

            *Mike Schmidt went on to collect 48 more home runs, bringing his career total to 548, before abruptly retiring on May 29, 1989 after a slow start. He was elected by fans to that year’s all-star game And while Schmidt did not play, he did participate in the game’s opening ceremonies. He is number 16 on the all-time home run list, and has 3 MVP awards to his name. Mike Schmidt was also a 12-time all-star and 10-time Gold Glove winner during his career. He was the World Series MVP in 1980. Mike Schmidt was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1995. You can view his statistics HERE. And you can read a fine article written by the fine folks at SABR about that 500^th home run right HERE.

            If I did it right, here's a YouTube link to the actual 500th Home Run

            *Don Robinson pitched 15 years in the Big Leagues. Ten of them with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was a part of the 1979 Pirates Word Series winning team, and 1989 World Series San Francisco Giants team. Don Robinson is noted for winning 3 silver slugger awards as a pitcher. You can read more about Don “Caveman” Robinson right HERE. Or check out his stats HERE.

 

NEXT FRIDAY: Ugh....Next Friday....I think I'm going to spend my time on here trying to wrap my head around this whole Topps/Fanatics/MLB thing. So....some childhood memories, brand identification influencing those childhood memories, Disney, Star Wars, Marvel, Google, Amazon....and a little bit of mega-conglomerate bashing.