In 1979, in his age 39 season, Willie Stargell shared the National League Most Valuable Player Award (he split it with Keith Hernandez), earned the World Series MVP, and his Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series.
On June 18 of that same championship season, Stargell hit a home run into the balcony of Portland, Oregon's Multnomah Athletic Club. This piece of obscure trivia is not a big deal to most people.
Indeed, to someone who did not grow up in Portland from the 1960s through the early 1990s, this feat means nothing.
To baseball-obsessed Portlanders of a certain vintage, this home run—and Stargell himself—means everything.
Stargell's blast—even though it was "only" in batting practice—was and is the stuff of legends. As far Portland baseball fans are concerned, away from the field, "Pops" Stargell might as well have worn a red flannel shirt and hung out with a Blue Ox named Babe.
On this day, Stargell's Pirates were in town to play their AAA affiliate, Portland Beavers, in an exhibition at Portland's Civic Stadium. As was customary, a home run derby was held before the game.
Portland's general manager, David Hersh, handed out $100 bills to any player who went deep, but he made a special offer to Stargell.
"Willie, I'll give you a grand if you knock it up into that balcony."
The Club's balcony was 403 feet from home plate, well past the right field fence, and the seating for the balcony was over 55 feet above the playing surface.
Stargell negotiated with the GM.
"Make it $2,000," said Pops.
Hersh agreed. The BP pitcher then served one up and Pops knocked a mammoth shot into the sky and it landed in the MAC's balcony. His Pirates teammates erupted out of the third base dugout and hugged Stargell.
Awe-struck Portlanders would talk about it nearly every time the MAC and Civic Stadium were mentioned in the same sentence. When Stargell came up in conversation, the topic inevitably changed to "the balcony."
Naturally, the 1979 season culminated in a championship for that "We Are Family" Pirates club.
In 1980, the defending World Champs came back to Portland. This time the Legend of Stargell brought the fans to Goose Hollow in droves—all 26,912 of them—in what has to be a record baseball crowd or a fire marshal's worst nightmare.
Whether Civic Stadium had such a capacity or not, close to 10,000 of those seats probably weren't all that "safe."
There was a similar frenzy when Fernando Valenzuela started his comeback with the California Angels. Fernando pitched against Portland for the Edmonton Trappers. It was the biggest crowd this writer had ever seen at Civic, including the exhibition with a defending World Champion Philadelphia Phillies club that starred Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose. We were in the left field bleachers for both games.
One day a sportswriter asked Stargell, "Hey, Willie, what is the secret to your success?"
"It's very simple," Pops said. "I listen to the umpire right before the game starts."
"What do you mean? What does the umpire tell you?"
"Don't you hear what he says right before the game starts?" asked Stargell.
"I guess, but I don't really know," said the writer.
"He says, Play Ball!"
"Okay… So?"
"I play ball," said Willie. "I don't work ball."
That’s passion.
Your work is your play. Your play is your work.
You don’t have to go work, you get to go play.
Make yourself passionate about your work and your play.
Love what you do.
Become the greatest.
If you want help figuring out how to do it, we're here to help.
As always,
Brian
P.S. —
A dozen or so years after Stargell, Minnesota Twins farmhand Bernardo Brito served a similar role in the mythology of Civic Stadium, except he was righthanded and took dead aim at The Oregonian building across the street and behind the left field bleachers … though Brito hit these seeds during games. Brito was a real-life Pedro Cerrano.
More real-life mythology: In 1995, former All-American and All-Pro safety Lawyer Milloy was an outfielder for the Washington Huskies in the springtime and, using a black and yellow Easton, he creamed a ball to dead center field off a Portland State Vikings pitcher. It was the longest ball this writer ever saw hit in the Stadium. Unfortunately, there were only about 50 to 100 other fans in the stadium to see this Herculean effort. Even better, Milloy wore high-top Nike Shark football shoes while doing it. Incredible.
