Pittsburgh Pirates Continue Long Tradition of Embracing Diversity

With players from Lithuania and Africa making their major league debuts, the Pittsburgh Pirates continued a long tradition of diversity on their roster.

For the second time this week, the Pittsburgh Pirates have made baseball history. On Monday, the team called up right-handed reliever Dovydas Neverauskas from the minor leagues. Neverauskas made history as the first Lithuanian-born player to make the major leagues. Two days later, the Pirates brought up Gift Ngoepe, who is the first African-born player in MLB history. Ironically, it was Dovydos Neverauskas who was sent back down to Triple-A to make room for Ngoepe.

In his brief time with the Pirates, Neverauskas appeared in one game. He pitched two scoreless innings without allowing a baserunner and showed a fastball that averaged 97 mph. Before making his big league debut, Neverauskas pitched 393 innings in eight minor league seasons with a 4.12 ERA and 1.42 WHIP. He was signed as an amateur free agent in the summer of 2009.

Growing up in Lithuania was not the best preparation for playing professional baseball for Neverauskas. Baseball is an afterthought in the country, well behind basketball, soccer, and hockey in popularity. Neverauskas had the support of his father, Virmidas, who is pushing to make baseball more popular in Europe. He started playing baseball when he was six years old, but he often played on rocky soccer fields rather than the baseball diamonds that boys in the U.S. grow up playing on.

After attending MLB European Academy camps in Italy in 2008 and 2009, Neverauskas was signed by the Pirates, making him the first professional player to come out of Lithuania. At the time, the Pirates were looking for baseball talent in places not typically associated with the sport, including Lithuania, India, South Africa, and the Netherlands. The same summer the Pirates signed Neverauskas, they also signed two pitchers from India through the reality TV show “The Million Dollar Arm Hunt.” Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel were former cricket players who each pitched professionally in the Pirates’ minor league system, but have since retired from the sport. Their story is told in the movie “Million Dollar Arm.”

Neverauskas is back in Triple-A but he may return at some point in the season. In his place, the Pirates called up Gift Ngoepe, the first African-born player to make the big leagues. Ngoepe is an infielder who primarily plays shortstop but can also play second base or third base. This is his ninth year in professional baseball and he’s hit .232/.322/.347 in his minor league career, so he isn’t expected to be a great hitter. He is considered to be the team’s top defensive prospect. Despite his modest minor league hitting stats, he singled in his first major league at bat.

The story of Gift Ngoepe is an inspiring one. It was best told by Gary Smith in a Sports Illustrated article in August of 2009, that is a highly recommended read. This is an excerpt from that article and tells the story of Ngoepe at the Pirates spring training facility and his relationship with the team’s clubhouse and equipment manager, Pat Hagert, who is thinking back about his time spent with Ngoepe.

He’d never seen a ballplayer with less sense of entitlement or more joie de vivre, but the clubbie couldn’t violate his bedrock rules: Never ask too many questions. Never get too attached. Sure, Gift would most likely return the next spring and summer to play for Class A Bradenton, but Pat had seen too many good kids sobbing on their dream’s last day, had removed too many nameplates from their lockers and replaced them with new ones 15 minutes later. He’d go as far as he could, slip Gift a zillion bags of sunflower seeds or bubble gum to occupy his hyperactive jaws, help set up his bank account, walk him through the Pirates’ media guide to identify the honchos and Buccos he needed to know, console him after a bad day … and teach him American Baseball Culture 101.

Ngoepe was very excited about making his major league debut, not just for himself but for Neverauskas also. He said, “It shows that you don’t have to be from a big country like the United States to reach your dream of making it to the major leagues. Dovydos is from Europe. I’m from Africa. Baseball is not a popular sport (on either continent), but if you work hard enough and dream a little bit, anything is possible.” You can’t help but root for a guy like Gift Ngoepe.

As the Pirates embrace international diversity with the promotion of players from Lithuania and Africa this week, it’s a good time to remember another history-making game for the Pirates almost 50 years ago. On September 1, 1971, the Pirates were the first major league team to field an all-black lineup. The Pirates at the time had a core group of non-white players—they were baseball’s most heavily integrated team—and had come close to fielding an all-minority lineup four years before. In that game, only the starting pitcher was white.

In the history-making game, the Pirates started African American pitcher Dock Ellis with eight non-white position players. According to an article at SABR.org, Ellis noticed the lineup and said of Pirates manager Danny Martuagh, “I would bet my life he didn’t know what he had done.” Martaugh later acknowledged as much, claiming he simply put the best nine out there that day. For him, it was no big deal. The lineup for the Pirates that day was:

2B Rennie Stennett

CF Gene Clines

RF Roberto Clemente

LF Willie Stargell

C Manny Sanguillen

3B Dave Cash

1B Al Oliver

P Dock Ellis

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The all-black lineup only lasted into the second inning because Ellis was roughed up that day for five runs (three earned) in 1 1/3 innings. The Pirates won the game, 10-7, to hold onto their first place spot in the NL East. They ended up winning the division by seven games, then beat the San Francisco Giants in the playoffs and the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. It was a great accomplishment for the most diverse team in the big leagues. Current Pirates fans can only hope Gift Ngoepe can be part of a winning team this year.