Pittsburgh Pirates All-Time 25-Man Roster
First Baseman
Willie Stargell (with Pirates from 1962-1982)
.282/.360/.529, 2360 G, 9027 PA, 147 OPS+ (with Pirates)
The Willie Stargell I most remember is the team captain known as “Pops” on the 1979 “We R Fam-A-Lee” World Champions. He was the gregarious guy who handed out “Stargell Stars” to his teammates when they made big plays and who was the co-MVP of the National League (with Keith Hernandez). He was exclusively a first baseman by this time, but actually played more games in the outfield than at first base in his career. The Pirates all-time 25-man roster has plenty of outfielders, so Stargell gets the starting spot at first base.
Willie Stargell was born in Oklahoma, but grew up in Alameda, California, just across the bay from Oakland. He attended a racially-mixed high school and was teammates with two other players who made the major leagues, Tommy Harper and Curt Motton. He was signed by the Pirates in 1958 and sent to San Antonio, Texas to play in a Class D league. It was his first experience with nasty racism. This was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. While playing in the south in the minor leagues, Willie Stargell was not allowed to stay in the same hotels or eat at the same restaurants as his white teammates.
Despite this introduction to the dark side of humanity, Stargell maintained a positive, upbeat attitude that he would be known for during his career in baseball. He played four years in the minor leagues before coming up to the big leagues for a 10-game stint at the end of the 1962 season.
Stargell had a breakout season in 1971 when he hit .295/.398/.628, with a league-leading 48 home runs. He was second in the league in RBI, with 125, and finished second in NL MVP voting. The Pirates made the playoffs in 1971 and beat the Giants in the playoffs, but Stargell was terrible in the four game series, going 0 for 14. The Pirates continued to roll in the World Series, which they won in seven games, but Stargell continued to struggle. Hit hit .208 in the series and was overshadowed by teammate Roberto Clemente, who hit .414/.452/.759 and won the MVP Award.
The Pittsburgh Pirates teams during the first 11 years of Willie Stargell’s career were definitely the team of Roberto Clemente. He was the star and the acknowledged leader of the team. When he died tragically after the 1972 season, there was a leadership void and Willie Stargell filled it. He was going into his age 33 season and it would be one of the best of his career.
In 1973, Stargell led the league in doubles, home runs, RBI, and slugging percentage. He was the first player since Hank Greenberg in 1940 to hit 40 doubles and 40 homers in a season. Despite such an impressive season, he finished second in NL MVP voting to Pete Rose.
Willie Stargell was the best home run hitter of the 1970s. He led all of baseball with 296 homers in the decade, four more than Reggie Jackson. He also led all hitters in slugging percentage and wRC+ (154), which is a FanGraphs metric that measures the things a hitter does and puts it on a scale where 100 is average. Stargell’s 154 wRC+ meant he was 54% better than a league average hitter.
Along with the quantity of home runs, Stargell also hit some incredibly long home runs. No player of his era ever hit mammoth shots as often as Stargell. There were 18 balls hit out of Forbes Field in Pittsburgh during its 61 years in existence. Stargell hit seven of them. Only six balls landed in the upper deck at Three Rivers Stadium and four of them were hit by Stargell.
One of his most well-known blasts was a monster home run hit on May 20, 1978 in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. The home run has been estimated at 535 feet. Before there was Olympic Stadium in Montreal, there was Jarry Park. Stargell hit home runs there that landed in the public pool behind the right field scoreboard. He also hit two home runs completely out of Dodger Stadium, which prompted pitcher Don Sutton to say, “I never saw anything like it. He doesn’t just hit pitchers, he takes away their dignity.”
The 1979 season was Stargell’s last great year. He was 39 years old and only played 126 games, but still hit 32 homers and drove in 82 runs. The Pirates won the NL East and faced the Cincinnati Reds in the NLCS. They had lost the NLCS against the Reds in 1972 and 1975, but wasted no time in sweeping them this time around. Stargell hit two home runs in the three games and was named the NLCS MVP.
The 1979 World Series was all about Willie Stargell. The Pirates fell behind in the series three games to one, but Stargell led them back with his big bat. After the Pirates won the series in seven games, Stargell was named MVP of the series for his three home runs and .400 batting average.
Stargell played three more years, but they were in a part time role. He retired after the 1982 season. He had a falling out with the Pirates organization in the late 1980s, but a new ownership group reached out to him in 1997 and mended old wounds. His health was failing by this time due to a number of issues. After suffering a massive stroke in April of 2001, he died on the same day that Pittsburgh played their first game in brand new PNC Park. Fans laid flowers at the base of a statue of Stargell that had been unveiled outside the stadium just days before.