Pittsburgh Pirates ace Bob Friend: What might have been

Sadly, the passing of a Pittsburgh Pirates legend drew very little fanfare recently. He deserved much, much more.

When tireless starter Bob Friend, one of the important faces of the 1960 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates, passed away February 3 at the age of 88, he seems to have gone mercifully, in his sleep. He was at home in O’Hara Township, outside Pittsburgh.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called him a “legend,” and The New York Times referred to him as a “Mainstay of Pirates Team That Stunned Yanks.” For younger fans, his death likely caused confusion, as in: “Wait, was that the golfer – he played baseball too? How old was he when he was on the tour?”

Friend’s son, also Bob, was a professional golfer on the Nationwide and PGA tours.

The pitcher’s claim to fame will likely end up resting on two facts besides his long, honorable tenure with the Pirates. He was the first pitcher to win a league ERA title with a last place team (2.83 in 44 games in 1955 as both a starter and reliever), and he was the winning pitcher in two All-Star games when those games actually mattered as much as any sports contest can – aside from those always exciting Super Bow…oh, wait, never mind.

A quick glance at Friend’s record might suggest “he wasn’t all that much,” however. When the Pirates hurler left baseball, the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax was just completing one of baseball’s most dominant stretches ever as a pitcher (three ERAs below 2.00 and none above 2.54 in five years), and a few years later, the Cardinals’ Bob Gibson would wow the world with an ERA (1.12 in 1968) that caused the MLB mound to be lowered. Friend’s career ERA was a “respectable” 3.58.

The right-hander’s won-lost record (191-218 with the Pirates; 197-230 overall) may seem only impressive in consideration of the fact that his managers left him in games long enough to amass an impressive number of decisions. But the state of the Pittsburgh Pirates when Friend started with them in 1951, at age 20, should be considered. The verbs applied to the Bucs of the early ‘50s were only – properly – stink, stank, stunk, and will stink.