Ep. 005 - Al, Manny, and the All-Minority Pirates

Written and Narrated by: Wyatt Schroeder
Sound Design by: JohnPaul Beattie
Produced by: Anna Ready

Act 1

September 1st, 1971 - Al Oliver walked into the Pittsburgh Pirates’ clubhouse at Three Rivers Stadium. Each game is another pilgrimage to the lineup card posted on the wall. The sheet of paper dictates who plays that day and who sits. It wasn’t likely that Oliver’s name was on it today. The Pittsburgh Pirates manager, Danny Murtaugh, liked to sit Oliver when there was a lefty pitching against them. And the Philadelphia Phillies were sending a southpaw to the mound that September day. 

Scanning down the lineup, Oliver likely noticed a few names out of place. Richie Hebner had some viral infection, so he was sitting out. Gene Alley had a sprained knee, so he was out. The lineup card read: 

Rennie Stennett leading off at 2nd

Gene Clines in centerfield

And then the heart of the order led by two future Hall of Famers: Roberto Clemente in right field. Willie Stargell in left.

Manny Sanguillen was in his familiar spot catching

Dave Cash slid over to third base

Al Oliver at first base. There he was. Starting. 

Jackie Hernandez rounded out the infield at shortstop. 

And Doc Ellis, the eccentric and dazzling pitcher was on the mound.

It was the final act of a long season. The Pirates were excelling, sitting comfortably in first place atop the East Division of the National League. Lineups always get a bit of a shakeup in the dog days of August and September, as teams prepare for the playoff sprint. They took the field like the energetic, clean-cut professionals they were known to be. And yet no one on the Pirates took notice of the historic nature of this starting nine. 

The first inning exploded with excitement. Doc Ellis was in the midst of a sensational year. He would win 19 games for the Pirates, including 11 complete games. This was not one of those games. He was knocked around for five runs and was pulled in the second inning. The Pirates wouldn’t go quietly, initiating a slugfest with the Phillies. At the top of the third, another Pirates pitcher, Bob Veale, took the ball and worked to quiet the Phillies’ bats. 

But history doesn’t cast its eyes on this game because of the play on the field. Instead it was the players on the field that became historic. Al Oliver remembered, “It really wasn’t a major thing until around the third or fourth inning, and Dave Cash was sitting next to me and one of us said, ‘You know, we got all brothers out there, man.’ We really had no idea that history was being made.” 

It was. The Pittsburgh Pirates had fielded the first all-minority lineup in the history of major league baseball. A lineup made up of all-Black and Latino players. This was 24 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. 

Was it intentional? Did manager, Danny Murtaugh, intend to break barriers? When asked about his decisions, Murtaugh simply remarked, “When it comes to making out the lineup, I’m colorblind and my athletes know it.”

Al Olivier agrees with his old skipper, saying “He put out the lineup that night that he thought could win the ballgame.To this day, I believe that.”

In 2023, the state of Pennsylvania installed a plaque on PNC Park in Pittsburgh to commemorate the night in 1971 when 5 African-Americans, two Puerto Ricans, two Panamanians, and one Cuban took their positions in Three Rivers Stadium and became a paradigm in the racial integration of sports in America. 

But how was this moment possible? And why was it the Pirates and not some other team? For that, let’s dive into the story of two of those players and the journey that led them into that September lineup. 

Act 2

Al Oliver was nearly cut from the team in 1968. His play in the Pirates’ minor leagues was not living up to its potential and the manager at Triple-A Columbus came close to sending him home. But Oliver had a responsibility that sharpened into grit. 

When he was 11 years old, Oliver’s mother died from a devastating heart attack. His parents had inspired a high ethical standard for Oliver and gifted the hard-earned knowledge of how to endure through adversity. He wasn’t leaving the Pirates quietly; his family back in Portsmouth, Ohio were counting on him.

Oliver turned his 1968 season around, finishing with a .315 average and 74 RBI’s. After four years in the minor leagues, the Pirates were ready to see if this line-drive hitting kid was ready for primetime. On September 14th, 1968, Al Oliver received the call. He was being promoted to the big leagues. He must have been ecstatic; the culmination of honest determination and self-assured desire. 

Unfortunately, that was not the only call Al received that day. He also heard from the hospital. Al Oliver Sr. had passed away, succumbing to the disease that had plagued him for most of that year. Oliver’s father had suffered from inhaling an excessive amount of brick dust; his work had killed him. 

As Oliver described it later, “I parented my pregnant teenage sister, and a younger brother who suffered from anger, depression and unresolved grief at the premature loss of our parents.”

The loss of his parents wasn’t the only adversity that Al was confronting. The minor leagues shuttled Oliver down south and out of the familiar confines of his rust belt upbringing. For the young ballplayer it was his first overt confrontation with a time-honored tradition, American racism. Oliver remembered, “We didn’t go through the things that Jackie Robinson went through or some of the black players right before me, like (Willie) Stargell. But we still heard the catcalls. All we could do was keep hitting. That would silence some of them. In some ballparks it didn’t. It was just part of society at the time.”

Through all of this, Al Oliver was realizing his dream. He was a regular for the Pittsburgh Pirates; he earned his spot and he would never go back to the minors. 

In 1968, Al Oliver played alongside another Pirates prospect at Triple-A Columbus. His energetic play was turning heads. His determination matched Oliver’s and represented a unique blueprint for how the Pirates built a championship team. Meet Manny Sanguillen, the pride of Panama.

Manny Sanguillen nearly quit the team. In 1965, Sanguillen was playing for the Pirates minor league affiliate in the New York-Penn League. He spoke no English, and it was causing friction with his manager. He was earning $350 a month, which was half of what the average American was earning. Like Oliver, he had a responsibility to his family. Manny was one of 13 children and his father, a fisherman, was counting on him to support his family clan. The math wasn’t adding up, so Sanguillen bought a ticket back to Panama. 

The next morning at 6am, hours before his bus departed for the airport, there was a knock at the door. It’s Danny Murtaugh, then a special assistant to the Pirates general manager. Danny assured the young catcher that he saw a spark in Sanguillen’s raw play and wanted to protect him by placing him on the 40-man roster. It was a vote of confidence in a shared, baseball language. A sign of trust. Sanguillen never boards that bus. By 1969, he was the starting catcher for the Pirates, playing for the new manager, Danny Murtaugh.

Manny Sanguillen grew up in Panama. He didn’t take to baseball immediately, preferring to box a few bouts or kick a soccer ball around. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising because there weren’t many people that looked like Manny in the major leagues. Even though the first Latinos entered professional baseball way back in the 1880s, that experiment never fully took hold. By the time that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, there were close to no Latinos in the sport. 

Manny’s life changed with a simple suggestion. “Why don’t you be a catcher for the day?” That was the voice of Herb Raybourne, a native of Panama and professional baseball scout. Herb was a former player and had a keen eye for talent. He would also scout Rennie Stennett, who played on the September 1st Pirates team. And would convince the Yankees to take a chance on a hurler named Mariano Rivera, who became the only person unanimously voted into the Hall of Fame. 

Herb had a hunch about Manny. When Herb saw Manny throw the ball down to second base, his hunch became a fact. The kid had an arm. 

A short time later, Manny was at a try-out with other hand-picked locals. Apparently there was a big wig visiting the island to examine the talent, dusting the dirt for any prize pieces. The assorted athletes stood in line to run the 40-yard dash. Herb put his hand on Manny’s shoulder and nudged him to the back of the line. When Herb yelled the command, Manny sprinted as few big men can do. The scouts nodded when he saw the time on the clock. Damn, he’s fast. 

And then Herb asked Manny to squat down behind the plate. Pitch after pitch tossed to second base like a ballistic missile. On target. The big wig exclaimed, “Wow. We got a player here!”

Herb introduced Manny to the visitor. “Hi, I’m Howie Haak from the Pittsburgh Pirates.”

Manny was offered a contract and a tiny bonus. The Pirates, like all teams then and now, were skeptical to give large money to an unproven name with few miles on his arms. It was a gamble but they believed that with enough shaping Manny could be a contributing member of their budding team. 

Manny was a part of a strategy for the small-market Pittsburgh Pirates. Howie Haak was considered something of a “super-scout” and made a specialty in opening up Latin America for professional baseball. Even though he was barely conversant in Spanish, Haak deserves more than a hat tip for seeing the percentage of Latinos in the game go from 0% in 1947 to 10% in 1964. It’s no accident that he was encouraged by his boss, Branch Rickey. I’m sure you know Rickey; the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager who signed Jackie Robinson and broke the color barrier. Haak worked for Rickey in Brooklyn and stayed by Rickey’s side as he left the Dodgers to join the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

Haak was the one to convince the Pirates to draft a scuffling minor leaguer named Roberto Clemente through the Rule 5 draft.

The Pirates saw Latin America as a way of signing players cheaply, a sly way to compete with the bigger pocketbooks of teams like the Yankees. It was the “moneyball” of the 50s and 60s. When Rickey retired and passed the baton to his acolyte, Joe Brown, the strategy became fever pitch.

By the time that Al Oliver and Manny Sanguillen joined the Pirates, the organization was already one of the most diverse. The Pirates nearly fielded an all-minority lineup in 1967. On June 17th of that year, every position player was Black, Puerto Rican or Dominican. Only the pitcher was white. The history making would have to wait another 4 years.

Al Oliver put the diverse lineup in perspective: “In 1971, we were just kind of coming off the racial tension that was going on. The racism, the fighting, the burning of homes. Pittsburgh was somewhat different. We were fortunate to be brought up with a team that was full of Latin players; you know, we always had 4 or 5 Black or Latin players on these teams.” 

I try to remind myself that the story is not that there were a lot of minority players on these Pirates teams. The pure math misses the point. The Pirates were led by Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell. They were a culture that was loud and proud of its heritage and normalized cultural acceptance. America was struggling to see people of color in leadership positions. And then here was Roberto, circling the bases and urging his teammates on through stark determination. 

It had to be a terrible weight; focusing on a game while white cultural norms police you and your home country expects you to pave a path of opportunity for every young face. Manny Sanguillen told MLB.com about death threats that came his way. “It wasn’t easy,” he said in Spanish.

But they had each other. Even if we, the fans, couldn’t fully understand; they had a teammate on the bench next to them.

Infielder Dave Cash remembered, “We faced a lot of racism and a lot of controversies especially because we had so many minority players. We were a talented group of young players that were fearless. We weren’t going to let any kind of situations like that get in the way of what we had to do. Our business was to win games.”

Manny summed the dichotomy up by saying, “We concentrate on each other. We love each other. You see a burning car, burning stuff, but that’s not going to stop us. We keep going.”

By September of 1971, no one could deny the success of the Pittsburgh Pirates’. They were leading the National League with a 4 and a half game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals. As they took the field on September 1st , they were confident in themselves, in each other; confident that all the foundational pieces were in place for a World Series ring.

The Pirates 25-man roster was 50% people of color. By contrast, their opponent, the Philadelphia Phillies, had only one person of color on their team. 

Three Rivers Stadium would have been a little quiet that night, as the stands were only 25% full. The Pirates faithful that stayed at home missed the early fireworks of the game as both the Pirates and the Phillies bats lit up the sky. 

Al Oliver, always the aggressive line-driving hitting machine, smacked an RBI double that put the Pirates into an early lead.

The Phillies were aggressive and knocked Pirates hurler, Doc Ellis, out of the game in the second inning. The history-making lineup was short-lived, as the Pirates brought in a white pitcher to relieve Doc. 

Down 6-5 in the bottom of the second, Manny Sanguiellen stepped up to the plate. Roberto Clemente, Manny’s leader and dear friend, took a lead off the bag, awaiting the pitch. All of the improbabilities swirled in the air. Here was this son of a Panama fisherman standing in the batter’s box, as a Puerto Rican icon readied himself to sprint the bases. 9 starting players from different countries, backgrounds, creeds, all who had earned their spot on that roster. 

The pitch came. Smack. The ball sailed into the Three Rivers bleachers. Manny hit a home run. The Pirates took the lead and never relinquished it, going on to win 10 to 7.

The Pirates again fielded an all-minority lineup in the third inning when Bob Veale came in to pitch. 

There was something special about that Pirates team in 1971. They won 97 games and stormed into the playoffs. They handled the San Francisco Giants to win their first National League Pennant since 1960. Punching their ticket to the World Series, where they faced off against the fearsome Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles that year boasted 101 wins and a pitching staff replete with 4 pitchers who won 20 games. Impressive as it is intimidating.

The series came down to a thrilling Game 7, where Roberto Clemente hit a 2-run homer. That was all the Pirates needed to cement the victory and to take the World Series trophy back to Pittsburgh. It was a monumental statement to the talent on the field and to the culture in the locker room. 

Al Oliver remembers, “In my travels I’ve heard, the reason the Pirates drew well on the road, we had a lot of personality on our team, we had characters on our team. We had style like no other.” 

The Pirates had proven something with their victory, much deeper than the box score. Adrian Burgos is a professor at University of Illinois who specializes in minority representation in sports. He summed it up this way in an interview:

“There was so much discussion in baseball circles, in the locker rooms, in the front offices -- can a team be predominantly Black, in its player roster but also in culture and in its leadership, and succeed?” said Burgos. “And what the Pirates showed is that, absolutely [it can].”

Act 3

So why haven’t more people heard of this game? It’s getting more column inches each anniversary, but why the historical delay in the storytelling?

To Al Oliver this game is a neglected treasure. “I wish that it would be brought up more, and it should be. It wasn’t as big as Jackie Robinson breaking into the major leagues, but it should be up there as far as baseball history is concerned. I think it’s a day that really should be celebrated.”

The game received very little coverage the next day in major outlets. This was complicated by a worker strike at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Pittsburgh Press. The city’s two major newspapers were silent on the glass shattering event, just as their presses were silent on so many things during the six-month strike. 

The Philadelphia Daily News made casual reference to the Pirates “all-soul lineup.”

Professor Burgos has more perspective for us to chew on: “There was a practice among sportswriters during that era to downplay events that we today see as more significant. . . why would they minimize this? Why would they not give it more attention? I think one of the factors is because it put the lights back on how long it took for more of Major League Baseball to integrate, and how inactive most sportswriters were in speaking about the racial inequality that existed during that time, that there was a color line.”

I believe you’re on to something there, Professor. To admit that something is historic, we have to recognize why it is historic. It would not be historic if white owners and managers had not kept people of color out of the game of baseball since its inception.

The 1971 game has aged and earned its keep in the baseball pantheon. It’s a story of inclusion and representation. And a story of being led by people of color in allowing the culture of baseball to evolve with the diversity of its players.

In 1971, 65% of baseball players were white. 25% were African-American, 10% were Latino. The demographics have shifted since then. Today, 57% of baseball players are white, 8% are Black, 32% are Latino, and 3% are Asian or other races.  

When asked about the greatest game he ever played in, Sanguillen doesn’t hesitate. This is a man who played in and won two World Series. And still he says, “Now that I’ve thought about it, that’s the best game I caught in the Major Leagues. That’s going to be part of history forever.” 

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you at the ballpark.