After a day off the Pirates and Phillies finished their two game opening series at Three Rivers Stadium with a night game. The pitching match-up two left handers – Luke Walker for the Pirates and Woodie Fryman for the Phillies. It was a pitchers duel- a double off the bat of Pirate slugger Willie Stargell with 2 outs in the bottom of the 6th inning brought in Manny Sanguillen and Bob Robertson- and those two runs was it- the Pirates winning 2-0. Luke Walker went all the way for the Pirates striking out 4, giving up 4 hits and a walk and of course no runs. Woodie Fryman pitched well but that one mistake to Stargell did him in- he went 7 innings giving up 5 hits 2 walks and 5 strike outs.
For the Thursday night game only 12,289 showed up at Three Rivers Stadium- the game was a quick one- 1 hour 47 minutes. I will bet there isn’t a game that goes by that quickly the entire 2021 season. The Pirates are off to a good start sweeping the series against Philadelphia and at 2-0 in first place.
The stars of the game -Luke Walker with his complete game shutout- and Willie Stargell doubling in both Pirate runs.
The Phllies pitcher Woodie Fryman- a former Pirate who would pitch a total of 18 seasons in the big leagues. The story Pirate announcer Bob ‘The Gunner’ Prince would tell about Fryman was- he owned a farm in Kentucky and the Fryman family lived off of the profits of the farm- and Woodie just banked his baseball salary. Another story on Fryman which is very odd and unlikely- he didn’t sign to play professional baseball until the age of 25- and made his debut in the majors at the age of 26 with the Pirates. He would pitch until he was 43. [below is Fryman as a Pirate]
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT197104080.shtml
This was a great idea Hans…Woody Fryman… not signing until 25 and in the bigs by 26…that would never happen again.
Not a chance- when they found out his age that would be the end of it.
I don’t get that either. There have been late blomers like Hoyt Wilhelm.
Phil Niekro didn’t really establish himself until he was 27-28. Wilhelm as you mentioned. Age is but a number- those two guys ended up playing forever..
You just never know when a guy will blossom.
Speaking of Niekro…I wish there were more knuckle ball pitchers around…I thought RA Dickey was going to last longer. I guess teams don’t like taking a chance on them because of being inconsistent.
The Pirates signed Steven Wright ex of the Red Sox– the way the Pirates rotation is going right now maybe they will bring him up. I read where last season the only knuckleballs thrown were by position players who were doing mop up work…. yes today would a team hold on to a Sandy Koufax as long as the Dodgers did before he finally clicked? No patience today.
I hope he gets to pitch. The first knuckleballer I remember was Charlie Hough and it was fun to watch the batters chase the ball.
No patience at all… just like with quarterbacks.
As you remember the Pirates had a knuckleballer who after great early success- struggled and they didn’t have patience- Tim Wakefield then went to Boston and pitched it seems forever and had a lot of success. A great innings eater.
That is right… I forgot about Wakefield. He was really important to those Boston teams. He had pretty good control also.
I loved the 60 Pirates.