Longtime Pirates fans of a certain age certainly must feel bad with news of the passing of Joe L. Brown on Sunday at the age of 91. If you know your Bucco history, you know that Brown was the GM of two World Series Champion Pirates teams, 1960 and 1971. A true "old school" baseball guy, you wonder how Brown must have viewed how the business of baseball has evolved in the years since his retirement.
Certainly, in the days since Brown left the front office, only two GM's have met with much success, Harding Peterson (a Brown disciple) and , briefly, Syd Thrift. Neal Huntington certainly doesn't appear to be the guy who will make us forget Joe Brown.
And do you remember "The Joe L. Brown Show" every Sunday afternoon on KDKA Radio at 12:15 (30 minutes in season and 15 minutes in the off-season)? Brown would field questions that listeners had sent in the mail that would be read to him by Tom "Ace" Bender. This was in the pre-phone-in era of radio, and it also assured that Bender would only be lobbing softballs for the GM to belt over the fence. Still, for the avid Pirates fan, it was a show you never missed. And the writers of all letters read on the air received "two reserved seat tickets for a future Pirate home game of their choice."
RIP Joe L. Brown.
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