To Absent Friends - Hal Smith

Hal Smith

1930 - 2020

His 1960 Topps Card

On October 13, 1960, in the bottom of the eighth inning of the seventh game of that year's World Series, Pirates catcher Hal Smith hit a three run home run that put the Pirates ahead of the heavily favored New York Yankees 9-7 and a mere three outs away from securing the Pirates first World Series championship in thirty-five years.  Smith's home run, according to the great Mel Allen, who was broadcasting the Series on NBC, would become the "most significant, important, and most remembered home run in World Series history."  And it was.  For about twenty minutes.

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of Pirates and World Series history gets my reference above, so I won't go into detail here.  If you don't get it, just go to your Google Machine and type in "Bill Mazeroski 1960 World Series."

Hal Smith had what can best be described as a journeyman major league career: ten seasons, five teams (two years with the Pirates), 879 games, a .267 batting average and 25 home runs and 142 RBI.  That Game Seven home run was easily the highlight of that career, and had the Pirates only been able to retire the Yankees without them tying the game in the top of the ninth, perhaps it would be a statue of Smith outside the right field gate at PNC Park today.  Such are the vagaries of life.

Smith was in attendance at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh back in October 2010 when the newly discovered video of the complete 1960 Game Seven was premiered.  After his eighth inning blast, host Bob Costas stopped the video tape and had Smith stand and be acknowledged.  He received a standing ovation from the packed house at the Byham. It took fifty years, but Pittsburgh fans that night acknowledged the man who hit the most forgotten important home run in Pirates history.

It was sad to me that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was only able to devote a single crummy paragraph to Smith's passing in the "roundup" section of its sports pages on Saturday, the day after Smith died at the age of 89.

RIP Hal Smith.

By the way, of the twenty-five players on the World Series roster for the Pirates in 1960, only nine are still with us: Vernon Law, Dick Schofield, Bill Mazeroski, Bill Virdon, Dick Groat, Bob Skinner, Roy Face, Joe Christopher, and Bob Oldis.  Of those, Oldis, 92, is the oldest, and Maz, who will turn 84 in September, is the youngest.

Smith greeted by Clemente and Groat after his 

famous home run in Game Seven