As a kid growing up in rural western Pennsylvania there was always stuff to do to stay busy.\u00c2\u00a0 The range of options was pretty expansive with everything from lounging under a tree to spending hours in the sun harvesting crops, but once the sun started to go down everything was put aside to catch the latest Pirates game on the radio.<\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not talking about today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stumble through life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6these were the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Battlin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Bucs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that morphed into the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lumber Company\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and seemed to win the Eastern Division title every year.\u00c2\u00a0 The Mets within the Division and the Reds within the National League were the two most hated rivals.<\/p>\n
As the years have passed, that era of baseball has become a distant memory.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been how many years <\/em>since the Pirates have had a winning team?\u00c2\u00a0 Back then we thought it was our birthright for the Pirates to be in the hunt for the NL crown every year.<\/p>\n This week the architect of that juggernaut passed away.\u00c2\u00a0 Joe L Brown was the man who built the 1960 and 1971 World Series champs.\u00c2\u00a0 He also laid the foundation for the 1979 Series winners.<\/p>\n He was always Joe L because his dad was famous actor\/comedian Joe E Brown.\u00c2\u00a0 Ironically, I stumbled upon a Joe E Brown movie the other day on one of the classic movie channels and while laughing at his antics I also wondered about the Joe Brown I knew.\u00c2\u00a0 Today in the news, word of his passing.<\/p>\n As a kid growing up in the 70\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, I aspired to be the Pirates play-by-play guy.\u00c2\u00a0 In the 80\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s I became a bona fide member of the press and Brown was called back to Pittsburgh to clean up the mess that was the Pirates in the early to mid-80\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.\u00c2\u00a0 The Pirates then were much like the Pirates now\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the Galbreaths didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the money to compete for big name players and Pete Peterson tied his wagon to some players who were either at the end of their career with not much to offer or players who decided they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to play for their paycheck. \u00c2\u00a0Of course there was also the cocaine scandal that rocked all of baseball but seemed to be centered in Three Rivers Stadium.<\/p>\n Joe was easy to talk to and he always seemed to have time to talk.\u00c2\u00a0 Even for young guys in the press who were still wet behind the ears, he was willing to give up his time.\u00c2\u00a0 I asked him why he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d spend as much time with a young reporter like me as he would with Hall of Fame writers like Charlie Feeney and Dick Young.\u00c2\u00a0 He replied, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just as important as them and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let them tell you otherwise.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00c2\u00a0There was no pecking order for Joe.<\/p>\n Brown was a respected baseball man pulled from retirement in 1985 to clean up a mess and make the team saleable.\u00c2\u00a0 He was able to jettison some of the aging and lethargic players for promising talent.\u00c2\u00a0 The new ownership group hired Syd Thrift to relieve Brown of his caretaker role.<\/p>\n Thrift finished the job Brown started by building the last winning baseball teams to play in Pirates uniforms.\u00c2\u00a0 Brown\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s touch from his hiring in 1955 until his final departure in the late 80\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s involved winning baseball that was something to behold.\u00c2\u00a0 He always signed the right players and made the right trades.\u00c2\u00a0 The Yankees had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Murderer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Row\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and in the 70\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sports Illustrated<\/em> dubbed the Pirates line-up \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Four Murders In A Row\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in an article about Clemente, Stargell, Oliver, and Sanguillen.<\/p>\n Savvy moves on an off the field was how he built the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dynasty\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll call it that.\u00c2\u00a0 The Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 strength was their farm system and their ability to cull the fields of Latin America.\u00c2\u00a0 Even in the early days of free agency, Brown kept the Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ship sailing full steam ahead.<\/p>\n While Brown\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assembled teams were keeping us enthralled with the game of baseball, it was his club\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s announcing team that kept us in touch.\u00c2\u00a0 Bob Prince and Nellie King were the voices of the Bucs.\u00c2\u00a0 They shared the booth for radio broadcasts and alternated every three innings when there were both TV and radio broadcasts.<\/p>\n While the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gunner\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was the star of tandem with decades of stories and hundreds of catch phrases, King was the former Pirates player (1952-57) who used his dedication as a player to perfect the craft of broadcasting.\u00c2\u00a0 King was the quiet every man to Prince\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s outlandish showman.\u00c2\u00a0 King would simply call a home run\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Prince would scream \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You can kiss it goodbye!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n King was a technician.\u00c2\u00a0 He worked hard to master his new trade.\u00c2\u00a0 He joined the Pirates broadcast crew in 1967 and just as he was hitting his stride as an announcer he was caught in the crossfire between Prince and management of KDKA radio; the duo was fired following the 1975 season.\u00c2\u00a0 The question was asked then and again recently with his passing, if Prince was the problem why fire King too? \u00c2\u00a0There was never an answer.<\/p>\n While Pirates fans were aghast that they would no longer be listening to Prince or King, King simply moved on.\u00c2\u00a0 He was doing radio work around Pittsburgh in the off-season, including color analyst for Duquesne University basketball, and soon became the Duquesne Sports Information Director and Golf coach.<\/p>\n King was genuine; he had a concern for everyone on press row but he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just concerned about their needs during the game; he would take time to get to know them away from the game.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ask about families, jobs, interests\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6you felt a part of his family.<\/p>\n He later returned to the Pirates Press Box as an official scorer.\u00c2\u00a0 While players would call the press box after a game to ask many of the scorers to reconsider an error or hit call, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s calls were ever questioned by the players.\u00c2\u00a0 He had been on the field for many Major League games unlike the other official scorers in the rotation the Pirates used and the players respected his tenure.<\/p>\n Brown and King were ties to an era that can only be remembered longingly.\u00c2\u00a0 King passed away at the age of 82.\u00c2\u00a0 Brown was 92. \u00c2\u00a0Both were men who made the world a nicer place and the world isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as nice a place without them.\u00c2\u00a0 Both will live in Pirates lore as much for their contributions as men as their accomplishments in the game.<\/p>\n Tim is a life-long Pirates fan who aspired to be the next Bob Prince. Of course, the Gunner was replaced before Tim was out of high school and Lanny Frattare got the job but that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop him from making his way into the press box. Following college, Tim began covering the Pirates, as well as the other pro and college teams in Pittsburgh, for WBZZ-FM and WMBA-AM.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a kid growing up in rural western Pennsylvania there was always stuff to do to stay busy.\u00c2\u00a0 The range of options was pretty expansive with everything from lounging under a tree to spending hours in the sun harvesting crops, but once the sun started to go down everything was put aside to catch the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":716,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10018,10015,5900,10017,10009,10011,10007,10006,10013,4458,10014,10004,1303,10016,10010,10005,10008,10012,8214,2447],"class_list":["post-7473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-antics","tag-birthright","tag-bucs","tag-comedian","tag-distant-memory","tag-famous-actor","tag-fide-member","tag-hated-rivals","tag-joe-brown","tag-juggernaut","tag-l-brown","tag-life-pirates","tag-lumber-company","tag-paycheck","tag-pete-peterson","tag-pirates-game","tag-series-winners","tag-western-pennsylvania","tag-winning-team","tag-world-series-champs"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}