BRADENTON, Fla. -- The morning meetings down here are ordinarily oriented around the future -- what’s ahead that day, that week, that season. The goal of Spring Training is to propel yourself and your team forward.
But when Pirates manager Don Kelly convened his club Saturday morning at LECOM Park, he took some time to look back, to honor the late Bill Mazeroski, whose death at age 89 had first been reported early in the day.
“What an icon,” a still-choked-up Kelly told reporters afterward. “What a guy for the Pirates, the city of Pittsburgh, for Major League Baseball and what he meant overall to a lot of people.”
A moment of silence was held for the man they call “Maz” on Saturday, prior to the Buccos’ spring opener against the Orioles in nearby Sarasota.
You know the home run. Everybody does. Mazeroski is the only player in history to end a World Series Game 7 by going deep, and that blast, which gave the Pirates the 1960 championship over the Yankees, will forever be central to his legacy.
But to people with the Pirates in the present day, Maz was so much more than that single swing. He was a friend to the organization for life.
“Every time he was around, he really cared and really tried to talk to the guys,” said veteran outfielder Bryan Reynolds. “He was fantastic.”
News of Maz’s death hit Neil Walker especially hard.
A Pittsburgh product, the former Pirate second baseman and current Buccos broadcaster, who was on the radio call for the spring opener, first got to know Mazeroski when he was about 9 years old through his father, Tom, a former MLB pitcher. It wasn’t until Walker joined the Pirates organization as an 18-year-old Draft pick that he began to get a deeper sense of what he meant to people.
And it was in Spring Training 2010 that Walker, attempting to make the transition from shortstop to second base, developed a deeper connection to the man who, home run aside, is really in the Hall of Fame because of his terrific defense.
“He was in either his late 60s or early 70s at that time, and he was still pretty impressive,” Walker said. “The hands were still there, the glove was still there, the footwork was still there. The eyes were probably going a little bit, but it was just incredible.”
Walker has memories of coming off the field at Pirate City and finding Maz and fellow Pirates legend Kent Tekulve sitting in the locker room in their underwear, smoking cigars.
“You’d smell those guys before you’d see them,” Walker joked.
Mazeroski implored Walker to use a smaller glove than he was accustomed to at second base. Maz tried to teach him how to seamlessly scoop the ball into the 11 1/2-inch model and transfer it to the hand.
Try as he might, Walker could never get that glove to work for him. The ball kept popping out.
“Get out of the way, kid,” Mazeroski would say before demonstrating how, even in his advanced years, he could still make the play.
Walker smiled at the memory.
“His other thing was his footwork around the bag,” Walker said. “And so his biggest thing was, when a throw was coming from second or third, if you got to the bag in time, he wanted you moving before the ball got to you.”
Before instant replay, this neighborhood play was not a problem. You could have your foot off the bag and still get the out.
But when instant replay arrived and Walker began to have outs at second overturned, he jokingly cursed Maz for ever teaching him this move.
“This damn game has changed,” Maz would say.
The game changes, but some things stay the same. It remains the dream of every young player to have a World Series on the line and come through in the clutch, the way Maz famously did in 1960.
“He got to live the ultimate ultimate,” Reynolds said.
When Pirates reliever Isaac Mattson attended the University of Pittsburgh, he would routinely pass the spot in Wesley W. Posvar Hall where the home-plate location from Forbes Field -- the plate Maz crossed after his definitive dinger -- is preserved.
“It was always in the back of my mind,” said Mattson, “while walking to and from class.”
Maz was on the minds of many Saturday. Especially in Pirates camp, where he is remembered more for the man he was than the moment he made.
“When you talk about the accolades he had and the biggest home run, a 10-time All-Star and eight-time Gold Glove [winner], you would never know that meeting and talking to him,” Kelly said. “He was the most humble person. He was all about the team and really embodied what we’re trying to do this year.”