Guest Opinion: Former Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh deserved a trip to the Hall

I had just turned 20 years old when I made my Major League debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1970 after my September call-up from the minor leagues. In my early days, and in my first full rookie season in 1971, I played some and pinch hit quite a lot. And what has stayed with me about our manager, Danny Murtaugh, was that he was extremely adept at putting players in good situations where they were best able to succeed. And his record shows it.

Murtaugh fell short of the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Dec. 5. Speaking as a former major leaguer who played under a variety of managers, I encouraged the committee to elect Murtaugh and enshrine him in Cooperstown.

The year 1971 was really magical. The Pirates were led by the immortal Roberto Clemente, his fellow future-Hall of Famer Willie Stargell, great hitters Al Oliver and Manny Sanguillen, and starting pitchers Dock Ellis and Steve Blass.

On Sept. 1 of that year, Murtaugh would make history by starting nine Black or Latino players for the first time ever in the Major Leagues. He deflected questions about it by saying that he was just putting nine Pirates out there.

Even with a solid team, we had to battle down to the end to win the National League East, and we beat the San Francisco Giants 3-games-to-1 to win the pennant.

That brought us to the World Series, where we faced the Baltimore Orioles, who were overwhelming favorites. The Orioles had four 20-game winning pitchers (Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, and Pat Dobson) and a powerful offense charged by Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, and Boog Powell. One Baltimore sportswriter actually predicted the Orioles would win the best-of-seven series in just three games, which is, of course, mathematically impossible.

After we lost the first two games in Baltimore by a combined total of 10 runs, we limped back to Pittsburgh needing to regroup. Murtaugh called a team meeting and held up the scouting report we had been using for the Orioles. He tore it up and threw it into a trash can.

“We’re not using the scouting report anymore,” Murtaugh said. “Go out there and play like the Pittsburgh Pirates.”

We did, and we beat the Orioles in seven games. Murtaugh beat Orioles manager Earl Weaver, himself a Hall-of-Famer.

That was the first championship for the Pirates since 1960, when Murtaugh was also the skipper.

In that one, the Pirates were also massive underdogs, facing the mighty New York Yankees, who featured superstars Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford.

If you just look at the scoring, it was a massive blowout, as the Yankees outscored the Pirates by a total of 55-to-27. But if you look at games won, it was the Pirates winning in seven games.

It was notable for being the only World Series to end on a home run in the bottom of the 9th of Game 7. Bill Mazeroski hit a leadoff homer in the 9th to make history, and Murtaugh bested Yankees manager Casey Stengel, another Hall-of-Famer.

Murtaugh’s teams won over 90 games five times, finished 1st five times, and saw him accumulate 1,115 career victories, good for a .540 winning percentage. This ranks higher than eleven managers already in the Hall of Fame: Joe Torre (.538), Tony La Russa (.537), Whitey Herzog (.532), Ned Hanlon (.530), Tommy Lasorda (.526), Bill McKechnie (.524), Dick Williams (.520), Stengel (.508), Wilbert Robinson (.500), Bucky Harris (.493), and Connie Mack (.486). He is tied with Leo Durocher.

His two World Series titles are more than nine current Hall of Fame managers and equal to five others.

Those numbers would be even better if Murtaugh had not retired four different times because of health problems, but it speaks to his quality that the Pirates kept asking him to come back. As it was, he managed the club for all or part of 15 seasons, and he ranks second in all-time wins by Pirates managers to Fred Clarke, who won 1,602 games in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Clarke is also in the Hall of Fame.

My family actually has two connections to Murtaugh — my father, Pinky May, was his teammate with the Philadelphia Phillies for several years in the early 1940s. He remembered him as a peppery second baseman with a driving desire to win. That spirit never left.

Milt May played 15 seasons of Major League Baseball for the Pirates, Giants, Detroit Tigers, Houston Astros, and Chicago White Sox.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Former Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh deserved a trip to the Hall