Bill Mazeroski, the Hall of Fame second baseman who won eight Gold Glove awards for his consistent work on the field and captured the hearts of countless Pittsburgh Pirates fans for his historic game-winning home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, has died at age 89.
Pirates president Bob Nutting said “Maz was one of a kind, a true Pirates legend… His name will always be linked to the greatest home run in baseball history and the 1960 World Series championship, but I will remember him most for the person he was: humble, kind and proud to be a Pirate.”
Mazeroski died Friday, the Pirates reported. The cause of death was not disclosed.
“Defensive magician”
Elected to the Veterans Committee in 2001, he was not, by some measures, a superstar. Mazeroski had the lowest batting average, on-base percentage and total stolen bases among all second basemen in Cooperstown. He batted just .260 in his career, with 138 home runs and 27 stolen bases in 17 years, and had a .299 on-base percentage. He never batted .300, never approached 100 runs batted in or 100 runs scored, and only once finished in the top 10 for Most Valuable Player.
His best qualities were both tangible and beyond statistics. His Hall of Fame plaque praises him as a “defensive wizard” with “tireless determination” and a “quiet work ethic.” A ten-time All-Star, he turned a major league record 1,706 double plays, earning the nickname “No Hands” for how quickly he caught ground balls and threw them. He led the National League nine times in assists to a second baseman and was cited by statistician Bill James as the greatest defensive player in history at his position — by a large margin.
“I think defense belongs in the Hall of Fame,” Mazeroski said defensively during his Hall of Fame induction speech.
“The defense deserves as much credit as the pitching and I’m proud to come in as a defensive player.”
A home run for the ages
But the defining moment of his career came at the pinch hitter, when Mazeroski, a square-jawed, tobacco-chewing son of a West Virginia coal miner, lived the dream of so many thinking children.
For those of us who cherish underdogs, once in a blue moon, something wonderful happens.
RIP Bill Mazeroski
— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history)
The Pirates had not reached the World Series since 1927, when they were defeated by the New York Yankees, and again faced the Yankees in 1960. While New York was led by Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, Pittsburgh had few prominent names other than a young Roberto Clemente.
They depended on hitters like shortstop Dick Groat and infielder Bob Skinner, and starting pitchers Vernon Law and Bob Friend. Mazeroski, who turned 24 that September, finished the season with a .273 average and usually batted eighth.
The series told one story in the race column and another in wins and losses. The Yankees outscored the Pirates 55-27, and 38-3 in the three games they won. Mazeroski’s New York counterpart, Bobby Richardson, drove in a record 12 runs batted in and was named series MVP — even though he was on the losing team. Whitey Ford shut out the Pirates twice, en route to a then-record 33 consecutive 2-3 World Series clean sheets for the Yankees ace.
The Pirates’ first three wins weren’t all that spectacular, but they were wins — and Mazeroski helped. He hit a 2-run homer in the fourth inning against Jim Coates of the Yankees in Game 1, a 6-4 Pirates win, and a 2-run double in the second inning against Art Ditmar in Game 5, a 5-2 Pittsburgh win. In Game 7, he saved his big hit until last.
Some 36,000 fans at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, and many more tuned in on radio and television, grieved during one of the fall classic’s wildest and most thrilling conclusions.
The lead changed several times as Pittsburgh scored the first four points of the game, only to fall behind when the Yankees fought back in the middle innings and took a 7–4 lead in the top of the eighth inning. Pittsburgh retook the lead with five runs in the bottom of the eighth inning, aided in part by an apparent double-play hit that took a bad bounce and hit the throat of Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek. But the Yankees responded immediately and tied the score at 9-9 in the top of the ninth inning.
The bottom of the ninth inning was revived, not always by choice, by both teams and generations of fans. New York’s pitcher was Ralph Terry, a right-hander who manager Casey Stengel had benched during the previous inning and would later acknowledge had a tired arm. Right-handed hitter Mazeroski, who had hit into a double play in his previous appearance, batted first.
Terry started with a fastball, considered high for a ball. After a brief conversation with catcher Johnny Blanchard, who reminded him to keep his pitches low, he threw what Mazeroski would call a slider that didn’t slide. Mazeroski caught it low and hit to left, the ball rising higher and higher as it cleared the tall, ivy-covered brick wall, with Yankees left fielder Yogi Berra circling under it, only to turn away in defeat.
The whole city seemed to explode, as if everyone had batted with him, as if he was every underdog who yearned to beat the hated Yankees. Mazeroski sprinted around the bases, smiling and waving his cap, joined by fans from the stands who had invaded the field and followed him to home plate, where his teammates hugged him.
“I was just trying to get on base,” he told The New York Times in 1985. “Nothing fancy, just looking for a fastball until he got a strike on me. I thought the ball would hit the wall, and I wanted to get to third base if the ball ricocheted away from Berra.”
“But when I got past first base and was running to second, I saw the umpire making circles above his head and I knew it was over.”
ESPN called it the biggest home run in . It was the first time a World Series ended with a home run, leading to lasting waves of celebration and despair. Pirates fans memorized the date, Saturday, October 13, 1960, and the local time of Mazeroski’s hit, 3:36 p.m. Forbes Field was demolished in the 1970s, but a decade later fans began gathering every October 13 at the park’s only remnant, the center field wall, and listened to the original broadcast.
Meanwhile, Mantle would cry during the flight back in 1960, insisting that the better team had lost. Ford would remain angry for years at Stengel — fired five days after the Series — for using him in Games 3 and 6 and making him unavailable to start a third time. Singer Bing Crosby, a co-owner of the Pirates, was so worried about bringing bad luck to his team that he listened to the game with friends across the Atlantic Ocean in Paris.
“We were in this beautiful apartment, listening on shortwave, and when it got close to the end, Bing opened a bottle of whiskey and was banging it against the fireplace,” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, told the Times in 2010. “When Mazeroski hit the home run, he hit it hard; the whiskey flew into the fireplace and started a conflagration.”
A team player
Mazeroski was a Pirate throughout his time in the major leagues and was a team man off the field. His wife, Milene Nicholson, was an office worker he met through Pittsburgh coach Danny Murtaugh. They married in 1958, had two children, and remained together until her death in 2024.
William Stanley Mazeroski was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, during the Great Depression, grew up in eastern Ohio, and lived for a time in a one-room house without electricity or indoor plumbing
His father, Louis Mazeroski, hoped to be a baseball player and encouraged his son’s love of the sport, even training with him by having Bill hit tennis balls thrown against a brick wall.
Although he excelled in basketball and football, he preferred baseball and was good enough to be drafted by the Pirates at age 17 in 1954. Mazeroski was a shortstop on a team with several prospects at that position, and had switched to second base in his rookie year, 1956. Even as a part-time player late in his career, he was a leader and constant presence on the 1971 team that featured Clemente and Willie Stargell and defeated Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.
After his final season in 1972, Mazeroski briefly coached the Pirates and Seattle Mariners and was an infield instructor for Pittsburgh during spring training. In 1987, the Pirates retired his uniform number, 9.
The 50th anniversary of his Game 7 heroics was marked in 2010 with the unveiling — on Bill Mazeroski Way — of a 14-foot, 2,000-pound statue of one of Pittsburgh’s greatest everyman, running the bases, on top of the world.
