Baseball Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski, known for walk-off home run in 1960 World Series, dies at 89

Bill Mazeroski, the Hall of Fame second baseman who won eight Gold Glove awards for his steady work in the field and the hearts of countless Pittsburgh Pirates fans for his historic walk-off home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, has died at the age of 89.

Pirates owner Bob Nutting said “Maz was one of a kind, a true Pirates legend. ... His name will always be tied to the biggest home run in baseball history and the 1960 World Series championship, but I will remember him most for the person he was: humble, gracious and proud to be a Pirate.”

Mazeroski died Friday in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, the Pirates said. No cause of death was given.

Elected to the Hall by the Veterans Committee in 2001, he was, by some measures, no superstar. Mazeroski had the lowest batting average, on-base percentage and stolen base total of any second baseman in Cooperstown. He hit just .260 lifetime, with 138 homers and 27 stolen bases in 17 years, and had an on-base percentage of .299. He never batted .300, never approached 100 runs batted or 100 runs scored and only once finished in the top 10 for Most Valuable Player.

His best qualities were both tangible and beyond the box score. His Hall of Fame plaque praises him as a “defensive wizard” with “hard-nosed hustle” and a “quiet work ethic.” A 10-time All-Star, he turned a major league record 1,706 double plays, earning the nickname “No Hands” for how quickly he fielded grounders and relayed them. He led the National League nine times in assists for second basemen and has been cited by statistician Bill James as the game’s greatest defensive player at his position — by far.

“I think defense belongs in the Hall of Fame,” Mazeroski said, defensively, during his Hall of Fame induction speech. “Defense deserves as much credit as pitching and I’m proud to be going in as a defensive player.”

But Mazeroski’s signature moment took place in the batter’s box, as the square-jawed, tobacco-chewing second baseman, a coal miner’s son from West Virginia, lived out the dream of so many kids who thought of playing professional ball.

The Pirates had not reached the World Series since 1927, when they were swept 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 beyond a young Roberto Clemente. They relied on hitters ranging from shortstop Dick Groat to outfielder Bob Skinner, and the 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 runs 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 counterpart on New York, Bobby Richardson, drove in a record 12 runs and was named the series’ MVP — even though he was on the losing team. Whitey Ford shut out the Pirates twice, on his way to a then-record 33 2/3 straight scoreless World Series innings for the Yankees ace.

The Pirates’ first three wins weren’t nearly so spectacular, but they were wins — and Mazeroski helped. He hit a 2-run homer in the fourth inning off the Yankees’ Jim Coates in Game 1, a 6-4 Pirate victory, and a 2-run double in the second inning off Art Ditmar in Game 5, a 5-2 Pittsburgh win. In Game 7, he saved his big hit for the end.

Some 36,000 fans at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, and many more tuning in on radio and television, agonized through one of the Fall Classic’s wildest and most emotional conclusions. The lead changed back and forth as Pittsburgh scored the game’s first four runs, only to fall behind as the Yankees rallied in the middle innings and went ahead 7-4 in the top of the eighth. Pittsburgh retook the lead with five runs in the bottom of the eighth, helped in part by a seeming double-play grounder that took a bad hop and struck Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat. But the Yankees came right back and tied the score at 9 in the top of the ninth.

The bottom of the ninth has been relived, not always by choice, by the two teams and by generations of fans. The New York pitcher was Ralph Terry, a right hander whom manager Casey Stengel had brought in during the previous inning and would later acknowledge that he had a tired arm. The right-handed hitting Mazeroski, who had grounded into a double play in his previous appearance, was up first.

Terry started with a fastball, called high for a ball. After conferring briefly with catcher Johnny Blanchard, who reminded him to keep his pitches down, he threw what Mazeroski would call a slider that didn’t slide. Mazeroski got under it and belted it to left, the ball rising and rising as it cleared the high, ivy-covered brick wall, with Yankees left fielder Yogi Berra circling under it, then turning away in defeat. The whole city seemed to erupt, as if all had swung the bat with him, as if he were every underdog who longed to beat the hated Yankees. Mazeroski dashed around the bases, grinning and waving his cap, joined by celebrants from the stands who had rushed onto the field and followed him to home plate, where his teammates embraced him.

“I was just looking 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 it would be off the wall, and I wanted to make third if the ball ricocheted away from Berra. But when I got around first and was digging for second, I saw the umpire waving circles above his head and I knew it was over.”

It was the first time a World Series had ended on a homer, leading to enduring waves of celebration and despair. Pirates followers memorized the date, Thursday, Oct. 13, 1960, and the local time of Mazeroski’s hit, 3:36 p.m. Forbes Field was torn down in the 1970s, but a decade later fans began gathering every Oct. 13 at the park’s lone remnant, the center field wall, and listened to the original broadcast.

Meanwhile, Mantle would sob on the plane ride home in 1960, insisting the better team had lost. Ford would for years remain angry 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. The late singer Bing Crosby, a former co-owner of the Pirates, was so afraid he’d jinx 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 Bing opened a bottle of Scotch and was tapping it against the mantel,” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, told the Times in 2010. “When Mazeroski hit the home run, he tapped it hard; the Scotch flew into the fireplace and started a conflagration.”

Mazeroski was a Pirate for his entire time in the majors and was a team man off the field. His wife, Milene Nicholson, was a front office employee whom he met through Pittsburgh manager Danny Murtaugh. They were married in 1958, had two sons 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, had hoped himself to be a ballplayer and encouraged his son’s love for sports, even practicing with him by having his son field tennis balls thrown against a brick wall.

Although a star in basketball and football, he favored baseball and was good enough to be drafted by the Pirates at age 17 in 1954. Mazeroski was a shortstop for a team with numerous prospects at that position, and had switched to second by his rookie year, 1956. Even as a part-time player at the end of his career, he was a leader and steady presence on the 1971 team that featured Clemente and Willie Stargell and defeated the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

After his final season, 1972, Mazeroski coached briefly for the Pirates and the Seattle Mariners and was an infield instructor for Pittsburgh during spring training. In 1987, the Pirates retired his uniform, No. 9. The 50th anniversary of his Game 7 heroics was marked in 2010 by the unveiling — on Bill Mazeroski Way — of a 14-foot, 2,000-pound statue of one of Pittsburgh’s greats, rounding the bases, on top of the world.

This story has been corrected to show that Mazeroski’s home run came on a Thursday, not a Saturday.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

FILE - Former Pittsburgh Pirates player Bill Mazeroski holds onto his plaque during the 2001 National Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies Sunday, Aug. 5, 2001 in Cooperstown, N.Y. (AP Photo/John Dunn, File)

FILE - Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame second baseman Bill Mazeroski makes a victory lap around PNC Park in Pittsburgh during a ceremony celebrating his induction into the hall. (AP Photo/Gene J.Puskar, File)

FILE - Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Bill Mazeroski is pictured in 1967. (AP Photo/File

FILE - Baseball fans rush onto the field toward Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski as he comes home after hitting a ninth inning home run to win Game 7 of baseball's World Series agains the New York Yankees in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Oct. 13, 1960. (AP Photo/Harry Harris, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 13, 1960 file photo, jubilant Pittsburgh Pirates fans rush onto the field to congratulate second baseman Bill Mazeroski as he rounds third base after hitting a ninth inning home run to win Game 7 of baseball's World Series against the New York Yankees in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Oct. 13, 1960. (AP Photo/Harry Harris, File)

FILE - Retired Pittsburgh Pirates player Bill Mazeroski reacts to fans befoe a spring training baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Red Sox Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020, in Bradenton, Fla. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

FILE - Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Hall of Fame second baseman Bill Mazeroski prepares to throw out a ceremonial first pitch before a baseball game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees in Pittsburgh, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

TESERO, Italy (AP) — Outside the Olympic cross-country stadium in this Dolomite mountain town, Norwegian flags have been draped over the railings like bunting on a national holiday.

Fans from the Scandinavian country have set up camp nearby and kept a live tally of medals won by their athletes at the Milan Cortina Games. After every victory, a gold sticker is pressed onto the board.

There have been plenty to add: Norway is now unequaled when it comes to winter gold.

A day after Johannes Dale-Skjevdal won the 15-kilometer mass start race to set a new mark, Norway was back at it Saturday, sweeping the podium in the men's 50-kilometer mass start race to extend its Winter Games record with its 18th gold medal. Norway has 40 medals overall, also a Winter Olympics record.

Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, a 29-year-old cross-country skier, was at the front of the 50-kilometer race and now has won six gold medals in Italy to take his career tally to a Winter Games record of 11 in just three Olympics.

It has also helped Norway lead the medal table for days and it should finish atop the standings when the Games wrap up Sunday.

The dominance has raised a familiar question: What makes Norway, a nation of 5.6 million people, such a superpower on the snow at the world’s biggest winter sports event?

Many believe it is a system that has few equals in winter sports.

Katerina Neumannova, a retired Czech Olympic champion, points to Norway’s structure as the foundation of its success. Cross-country skiing is among the country’s most popular sports, with hundreds of clubs and large numbers of kids starting young.

“When you have so many children, so many trainers and so many clubs all around Norway, it’s much easier to find special talent,” Neumannova told The Associated Press.

Norway, she said, has benefited from the absence of the banned Russian team as well as having a concentration of talented team officials supporting athletes, and even the lack of snow in lower latitudes affecting mainland Europe.

And its depth of public participation, she argued, provides a steady supply of elite competitors.

“Other countries usually have some gaps between generations, but the Norwegian team is very stable,” Neumannova said. “When one athlete ends, younger ones are already coming up.”

Klaebo’s race partner on Wednesday was Einar Hedegart, a 24-year-old Olympic rookie who shared gold in an earlier relay event and won bronze in the 10-kilometer interval start.

A lot Norway’s supremacy stems from tradition as the cradle of Nordic skiing. Most medals came from cross-country and biathlon whiles ski jumper Anna Odine Stroem swept both the normal and large hills, and added a silver in the mixed team event. Jens Luraas Oftebro took both Nordic combined titles.

The medals don’t stop there: Norway won in freestyle skiing, Alpine skiing and completed the speedskating set with a gold, two silvers and a bronze.

Finn Dahl, a superfan who did marketing for the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics at home in Norway, attributed his country's success to a way of life that revolves around snow.

Children, he said, often take trips with their families to the mountains, where skiing is just the normal way of getting around.

“It’s a natural way of sort of moving from one cabin to another,” Dahl said. “It’s a spirit, it is inside you.”

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Sturla Holm Laegreid, of Norway, left, and Johan-Olav Botn, of Norway, lead a group during the men's 15-kilometer mass start biathlon race at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Anterselva, Italy, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, approaches the finish line to win the gold medal in the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Johannes Dale-Skjevdal, of Norway, poses with the gold medal for the men's 15-kilometer mass start biathlon race at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Anterselva, Italy, Friday, Feb. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

Silver medalist Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo and bronze medalist Emil Iversen, all three of Norway, pose on the podium of the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)