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This Day in Pirates History
April 14th

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5 Fact(s) Found
1908 Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss offers Honus Wagner a contract with a proposed salary of $6,000. The third baseman, who won his second consecutive NL batting crown last season, will eventually sign for $10,000, double his previous pay, to become the first major leaguer to make a five-figure salary.
1925 WGN broadcasts the first fully live regular season baseball game, detailing Grover Alexander and the Cubs' defeat of the Pirates on a chilly Opening Day, 8-2. Quin Ryan is behind the microphone doing play-by-play from a perch on the Wrigley Field roof.
1960 Bill Mazeroski hits the first home run of the season at Forbes Field, going deep in the bottom of the second of the Pirates' 13-0 rout of the Reds in the team's home opener. The Bucs' second baseman will also hit the last round-tripper of the season at the historic Pittsburgh ballpark, ending the season with a dramatic ninth-inning walk-off homer that beats the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series.
1968 Jim Bunning becomes the first pitcher since Cy Young to collect a thousand strikeouts in both leagues when he whiffs eight Dodgers during his first win for the Pirates, a 3-0 complete-game victory in Chavez Ravine. The 37-year-old right-hander, acquired from the Phillies in December, sent 1,406 American League batters back to the bench with a bat in their hands for nine seasons while pitching for the Tigers at the start of his Hall of Fame career.
2001 A total of eleven one-run games (six in AL and five in NL) breaks a 1967 record set on May 30th when there were ten combined one-run contests in the major leagues.


5 Fact(s) Found