Pittsburgh Pirate Bob Robertson owned the 1971 postseason
It’s been a minute since the Pittsburgh Pirates were a consistently good team. I’ve always had a ‘thing’ for the Pirates and Reds having written about their amazing 1970’s rivalry. Maybe I became enamored with the Bucs because one of the first times I watched them play in person I saw right-hander Bob Moose throw a no-hitter vs. my Mets on Sept. 20, 1969. Art Shamsky grounded second to first to end the game. It was all over in 2 hours and 2 minutes. Bob Moose!
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Robertson did not play that day as Al Oliver was the first baseman on the team that featured so many great players like Clemente, future HOFers Bill Mazeroski and Willie Stargell, not to mention Matty Alou, Manny Sanguillen, and Richie Hebner.
So when a fellow Substack writer Justin Alston posed the question ‘Which five teams should be cut if the league went to 25 teams’ and he included the Pirates, I immediately thought about Pittsburgh Pirate’s first baseman Bob Robertson. Yeah, I know.
Robertson today is 78 years old, and for most fans a distant memory. But in the 1971 playoffs and World Series he was at his best and was named co-World Series MVP with HOFer Roberto Clemente. Had there been an NLCS MVP award he would have won that easily, but the NL did not begin to award an NLCS MVP until 1977. The AL in 1980.
The Pirates were a good team in the late 1960’s through the 1970’s. I saw Robertson play in person more than once and he seemed larger than his Baseball-Reference.com listed 6’1” 195 lb. His career numbers over 11 seasons aren’t notable. A 114 OPS+ (14% above average for his career) is nice.
Robertson’s postseason numbers over 59 plate appearances were excellent overall when considering the career postseason 1.016 OPS.
But in 1971 Bob Robertson had a crazy postseason:
In the NLCS four home runs in four games should be legendary. Up there with Carlos Beltran’s performance in 2004 with Houston or Daniel Murphy’s amazing 2015 postseason with the Mets. To add to that, neither Beltran nor Murphy ended up playing a World Series champion those seasons. But Robertson did!
Robertson went 2 for 4 in a 5–4 game one loss to the host San Francisco Giants and had no home runs or extra base hits. Gaylord Perry pitched a complete game for the Giants. It was in game two, a 9–4 Pirate victory to even the series that Robertson announced himself going 4–5 with three home runs and five RBIs. Besides future HOFer Perry, the Giants featured future HOFers Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal along with Bobby Bonds. Talk about your star power in one series!
Back in Pittsburgh, game three featured a gem thrown by Marichal who also tossed a complete game, but it was to no avail as Robertson’s second inning homer gave the Pirates 1–0 lead that held up until the sixth inning when the Giants scored an unearned run to tie up the game. Richie Hebner smacked the go-head homer in the eighth inning of a 2–1 Pirate victory and series lead of two games to one.
All that was left was for the Bucs to wrap it up in game four which they did 9–5 featuring another homer from Richie Hebner in a game that was tied 5–5 after two innings. Willie McCovey had three hits including a home run, but it was Clemente’s sixth inning RBI single that gave Pittsburgh the lead they’d never relinquish, and two batters later Al Oliver delivered the coup de gras, bombing a three-run homer to put the game out of reach. The Pirates were on their way to face the defending champion and powerful Baltimore Orioles in the World Series!
Robertson had a good but not great World Series bashing two more homers, driving in five runs (most on the team), and putting up an OPS of .825. (The average player’s regular season MLB OPS+ is around 725). Roberto Clemente was the hitting star and MVP of the 1971 World Series which was a seven-game thriller in which both teams scored exactly 24 runs. Right hander Steve Blass pitched a complete game striking out eight.
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It would be Bob Robertson’s only World Series championship, but being such an important part of a championship team and playing his best in the biggest moments is something Robertson wears with pride and should!
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com. Mark can be reached on x @almostcoop and almostcooperstown@gmail.com.
