When you speak the speak, you higher stroll the stroll.
Former Pittsburgh Pirates announcer Jim Rooker realized that lesson the laborious manner.
On June 8, 1989, within the last recreation of an eight-game highway journey, the Pirates — winless within the first seven video games — roared to a 10-0 lead within the high of the primary inning towards the Phillies at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Even a group spiraling as severely because the Pirates couldn’t let this get away.
Rooker, a former Pirates pitcher and World Collection hero, speculated on the radio broadcast that one other loss, particularly after being noticed 10 runs, might end in a depressing aircraft journey house.
“If we lose this recreation, I’ll stroll again to Pittsburgh,” Rooker stated on Pittsburgh’s KDKA Radio.
After which one thing occurred.
Philadelphia’s Von Hayes hit a pair of two-run homers. Steve Jeltz, a switch-hitting shortstop who had only one house run in his first six Main League seasons, hit two house runs, one from all sides of the plate. The Phillies scored 5 runs within the backside of the eighth and took the lead.
Ultimate rating: Phillies 15, Pirates 11.
What did that man say he was going to do if the Pirates misplaced this recreation?
Rooker was a preferred broadcaster in Pittsburgh, however throughout his profession as a pitcher with the Pirates (1973-80), he went 82-65. In 1979, with the Pirates trailing the Orioles three video games to 1 within the World Collection, Rooker began Recreation 5. His 5 innings of one-run ball set the tone in a 7-1 Pirates win that started their historic comeback. The “We Are Household” Pirates, led by Willie Stargell, went on to win the championship in seven video games to finish one of many biggest comebacks in World Collection historical past.
That winter, when play-by-play man Lanny Frattare was unavailable to host one of many Pirates’ winter caravan stops, Rooker stepped in, and that was how his broadcasting profession began. Rooker impressed sufficient individuals within the Pirates group that he was provided a job on the radio after his enjoying profession ended.
“It simply type of fell in my lap,” Rooker stated. “I used to be very fortunate.”
His tell-it-like-it-is fashion rapidly endeared Pirates followers, however Rooker was cautious to not be overly vital. Possibly that’s why listeners all perked up when a daring and stunning assertion got here flying out of his mouth. However how many individuals caught a throwaway remark throughout a 3-hour and 20-minute broadcast?
Properly, by 1989 requirements, Rooker had gone viral. Because the Phillies’ comeback started, individuals within the TV and radio crews started spreading the information.
Rooker was nonetheless shaking his head concerning the absurdity of this newest loss and had type of forgotten concerning the first-inning remark when he walked out of the radio sales space and into the Veterans Stadium press lounge. That’s the place legendary Phillies announcer Harry Kalas greeted Rooker.
“Properly, Rook,” Kalas known as out in his Corridor of Fame baritone. “It appears such as you caught your foot in your mouth on this one, huh?”
“All of us received a giant kick out of it,” Rooker stated. “All people within the press room began laughing.”
Nonetheless, nobody was going to take it actually, proper? In any case, it is over 300 miles from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
No person within the Pirates touring social gathering stated something to Rooker. They weren’t within the temper. Properly, nearly no one.
As Rooker walked onto the group aircraft – nobody would deny him a seat in any case – he handed Jim Leyland. Rooker had identified the Pirates supervisor since their days as Detroit Tigers Minor League teammates twenty years earlier.
“Good goin’, Rook,” Leyland remarked as Rooker walked previous.
“It was like I put the black cat on him or one thing like that,” Rooker recalled.
The group landed again in Pittsburgh, and Rooker received house and into mattress round 3 a.m. He was woke up by a cellphone name at 10 a.m. It was Marvin “Goose” Goslin, a chat present host on the Pirates’ flagship radio station. Goslin requested him to go on the air to speak about his remark the evening earlier than.
By now, everybody had heard. Phone switchboards have been lit up on the radio station and on the Pirates’ workplaces, demanding that Rooker preserve his phrase and stroll the stroll.
Had been they critical? It was only a joke, and now it was taking up a lifetime of its personal. However Rooker didn’t run away from his remark. As an alternative, he determined to run – er, stroll – with it.
“I’ll do it underneath one situation,” Rooker stated. “We do it for charity.”
Two months later, Rooker and the Pirates held a press convention to announce “Rook’s Unintentional Stroll,” a 300-plus mile trek mapped out from Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia to Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.
Rooker wasn’t doing this alone. His good good friend Carl Dozzi volunteered to make the journey with him. Whereas they have been scheduled to set out on Oct. 5, just some days after the season ended, they weren’t positive how lengthy it will take to finish the journey.
Rooker and Dozzi skilled with two-to three-mile walks in September. Whereas the prep helped, it didn’t actually put together them for the highway forward. These two males would mainly be strolling a marathon on daily basis for 2 weeks.
“We might stand up and begin out at 8 within the morning, and it will be an 8-to-5 job doing this all day lengthy,” Rooker stated. “We had a podiatrist from Philly who went with us the primary three days and confirmed us the way to soak our ft and put Vaseline on them. We received three totally different shoe sizes as a result of your ft swell a lot from the blisters. It received to be torture.”
In between the torture, they managed to have some enjoyable. Native and nationwide TV crews spotlighted Rooker, however the information unfold even additional than he might have imagined.
“We have been out in Amish nation [Lancaster County, Penn.], and this one man is coming towards us [in a horse and buggy],” Rooker stated. “He sticks his head out as we go by and says, ‘Boo Pirates!’
“I checked out Carl and stated, ‘They don’t have radios or TVs. How does he even know who we’re?’”
Alongside the best way, individuals stopped to speak, make donations, serve meals or simply stroll alongside them for a couple of miles.
“Sooner or later, we have been out in the midst of nowhere. We have been by a nine-hole golf course, and we stopped and performed 9 holes of golf simply to do one thing,” Rooker laughed. “It’s so boring. We needed to give you every kind of issues.
“In one other city, we stopped in, this child was washing home windows on the primary road. We took his squeegee and his pail and informed him to sit down down for some time, and we began washing home windows for him.”
The purpose, although, was nonetheless to boost cash for a trigger. Alongside the route again house, they stopped by the Youngsters’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, for which they raised $81,000.
One other $10,000 was raised for the household of Al Ricciuti, an previous teammate of Rooker’s who was battling A number of Sclerosis and wanted funds for a brand new van outfitted with a carry.
“We went manner again,” Rooker stated. “Me, him and Leyland performed collectively within the Minor Leagues.”
Rooker appeared up alongside the house stretch close to Pittsburgh on Route 30 and noticed Ricciuti and his spouse Audrey on the roadside cheering him on.
“I received slightly emotional after I noticed them,” he stated.
On Oct. 17, 12 days after leaving Philadelphia, Rooker and Dozzi crossed the end line as they walked into Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Rooker was met there by a crowd of household, followers and supporters. He had stored his phrase, protecting about 25 miles per day and elevating almost $100,000 for charitable causes.
“I’d by no means do it once more, nevertheless it was fairly an expertise,” Rooker stated.
Rooker is now 82 years previous and lives in Jacksonville, Fla. He was again in Pittsburgh final summer time for the 1979 world champion Pirates’ reunion, his most cherished reminiscence from a 13-year profession. Typically, when individuals ask him about his one well-known stroll, he likes to remind them he additionally had 103 Main League wins and a World Collection ring.
One reminiscence from the stroll nonetheless comes again to Rooker and startles him when he thinks about it.
It occurred close to Sideling Hill on Route 30, about 120 miles from Pittsburgh. Whereas strolling uphill and towards the site visitors – they all the time walked towards site visitors so they might see the oncoming vehicles and vans – Rooker steered to Dozzi that they transfer off the highway a bit. He had simply noticed a automotive on the point of make a flip of their path.
Moments later, an 18-wheeler appeared from over the hill, veering completely off the highway to keep away from hitting the turning automobile Rooker had spied. The truck motored proper over the trail they’d been strolling and stored proper on going, having simply missed hitting the automotive and the roadside pedestrians. Rooker and Dozzi would have been steamrolled for sure in the event that they hadn’t simply moved off the shoulder a couple of moments earlier.
“What made me try this, I don’t know,” Rooker stated. “Imagine me, if we stayed on our regular path, and we did the entire two weeks like that, he would have gone proper excessive of each of us, and we wouldn’t be right here as we speak.”
Largely, although, Rooker and people round him went on to chortle about the entire journey. In a recreation early the following season, when the Pirates had jumped out to a giant lead, Frattare turned to Rooker within the radio sales space and smiled.
“Bought something to say?” Frattare requested.
“No, not likely,” Rooker replied with fun.
The funniest factor about the entire saga is perhaps this piece of trivia. The beginning pitcher for the Pirates on that notorious June evening after they blew the 10-0 lead that began all this was additionally the man who changed Rooker within the KDKA radio sales space 5 years later.
