By Rodger Morrow, Editor & Publisher, Beaver County Business
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I never met Bill Mazeroski.
Which is not the sort of confession one usually opens an obituary with, but in my case it explains everything.
Mazeroski—“Maz” to Pittsburgh and eventually to the Republic—played an outside but indelible role in my childhood. In 1960 my father owned Morrow Motors in Beaver Falls, a Ford dealership that understood the eternal American truth: nothing sells a new Fairlane quite like a famous ballplayer leaning against it.
For several years my dad’s new-model introduction days featured the Pirates’ genial relief pitcher Elroy Face. Face could draw a crowd, and crowds were what you wanted if you were unveiling chrome, tailfins, and dashboards that looked capable of launching satellites.
But in 1960, my father was opening a brand-new building near the New Brighton bridge—plate glass everywhere, gleaming floors, the sort of showroom that made a seven-year-old boy believe America would never run out of horsepower. Elroy was already booked. Being a good teammate, he said he’d ask another Pirate.
That other Pirate turned out to be a shy second baseman named Bill Mazeroski.
At the time this was arranged, no one—least of all my father—imagined the Pirates were about to collide in the World Series with what was widely regarded as the toughest team in Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees. The Yankees of Mantle and Maris did not generally lose to plucky National League clubs from river towns.
But on October 13, 1960, in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 at Forbes Field, Mazeroski hit a home run that sailed over the left-field wall and into baseball immortality. It remains the only Game 7 walk-off home run in World Series history—a statistical thunderclap delivered by a man more famous, until then, for turning double plays than for clearing fences.
By the time new-car night arrived in Beaver Falls, the shy second baseman was no longer merely a teammate filling in for Elroy Face. He was the man who had humbled the Yankees and detonated joy across Western Pennsylvania.
Needless to say, the Ford showroom was packed to the gills.
My father’s chief concern was not so much civic pride as structural integrity. He had invested heavily in plate glass. The sort of plate glass that looks magnificent reflecting a Galaxie 500 but less reassuring when pressed upon by several hundred ecstatic Beaver Countians.
He was also worried about the survival of a small, bespectacled seven-year-old named Rodger.
The crowds kept coming. They came in waves, smelling faintly of aftershave, motor oil, and October triumph. They came to see the new Fords, yes—but mostly to see Maz. At some point the situation grew so enthusiastic that the only solution was to sneak the hero out a back door and return him safely to his family.
And so I never got to meet him.
I did, however, secure his autograph on a baseball—a white sphere that became, for me, proof that history had once passed through Beaver Falls and nearly shattered our showroom windows.
Mazeroski would go on to a career that, in quieter ways, matched the drama of that home run. A ten-time All-Star and nine-time Gold Glove winner, he redefined defensive excellence at second base. Teammates and opponents alike spoke of his uncanny footwork, his ballet at the pivot, the way a ground ball seemed magnetically drawn to his glove.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2001—not merely for one swing, but for a lifetime of steadiness. Still, it is that swing we remember. The crack of the bat. The ball arcing into autumn sunlight. The Yankees stunned. Pittsburgh unhinged.
Maz never seemed entirely comfortable with celebrity. He was, by all accounts, modest, even shy—the sort of man who would agree to help a teammate’s friend sell Fords and then find himself the epicenter of a regional stampede.
I never shook his hand. I never heard his voice over the din. But somewhere in a crowded showroom near the New Brighton bridge, Bill Mazeroski stood beneath fluorescent lights while my father worried about glass and I clutched a baseball that would outlast the cars, the building, and eventually even the boy.
Bill Mazeroski and Elroy Face remain my favorite sports heroes.
One saved games. The other ended one forever.
And both, in their way, helped sell a few Fords in Beaver Falls.
