Cooperstown Confidential - A Tribute To Nellie Briles

[Crash Course]

Posting This For Bruce...........

A Tribute To Nellie Briles

I can’t say that I was with friends with former major league pitcher Nelson “Nellie” Briles; I simply didn’t know him that well. But I did get to know him a little bit, through an interview I did with him about the 1971 Pirates and during a Hall of Fame Weekend visit in 2001, when Nellie’s friend, Bill Mazeroski, officially entered the Hall. Based on the few experiences I did have with Nellie, I wish that I would have had more opportunities to talk baseball with him.

Articulate, thoughtful, and knowledgeable, Nellie Briles could talk baseball with anyone. More importantly, he liked to talk about other people in baseball, people that he liked. When I called him up on short notice in 2001 to ask him if we could do a program with him in the Hall of Fame’s Bullpen Theater about Bill Mazeroski, he didn’t hesitate. He was accommodating, gracious, and charming. It was as if Nellie didn’t want to lose the opportunity to honor his friend on the weekend that he was entering Cooperstown.

Nellie died on Sunday, February 13. He was far too young—only 61. In his honor, here are some excerpts from a manuscript on the ’71 Pirates, a project that Nellie happily contributed to. Nellie was an important part of that World Championship team, both on the field and in the clubhouse. Even after his playing days, he continued to do great work—he and people like Sally O’Leary—in running the Pirates’ Alumni Association, the best group of its kind in all of baseball. He will be missed.


On March 19, 1971, the newly acquired Nellie Briles threw five scoreless innings against the Mets. Pitching impressively in the early spring, Briles had taken well to the offseason trade from St. Louis. For the first time since 1968, Briles showed signs of mastering opposing hitters.

Briles’ career had undergone a serious downturn after the 1968 season, when a major change in the rules dictated that pitching mounds be lowered. The dropping of the height of the mound, from 15 inches to 10 inches, had made it more difficult for Briles to throw “over the top” with his key out-pitch, the curveball. As a result, he had pitched poorly in his last two seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals.

So why the turnaround in the spring of ’71? At the time, Briles credited his newfound success to his decision to eliminate his no-windup delivery. “I’ve decided to do it because of the pitching mound,” Briles explained to Bill Christine of the Pittsburgh Press. “I’m not big enough to get a lot of push off the lower mound. It’s my idea to go back to the full windup. I think it’ll give me more momentum.”

In retrospect, Briles downplays the adjustment in his pitching delivery, while crediting a change in his repertoire of pitches as the real key to his improvement in spring training. “It wasn’t so much a change in my delivery,” Briles says. “I threw a good, sinking fastball; I could ride the fastball when I had to, but I think my real out-pitch and real gem was a good overhand curveball. For me, being five-foot, 11-inches, when they lowered the mound, it seemed to affect my curveball. I just couldn’t throw it as hard. I could still get it to break, but the break was bigger [and not as sharp]. In 1970, I was struggling with not being able to throw as many strikes with the breaking ball. The adjustment that I made after the 1970 season—in fact during the ‘70 season—I started working with a slider, and working with Bob Gibson, who had a great slider. Bob was one who never really threw a real, good curveball, and so he discussed with me how he could throw a real good, hard, short slider—a quick slider. [Gibson] would change speeds on his slider to make it break bigger when he was behind in the count. He just started to educate me as to what you could do with the slider, and throw a lot more strikes with it, but still almost give a curveball effect...That’s what I started working with in ‘70, and in ’71. That was the primary change that I made.”

***

Nellie Briles says that one of the prime jokesters on the 1971 Pirates was coach Dave Ricketts, who had been the veteran pitcher’s teammate in St. Louis and had played for the Bucs in 1970 before being dropped from the roster on August 31. “Dave Ricketts was the No. 1 needler on the ballclub,” Briles says of the journeyman catcher-turned-coach, who was actually activated for three weeks in 1971 but did not play in any games. “That was the style we had in St. Louis. When we were winning the championships [with the Cardinals], Dave Ricketts was also there. [In Pittsburgh], we always had this constant needling going, and the only rule we had about needling each other is that we never got personal. That was off limits. We could certainly ridicule—although ridicule might be a strong word—but we could certainly make fun of each other when someone did something stupid, something great, you know, on the field...That kept the club very, very loose.”

The Pirate players’ tendencies to kid each other, without creating hard feelings, exemplified the togetherness of the team and helped establish a foundation for winning. “It was a pretty close team,” remembers Briles. “We all got along pretty well, even though you had some wild personalities, with a Dock Ellis and the Richie Hebners, and the Bob Robertsons and the [Manny] Sanguillens. It was a real diverse group. Even though the personalities were diverse, when that ballclub went on the field, I mean they were there to play baseball, and play hard. I think that’s where we had a lot of respect for one another, because when it came time to play, we were ready to play.”

***

Nellie Briles says the Pirate players were able to use good-natured, ethnic humor, without creating tension, because of the respect they had for one another. Without such respect, kidding and needling would not have been possible. “I wouldn’t overstress that point [about the amount of racial kidding], in my opinion,” Briles says. “But I think the only time that you can have a close ballclub, regardless of the ethnicity, or makeup of the club, is when you have a lot of respect for each other. When I say the No. 1 rule in kidding each other, or needling each other was that you didn’t get personal, and that it wasn’t serious. If you don’t respect each other, then those things do get taken personally, and in a very personal way. And it did not happen. It didn’t happen on that ballclub, it didn’t happen on the St. Louis World Championship ballclub. I would compare both championship teams very much that way.”

Briles says that winning teams like the ‘67 Cardinals and the ‘71 Pirates simply did not allow racial disharmony to infiltrate the clubhouse. “To have a winning team, there’s no room for the racial tensions, there’s no room for the improper attitudes,” Briles says, “because those things will always get in the way. When the going gets tough, when you need to win crucial games, at crucial points in the season, those things can seep in and prevent you from winning.”

[Crash Course]

***

Whatever the final outcome of the World Series, Game Five would represent the final game of the season for the Bucs at Three Rivers Stadium. Pirate players realized they had to win their last home game in order to have a realistic chance of completing a dramatic Series comeback. A loss in Game Five would put the Pirates in the undesirable position of having to win two straight games on the road against a superior Baltimore pitching staff.

For the second straight game, Danny Murtaugh called upon an unlikely starter: 28-year-old right-hander Nellie Briles, who had started only 14 games during the regular season and missed his one scheduled playoff start because of a pulled leg muscle. Briles had posted a solid but unspectacular record of 8-4, with a respectable 3.04 earned run average. Although Briles had fared well as a starter in the second half, he had not pitched in an actual game from September 30 through October 13, a full two-week layoff. Now, Murtaugh was asking him to pitch the most important game of his life.

Although his excitably restless children had difficulty staying quiet in their beds, Briles slept well the night before the fifth game at Three Rivers. Bolstered by a good night’s sleep, Briles opened Game Five by retiring Don Buford, Paul Blair and Boog Powell in order. In the second, Briles handled Frank Robinson and Elrod Hendricks with ease before allowing Brooks Robinson to reach base on a line-drive single. No one realized it at the time, but Robinson would represent the first of only two Oriole batters who would manage to break through against Briles.

In the meantime, the Pirates went to work against Orioles left-hander Dave McNally, who had pitched so brilliantly in Game One of the Series. Bob Robertson started the top half of the second inning by vaulting McNally’s first pitch some 410 feet to center field. The leadoff home run gave the Pirates a 1-0 lead. Manny Sanguillen followed up Robby’s shot with a line-drive single, and later stole second base. Facing the lower part of the Pirates’ lineup, McNally regrouped, striking out both Jose Pagan and Jackie Hernandez. As his counterpart, Nellie Briles, stepped to the plate, McNally appeared on the verge of ending the inning without further damage. He picked up two quick strikes on Briles, but then missed with his next three pitches, filling the count. McNally and catcher Ellie Hendricks decided to throw Briles a breaking ball, specifically a slider. The pitch hung high in the strike zone. Briles swung, smacking the ball on a line into center field. The hard single scored Sanguillen from second base, giving the Pirates a 2-0 lead.

In the third, the Pirates added to their margin when Gene Clines walked, moved to second base on a Roberto Clemente grounder, and advanced to third on an error by Brooks Robinson. Clines came home on a wild pitch, giving the Bucs a three-run lead. In the fifth, the Pirates tallied again, sending McNally to the clubhouse in favor of little-known long reliever Dave Leonhard.

The Pirates had supported Briles with four runs, which would prove to be more than sufficient on this day. The veteran right-hander brilliantly spotted his pitches and exhibited remarkable control, considering his recent lack of work. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Briles came to bat and received a thunderous standing ovation from the fans at Three Rivers Stadium. As he listened to the crowd, Briles cried openly, remembering the difficult times that he had endured in St. Louis over the two previous seasons. “I’ve never done that before, but I couldn’t help it,” Briles told the New York Times in explaining his emotional reaction. “I didn’t know how to take it. All sorts of things flashed through my mind in a matter of seconds. All the people who were good to me, the people who gave me encouragement when I was down, my high school coach and the other coaches I had, my wife, my family, the things they’ve given me. I guess the main thing I thought in those seconds was that it had been two hard years with not much success and this was the culmination of all of it.”

In the top of the ninth, an emotionally drained Briles retired the first two Oriole batters, Mark Belanger and Merv Rettenmund. Briles then staggered, walking Don Buford on four pitches. Since Briles was noted for his control, the sudden fit of wildness prompted a visit from pitching coach Don Osborn, and some warm-up action in the bullpen, where both Dave Giusti and Luke Walker stirred. Briles recovered by throwing two consecutive strikes to Paul Blair before inducing a ground ball to the left side of the infield. Jose Pagan fielded the ball and threw quickly to Dave Cash, who barely avoided the slide of the hard-charging Buford and touched the second base bag. In finishing off his masterpiece, Briles had surrendered only two hits and two walks while extending the Orioles’ run-scoring drought to 17 consecutive innings.

***

After his brilliant pitching performance in Game Five of the World Series, Briles became a full-time starter for the Bucs in 1972, and went 14-11 with an earned run average of 3.08. In 1973, Briles continued to pitch well, leading the club in wins, starts, complete games, and innings pitched. After the season, the Pirates surprisingly traded Briles and infield prospect Fernando Gonzalez to the Kansas City Royals for outfielder-catcher Ed Kirkpatrick, utilityman Kurt Bevacqua, and minor league first baseman Winston Cole.

Briles struggled through two injury-plagued seasons with the Royals before being traded to the Texas Rangers for infielder Dave Nelson. In 1976, Briles finished a surprising 11-9 for the Rangers, in what would prove to be his last productive season. Late in the 1977 season, the Rangers sold him to the Baltimore Orioles, who used him for the stretch run of the American League East playoff drive. After a poor performance in 1978, Baltimore decided against bringing Briles back for the following season, preventing him from taking part in the 1979 World Series rematch between the Orioles and Pirates.

Having honed his skills as a drama student at Chico State College and Santa Clara University, Briles gained off-the-field attention as a well-rounded entertainer. At Chico State, Briles had played the character of Joe Hardy in the college production of “Damn Yankees.” During the offseason, Briles sung regularly in nightclub acts, signed several motion picture contracts, and worked as a television sportscaster. In perhaps his most notable public performance, Briles sang the National Anthem prior to Game Four of the 1973 World Series at Shea Stadium in New York.

After retiring as an active player, Briles joined the Pirates’ television announcing crew as a color commentator before becoming the team’s Director of Corporate Affairs. In 1999, the Pirates named him Vice President of Special Events. Briles also served as president of the Pirates Alumni Association up until the time of his death from a heart attack on February 13, 2005.