The Feast of Stargell the Hammerer

Our feast-day exercise returns and is yellower than ever.

Life: Wilver Dornell Stargell played 21 seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who won the World Series twice during his career, once in 1971 and also in 1979. Playing mostly as a left fielder and first baseman, Stargell is remembered for his prodigious power. At one time, Stargell held the record for the longest homer in nearly half of the National League parks. He hit 475 lifetime homers despite playing his age-22 through -29 seasons in Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, which allowed home runs at just 68% of the league-average rate over that same time. Stargell was also the driving force of the festive “We Are Family” Pirates and likely gave amazing Christmas gifts, although this last point is unsubstantiated.

Spiritual Exercise: Of Stargell, Dodger starter Don Sutton said, “I never saw anything like it. He doesn’t just hit pitchers, he takes away their dignity.” Question: with regard to dignity, is it a quality that one feels inside, or is it proscribed to us by others? Consider the case of Diogenes the Cynic, who lived like a dog (literally, as cynic is from the Greek kyon, which means “dog”) and yet made happiness the study of his life. Did he have dignity?

A Prayer for Willie Stargell

Willie Stargell!
No less a personage
than American poet
Robert Frost died
as a direct result
of the home run you hit
in 1971 at Philadelphia’s
Veterans Stadium, which
plummeted into the ocean
because the protective shell
didn’t separate
before entering orbit,
somber-faced officials
begrudgingly admitted.

The episode was
so full of pathos
that it spilled
over the sides
of its ice cream cone
and onto the street,
where it mixed with
Jamaican traditions
to create hip-hop music
in the Bronx in 1979.

Hail!