Bob Veale obit

Birmingham’s Bob Veale, All-Star pitcher with Pittsburgh Pirates in 1960s, has died at 89

 

He was not on the list.

Bob Veale, the towering, hard-throwing left-hander from Birmingham who was an All-Star pitcher with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960s, has died. He was 89.

Veale’s death was confirmed to AL.com by Gerald Watkins, executive director of the Friends of Rickwood Field and a longtime friend of Veale’s. Watkins said Veale — who continued to make his post-baseball home in Birmingham — died suddenly over the weekend.

The Birmingham Black Barons player-manager Piper Davis made him the team's batboy and let him pitch batting practice regularly.

Veale was a two-time All-Star and World Series champion during a 13-year MLB career spent with the Pirates and Boston Red Sox, but his roots in the sport went back to the heyday of Black baseball in his hometown. Born Oct. 28, 1935, as one of 13 children in his family, he was a batboy and concession worker for the Birmingham Black Barons in the 1940s and even pitched batting practice for the team on occasion as a youngster.

“I used to pitch batting practice for the white Barons and come back and do the same for the Black Barons,” Veale told author John Klima for his 2009 book Willie’s Boys, the story of Willie Mays and the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons championship team. “When the game started, I went to the concession stands and did the things I normally did.”

Blessed with a blazing fastball on his 6-foot-6 frame, Veale played for various industrial league and sandlot teams around Birmingham before attending Benedictine College in Kansas on an athletic scholarship. Veale played baseball and basketball in college, and for a time appeared ticketed to join the famed Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League.

However, the Major Leagues had almost fully integrated by then, and Veale signed with the Pirates prior to the 1958 season. He spent five seasons in the minor leagues — a time highlighted by a 14-strikeout, 9-walk no-hitter for the Wilson Tobs of the Class B Carolina League in 1959.

After two seasons with the Triple-A Columbus Jets, Veale made the Pirates out of spring training in 1962. He was sent back down to Columbus after mostly good 45 innings, but set an International League record with 22 strikeouts in a game against Buffalo that August.

Veale made the big club for good in 1963, and after one season as a valuable member of the Pirates’ bullpen — he posted a 1.04 ERA with 68 strikeouts in 77.2 innings that year — he joined the starting rotation full-time in 1964. Veale won 18 games and led the league in strikeouts that season, and was an all-star in both 1965 and 1966 (Veale also led the NL in walks four times from 1964-68).

Veale was noted as one of the hardest-throwers of his era, with his prime in the National League coinciding with that of Hall-of-Famers Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals and Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Pirates teammate Willie Stargell said after one 1966 Veale start that “I could see the blue flame rising from his fastball way out in left field,” while Cardinals star Lou Brock once remarked that Veale’s fastball was often even more overpowering than Koufax’s.

Veale struck out at least 200 batters four times in six years from 1964-70, twice struck out 16 in a game, posted a 2.05 ERA in 1968 and won at least 10 games for seven straight seasons. He was beset by elbow problems beginning in 1968 and moved to the bullpen full-time in 1971, but won a World Series ring that season when the Pirates beat Baltimore in seven games (Veale made just one appearance in the Series, allowing a run in two-thirds of an inning in a 3-2 loss in Game 6).

That September, Veale was part of baseball history when he pitched in relief in a game in which Pittsburgh started an entirely African-American or Afro-Latino lineup, a first for MLB. Veale relieved starter Dock Ellis (who was also Black) in the third inning of a game in which the Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies 10-7 at Three Rivers Stadium.

Veale’s contract was purchased by Boston toward the end of the 1972 season, and he finished his career with two more seasons as a reliever for the Red Sox. In 397 big-league games (255 starts) spread over 13 seasons, Veale posted a 120-95 record with a 3.05 ERA and 1,703 strikeouts in 1,926 innings.

Veale married his high school sweetheart, Eredean Sanders of Graysville, in 1973. He told a newspaper reporter that year that he’d waited on marriage until he had helped all 12 of his siblings attend college.

“You’ve got to have a real fine, tolerant wife — one who understands the problems of baseball,” Veale told the Boston Globe in 1973. “If you’re not fortunate enough to get the right one, she can pull you down. But, thank God, I’ve got the right one.”

Veale worked as a scout for the Atlanta Braves for a time in the 1970s, and later spent several seasons as a scout and minor-league coach with the New York Yankees’ organization. In his late 50s, he worked two days a week as a groundskeeper at Rickwood Field, where he’d begun his baseball life some 40 years earlier.

On September 22, 1964, Veale struck out 15 Milwaukee Braves to set the Pirates team record for most strikeouts in a nine-inning game, breaking the previous record of 12 set by Babe Adams in 1909. He led the National League with 250 strikeouts in 1964; he had been tied with Bob Gibson with 245 entering the final day of the season. He ended the season with a career-high record of 18–12 and a 2.74 earned run average.

The 1966 Pirates team which, included future Baseball Hall of Fame members Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazeroski and Willie Stargell as well as the National League batting champion Matty Alou, fought the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants in a tight pennant race and were in first place on September 10, before they faltered to finish the season in third place for a second consecutive year. He also played for the 1958 San Jose Pirates/Las Vegas Wranglers, Charleston Charlies and Pawtucket Red Sox.