Wilver Dornell Stargell
(March 6, 1940 – April 9, 2001)
He made history in 1979 by winning the MVP award in the NLCS, World Series, and National League. No player has achieved the fete.
“Pops”
He was an American professional baseball left fielder and first baseman who spent all of his 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) (1962–1982) with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Among the most feared power hitters in baseball history, Stargell had the most home runs (296) of any player in the 1970s decade. During his career, he batted .282 with 2,232 hits, 1,194 runs, 423 doubles, 475 home runs, and 1,540 runs batted in, helping his team win six National League (NL) East division titles, two NL pennants, and two World Series championships in 1971 and 1979, both over the Baltimore Orioles. Stargell was a seven-time All-Star and two-time NL home run leader. In 1979, he became the first and currently only player to win the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award, the NL Championship Series MVP Award and the World Series MVP Award in one season. In 1982, the Pirates retired his uniform number 8. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988.
After years of suffering from a kidney disorder, he died of complications related to a stroke in Wilmington, North Carolina, on April 9, 2001. In his later life, Stargell had also suffered from hypertension and heart failure. A segment of Stargell’s bowel was removed more than two years before he died. He had been in the hospital recovering from gallbladder surgery at the time of his death. On April 7, 2001, two days before Stargell died, a larger-than-life statue of him was unveiled at the Pirates’ new stadium, PNC Park, as part of the opening-day ceremonies. As his death occurred on the same day as the official opening of the stadium against the Reds, the statue served as a de facto memorial for Stargell.
HIS LEGACY
The Pirates retired his number 8 on September 6, 1982. In 1999, he ranked 81st on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players,and was also nominated as a finalist for the MLB All-Century Team. He threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Stargell also threw out the ceremonial last pitch at Three Rivers Stadium before the team’s move after the 2000 season.
After Stargell died, Joe Morgan said, “When I played, there were 600 baseball players, and 599 of them loved Willie Stargell. He’s the only guy I could have said that about. He never made anybody look bad and he never said anything bad about anybody.”
The Willie Stargell Foundation was established to promote research and treatment for kidney disease. Champion Enterprises sponsors a Willie Stargell Memorial Awards Banquet which raises money for disadvantaged children in Pittsburgh.
Stargell also worked to raise awareness of sickle cell anemia. He formed the Black Athletes Foundation (BAF) shortly after President Richard M. Nixon identified the disease as a “national health problem” in the early 1970s. For a decade, BAF, renamed the Willie Stargell Foundation, raised research money and public awareness about the disease. Starting in 1981, sickle cell awareness and fundraising was gradually being assumed by The Sickle Cell Society Inc. The Willie Stargell Foundation transitioned to raising money for treatment of and research into kidney disease.
Wilver “Willie” Stargell Avenue (formerly Tinker Avenue) is a major thoroughfare in his adolescent home of Alameda, California, connecting to the former Naval Air Station Alameda, and Stargell is honored with a plaque and plaza at its intersection with Fifth Street.