Clint Hurdle likes to quote and read as much as he can about John Wooden, the basketball coach who lived four months short of his 100th birthday and led UCLA to 10 national championships in 12 years.
But who knew Wooden and Hurdle almost ended up on the same list of former Pittsburgh Pirates managers?
That revelation came from award-winning hockey play-by-play broadcaster Doc Emrick, who isn’t shy about revealing his love for the Pirates.
Emrick told the story to veteran sports columnist Phil Mushnick, who put it in print in the Sunday New York Post.
Emrick supported his assertion with newspaper clippings from the mid-1960s, when the Pirates were seeking a replacement for Danny Murtaugh, who was ill. Murtaugh had led the Pirates to the 1960 World Series title and was their skipper during the 1971 championship season.
Pirates general manager Joe L. Brown, the son of comedian and baseball fan Joe E. Brown, was in California, having dinner with Wooden in 1964 when he offered him the job. Wooden had just won his first national championship at UCLA.
Wooden told Brown that baseball was his first love, but he doubted the players would take him seriously.
“I don’t know who’d be run out of town first, you or me,” Wooden was quoted as saying.
Brown eventually hired Harry “The Hat” Walker.
“Wooden kept a newspaper clipping in his wallet as proof of that offer,” Emrick told Mushnick.
Mushnick wrote that former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Joe Torre said Wooden told him the same story.
As it turned out, Murtaugh replaced Walker midway through 1967. He retired for a second time after that season, but he was named Pirates manager on two other occasions in 1970 and 1973, replacing Larry Shepherd and Bill Virdon.
