1960 World Series | Weekly Windup

posted May 6th, 2025 by jake

I believe that everyone has an interesting story, and I love reading about people. People in history, music, Hollywood, writers, inventors, but I also love the randomness of finding someone I have never heard of before and learning their stories. In baseball, for every Mickey Mantle, there is a Don Demeter. Which is an awesome name if I’m honest. Aside from interesting stories, I also get pulled in by names, especially when I’m researching players for…yep you guessed it, my Immaculate Grids! So, imagine the level of my interest meter when I saw the name Smoky Burgess. Then I saw this picture and I was hooked. He did not look like a prototypical baseball All Star.

Like many of the players with cool names, Smoky was not his given name. Forrest “Smoky” Burgess was born in 1927 in North Carolina. His father was a semi-professional player, and Smoky followed in his father’s footsteps. Smoky was a solid left-handed hitting catcher (he threw righty), and played well in high school. He was noticed by scouts and in 1943 the St. Louis Cardinals tried to sign him at the age of 16, but he was considered too young and had to wait until a year later before he was grabbed by the Chicago Cubs.

1944 was a great year for Smoky. After signing with the Cubs, he bought himself a shiny new Mercury and would meet the woman of his dreams, Margaret, who would eventually become his wife.

At 17, he had a great season for the Lockport Cubs, hitting .325 in 1944. He would only play 12 games in 1945 before joining the Army. He would remain enlisted through the rest of the 1945 season and almost all of 1946. Smoky would return with a bit of extra weight and a serious injury to his throwing arm, the result of a jeep accident while in the Army in Germany.

Upon his return, Smoky would continue his hard-hitting ways, though he had to be moved from catcher to outfield due to the injury. He would win the batting title in 1947 for the Fayetteville Cubs, batting .387 with a 1.008 OPS including 11 home runs and 28 doubles. In 1948 it was more of the same for the Nashville Volunteers as he would once again win the batting title, this time hitting .386 was an OPS of 1.082 and 22 home runs, 102 RBIs and 38 doubles. He was promptly promoted. He was also moved back to catcher as his arm began to improve.

Smoky was 22 years old when he made his major league debut on April 19, 1949, for the Chicago Cubs. He would only play in 46 games and didn’t play well. He was sent back to the minors where he would stay for all of 1950. After hitting .325 for the Springfield Cubs he found himself back in Wrigley for the 1951 season.

It wasn’t a great start for Smoky as he hit only .251 in 94 games with 2 home runs and .632 OPS. After the season, he was traded to Cincinnati, where he played exactly 0 games before being traded again, this time to the Philadelphia Phillies.

With the Phillies, Smoky started to blossom. His aggressive approach at the plate lead to his first (1954) of 9 All Star selections and he routinely hit for average. His All Star season was his best to date. He hit .368 with 127 hits and only 11 strikeouts with an OBP of .432. Unfortunately, he only had 392 plate appearances, disqualifying him for the 1954 batting title.

In 1955 after only 7 games, he was traded to the Cincinnati Redlegs (as they were called from ’53 to ‘58). He was once again an All Star, hitting .306 in 421 at bats, with 20 home runs. On July 29^th he went 4-6 with 3 home runs and 9 RBI’s helping the Redlegs beat the Pirates. His best game in the majors! In 1956, he was the catcher for a 10-inning no-hitter against the Milwaukee Braves. Three pitchers combined to hold the Braves hitless through 10 innings, but the Redlegs lost in the 11^th inning.

He was a good teammate in the locker room and had a solid reputation off the field as well. He was known to be a good family man, attended church regularly and avoided vices like tobacco and alcohol. If there was one weakness, it was probably his defense.

He struggled defensively since his Army injury. His defensive contribution was rated -96 by Total Baseball, he was an easy catcher to steal against and “he routinely ranked among the league leaders in passed balls, stolen bases allowed, and errors by a catcher.” Sturgill, Andy. “Sweet ’60: The 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates” (SABR, 2013. pg 45)

Still, he was known to be a real pain to batters at the plate. According to Bill James, “Some catchers like to chatter at the hitters to see if they can mess them up while they’re trying to hit. Smoky was the world’s champion. He used to drive Richie Ashburn nuts. He’d say, ‘Get ready, Rich; it’s a fastball.’ Ashburn would pop up or something, so Burgess would say ‘You didn’t do too well on the fastball, Richie; let’s try a curve.’ Of course, Ashburn never could believe him and couldn’t ignore him. One time he asked the umpire, ‘Isn’t there some rule that will make that guy shut up?'” (The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Free Press Publishing. 13 June 2003. Pg 392)

He would remain with the Redlegs through the 1958 season before being traded to the Pirates where he would become an All Star in his first three seasons with Pittsburgh. In ’59 he hit .297 and once again found himself on the receiving end of a no hitter.

On May 26^th 1959, pitcher Harvey Haddox, who happened to be traded with Smoky from the Redlegs earlier in the year, pitched a perfect game through 13 innings against the Milwaukee Braves. The same team as the last no-hitter Burgess was a part of in 1956. Like that game, this one also ended in a loss. After 13 perfect innings, in which Haddox would retire 36 straight batters, a throwing error by the Pirate’s third baseman landed a player on first. The Braves Eddie Mathews would then hit a sacrifice, moving the runner to second. With his perfect game tanked, Haddix still had a no hitter going, so when “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron came up to bat the obvious move was an intentional walk to face Joe Adcock, who was sitting at 0-4 for the day. Adcock would nail the ball to deep right center for a game winning double. This made Burgess the catcher for two no hitters that both ended in losses in extra innings to the Milwaukee Braves. That’s crazy right!?

1960 was an awesome year for the Pirates and for Smoky. He played solid defense, posting the top fielding percentage among NL catchers. He also hit well, with a .294 average in 337 at-bats, and he was a key contributor to the Pirates World Series run making the All Star game for the 2nd year in a row.

For Smoky, it was his first time in the playoffs, and he went 6-18 for a .333 average and had a key hit in the seventh game of the World Series against the Yankees. The Pirates would eventually win the title on a ninth inning home run in game seven by Bill Mazeroski. This was the only time a World Series was won on a game winning home run in the 9^th inning of game seven and is one of the most iconic World Series wins in history. It was the Pirates first title in 35 years and their third overall. It was also the one and only World Series ring for Smoky Burgess.

Smoky would remain with the Pirates through most of the 1964 season. During ’64, he would play 68 games, but only fielded in 44, the rest of the time pinch hitting. In September of ’64 he was released and picked up on waivers by the Chicago White Sox. He would spend the rest of his career with Chicago and would become one of the premier pinch hitters in baseball. This was prior to the DH position which may have been great for Burgess. Smoky currently ranks fourth all time with 145 pinch hits with 16 pinch home runs.

Smoky would retire at the age of 40 on October 1^st, 1967.

For his career, he was selected to the All-Star game nine times and was the first catcher in baseball history to be selected from three different teams (the Phillies 1954, Redlegs 1955, Pirates in 1959, 1960, 1961, and 1964). Later joined by two other outstanding catchers; Lance Parrish (a personal favorite of mine) and Paul La Duca. He also won that World Series ring in 1960. He had a career batting average of .295 (nice for a catcher/pinch hitter), 126 home runs, 673 RBI’s and a .362 OBP along with 230 doubles.

He would go on to run a car dealership in North Carolina and spend time with his family. Smoky eventually became a scout and minor league batting coach with the Braves, helping players like Dale Murphy hone their skills.

Smoky Burgess passed away at the age of 64 in 1991.

“Everything went well, I have no regrets. I don’t know a thing I would have changed. If I hadn’t played baseball, I would have probably had to work in the cotton mills. That’s real hard work. I’m certainly glad I had baseball.”-Smoky Burgess (Sturgill, Andy pg 50)