Published Saturday, Jan. 18, 1996 
Mercer County
Hall of Fame
Going, going, gone
Ex-PIRATES HIGHLIGHT 1st BENEFIT AUCTION
The induction of Hall's 1997 class set for tonight
By Ed FarrellHerald Sports Writer
"BASEBALL CAN DO nothing but succeed in spite of what anybody tries to do to it.''
Predictably, former Pittsburgh Pirates manager Chuck Tanner put a positive spin on the current state of Major League Baseball
despite the labor strife of recent years. And his upbeat demeanor seemed to capture the mood of Friday evening's gala gathering for the Mercer County Athletic Hall of Fame's benefit sports memorabilia auction at the Radisson Hotel, Shenango Township.
Tanner was one of several guests to appear at the inaugural affair with a current or previous affiliation with the Bucs. Also in attendance were Steve Blass, Bob Robertson, Elroy Face, Nellie Briles and the voice of the Pirates, Lanny Frattare.
The auction served as a prelude to tonight's Hall of Fame golden anniversary induction ceremony at The Radisson. Members of the Class of '97 include Brian Generalovich, Willie Somerset, Don Jones, Jack Marin, Jeff Persson, John Stevens, Lou Fortuna, Bob ``Posey'' Rhoads,
Bob Robbins and, posthumously, Jerry Woods.
Some excerpts from some of the comments by Buccos past and present:
TANNER:
On Pirates' prospects for '97:``They (the `experts') said, `They're not gonna do much,' but I'll say, `Well, where'd they finish last year? Where'd they finish the year before?' So, they won't finish lower than they've finished the last two years. And their payroll will be a lot less and they're gonna develop ballplayers.
``It's not gonna be easy. You have to have a lot of patience _ I went through it (rebuilding) _ but I managed the Chicago White Sox, I had six kids from Class A, and we finished third in the American League, before expansion. So it can be done. (But) you can't put a time on anything, be cause you never know what the other teams are gonna do: Who's gonna sign the free agents? Some club in your division might load up with four free agents. And I don't care how much you improve, you can't get 'em.
``So it's just a case of, `You want to see a Major League game? Come down to Pittsburgh, and if you don't want to root for the Pirates you get to see some other teams. The Cleveland Indians are gonna be down there this year.
``So, just so there's Major League Baseball, and they're gonna do everything they can to have a team in profitable order when they get in the new stadium.''
``Yes sir! Baseball can survive in Pittsburgh. I really believe it. I think they're capable of drawing 2 million fans a year; they keep the payroll in the proper order, and they have revenue sharing and they have a salary cap, they can make it.''
Regarding fans' unrequited love affair with baseball:
``No matter what the players do, and no matter what the owners do, nobody can ruin the game. Baseball's the greatest game in the world. No matter how much they try to screw it up, they can't do it, 'cause you play it every day, you go to the barber shop everybody knows the score, you go in the bar, you go in the restaurant, at home at night, you say, `What did the Pirates do?, What'd Cleveland do?' It's on your lips seven days a week. It's not once a week.
BLASS:
Forecasting the '97 Bucs:``It's gonna be an interesting spring training because there are more players that are invited to spring training than ever, as you might guess, because there's probably a lot of opportunities, and you can look at it a couple of different ways: as being the beginning of a difficult year, or a year for opportunities. And if I was a young ballplayer, I'd be very excited about going to spring training with the Pirates because of a chance to get a job.
``There's a lot of work to be done. Obviously, you can't paint a real rosy picture, but I think the Pirates might be a little bit better than people think. I choose to think that way, and I'm hoping that's the case. I think one of the real critical areas is how well our scouts did, in terms of assessing the young talent that we got in these trades. I think we got something like 13 young players from the trades we had to make _ that we didn't want to make _ that we had to make. And if (the scouts) did their jobs _ and I'm sure they did _ we might get lucky. If four of those guys make the big leagues, then those scouts have done a terrific job. They can't read the future; you just hope that somebody breaks through. And it might not happen right away, but that's the future of the Pirates, along with a new ballpark.
``So it's gonna be a challenging year. We're not saying that we're gonna set the world on fire but, who knows? There's no laws, there's no rules against having a better year than people think. So I choose to be optimistic.''
On the state of the game:
``Fortunately, the game is good enough to survive both the antics of the players and the antics of the owners. That's the real good news. The game was thoroughly tested in that regard and it came through that _ with damage. There has been a degree of healing, crowds have increased (and) I think that's gonna continue to improve with this labor agreement. I think now people have had the argument taken away from them, `Well, it (a strike) could happen again this year,' or `We haven't really gained much ground from where it was during the strike.' And that was true, but now that argument is gone and the labor problems have been put to rest.
``I thought all along, the true healing could not be completed until that happened, and the labor agreement I think can allow us to completely heal and, again, the game is good enough to do that, but it was thoroughly tested.''
On the human side of baseball:
``It seems like, every season, strike or not, there is a human story. There is that theme, a story, that catches people, and that's been the charm of the game for 100 years.
``(New York Yankees' manager) Joe Torre's a good guy; he's done everything. He's played, he's managed, he's coached, he's been a broadcaster. He's proven himself to be a consistently good guy, so he was easy to root for even though, from a personal standpoint, the Yankees have never been easy to root for. But I'm a fan of Joe Torre's, so I was happy for him. I've never been happy for the Yankees. I never have wanted the Yankees to win. I didn't want them to win this year, unless Torre was involved. I can't stand them. I have no use at all for George Steinbrenner, I think he's made a travesty of his dealings. But I was happy for Torre, (and) there are stories like that each and every year.''
``When you go to spring training it's interesing, because in almost every major league camp, there is a story that catches people's imagination or their fascination and that's great.'' that's a part of the charm of the game because, you have the ground balls, the fly balls, the strikeouts and the home runs, but there are human stories that emerge almost in every organization, and that's a neat part of it.''
BRILES:
On the state of the Bucs for this season and beyond:``Nineteen, ninety-seven will be a year of transition for the Pirates. Anytime you finish last two years in a row, changes are going to be made, and our new owner, Kevin McClatchy, decided in August that the route that we were pursuing was not the right route. He had spent an extra six million dollars to try and improve the club, and it was very obvious we were going to finish last again and lose some money, so he decided that we would, basically _ not start over _ but kind of go back to the drawing board, see what we could do by acquiring a lot of young talent, develop that talent, and in the foreseeable near future put a champion ship ballclub back on the field.
``When we looked at our minor league system, we saw that we had some talent, but we didn't have a depth of quality talent. And so we used, of the stars that we had on the team _ the Jay Bells, the Jeff Kings, the Denny Neagles _ to acquire 17 prospects. And from what I understand inside baseball circles, these prospects are very legitimate major league prospects.
``Granted, some of them are in the lower minor leagues, but some of them are AAA and major league prospects. So, we're looking in the next couple of years or bringing this young talent along, combined with the talent that we already have in our minor league system _ starting at about AA level because all of our AAA talent is in the big leagues _ so projecting that within two to three years, that we will really start to build a championship ballclub.
``The timing of this thing is we're hoping that within three years that this young talent will be in the big leagues, gain some experience and really look at starting to win within the next four years because within the next four years we are confident that we'll get a new stadium.
``As guys come on to our ballclub and produce and play well, there'll probably come a time, like happens with most eams inow in baseball, when they price themselves out of our market, and the key for us and small-market teams to be able to survive now, is you have to have your own minor league talent that is going to feed your major league roster.''