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How Two Fans Nearly Destroyed the Pirates · Pittsburgh Sports Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everybody, welcome to the Pittsburgh Sports Memories Podcast, where we always say no to drugs.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your co-host, Tim Hannon, and with me as always is the not addicted to oxy Steve word.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in this episode, uh, we're gonna talk about the Pittsburgh drug trials that took place in the 1980s involving the Pittsburgh Pirates.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the story is really, to me, is really the story of two fans.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Two fans that that really loved their team and really got caught up in something that was way over their heads, and it ends up leading to almost the demise of the entire franchise.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about who these two fans were.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh their names were Dale Schiffman and Kevin Coke.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Dale Schiffman was born in Baldwin.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: He dreams of playing Major League Baseball growing up.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: He actually plays a little bit in the Army.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um his job is that he's a freelance photographer, which means work is sporadic, uh, and that really fits his lifestyle.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: His lifestyle is one where he likes to have fun.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: He likes to go out, have a good time.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's a young adult in the 1970s, which was a time where a lot of young adults like to go out and have a good time.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he's also a very, very avid sports fan.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: He actually is a season ticket holder for all three Pittsburgh teams, the Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So he loves his sports teams.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Kevin Coke is uh a guy that um also grows up in the Pittsburgh area.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: He becomes friends with Shiftman in high school.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: He is also a lover of baseball, and he actually even plays baseball in high school.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And at one point, he's he's actually scouted by a couple of major league teams, but he's never quite good enough to make a career out of it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um but nevertheless, he's just a huge, huge baseball fan.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: He also, like his buddy Dale Schiffman, likes to party.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: In 1979, the Pirates decide they're gonna have a mascot.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Pirates had not had a mascot prior to this, and and this is really in response to the Philly Fanatic.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: That was the Philadelphia Phillies mascot that was introduced the year before.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess that was a that was a big hit.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so the pirates said, well, we can have a mascot too.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and the mascot that the the team decides to have is the pirate parrot, because you know, pirates have parrots sitting on their shoulders, and and so the parrot's gonna be their mascot.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know before 79 that the parrot didn't exist.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know it.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I actually didn't know that until we did this episode either.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was older than that, but that was the year they decided they were gonna have a mascot.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so they decided to hold auditions for the pirate parrot.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is in like the uh winter of 79, right before the season.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Coke had just finished welding school.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: He was actually had just finished welding school, he was gonna get a job as a welder.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And a friend of his says, hey, the pirates are holding auditions at Three River Stadium for a new mascot.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: You should you should totally go try out.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And Coke is like, Really?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't I'm not gonna be a mascot, but but because the auditions are happening at Three River Stadium, and it's because they're all like they're he's such a big Pirates fan, he's like, Yeah, I'll go.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: What the heck?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he figures, you know, I get I'll probably get to see part of the stadium I've never got to see before and meet with people from the Pirates.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that would be just a cool experience.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he actually invites Dale Schiffman to come with him.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and he he watches a couple other people audition and he realizes, man, there's like a hundred people here.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: I have to stick out somehow if in this audition.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when he auditions, he actually brings Schiffman with him.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And Shiffman, again, being a freelance photographer, has a camera with him, and he pretends like he's like the paparazzi following the parrot around.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess that's enough to um to convince the people making the decision that they like this guy, and they actually give Kevin Koch the part of the pirate parrot, which he didn't even really want.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Koch says it really hits him in spring training that year that he's like now part of the team that he grew up loving.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: He he talks about how the owners flew him to Florida on their private jet, and how when he gets there, he finds himself standing in the outfield just having like a casual conversation with Willie Stargil, and it kind of hits him like, oh my gosh, I'm I'm actually like part of the team, even though I'm not a player.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and it seems like kind of a fun, like, oh, who wouldn't want to be the mascot?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it's actually not an easy gig.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we mentioned that the the pirates didn't have a mascot.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, none of the sports teams in Pittsburgh had a mascot at that point because it wasn't considered like Pittsburgh ish to have some dude in a costume dancing around.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So no iceberg or Steely McMeam.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, no.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and that was I mean, you know, that was the era where we were Steel of Town, we wore our hard hats and brought our lunch pals to the game, and we're not gonna have some some dude in a costume.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's just not that's just not blue collar.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't it wasn't you know guaranteed to win people over.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing was that the pirates really give Coke like no guidelines whatsoever.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like okay, what do you want me to go do?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, well, uh figure it out.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like they don't they don't tell him like do this or do that.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: They they basically um he said it was like uh an improv night every night.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and there's no predecessor to learn from.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if if you got that job today, you would at least know, well, this is kind of what the parrot does, and this is what the fans expect.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: But but this is like he's a pioneer, and and he works really hard to perfect a routine to that that they'll entertain everybody on a nightly basis, which can't be easy, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and it's an immediate hit, and and the timing couldn't be better, right?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: That 1979 season, of course, is the We Are Family season.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: The Pirates have this magical run, they go on to win the World Series that year, and uh, and the parrot is part of that.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and because it's so popular, the parrot ends up getting booked for all kinds of events and parties outside of just the game.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: The the pirates actually like book him out to other things, corporations, and things like that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: So Coke is now like part of all this you know nightlife, which he was already part of even before he got that job.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he's around the team so much that he starts making friends with some of the players and actually hanging out with them, like when he's not wearing the parrot costume.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and Coke starts inviting his friend Shiftman down to the stadium as well.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And both of these guys are just totally starstruck, right?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just as just as Steve probably you or I would be, right?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: If we if we were just getting in, well, maybe not the pirates, but if we were getting invited to like a team that, you know, and at the time the pirates were a big deal.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they again world champions that year, and and you're getting invited to the stadium, and Shiffman said like they would let him like shag fly balls in batting practice.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So like Willie Stargle's like hitting fly balls into the outfield, and you're just out there with a glove catching them.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, could you imagine?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was the 70s, so they were a little bit looser back then.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and and Shiffman said that you know, he even he could, you know, he was a young guy, he was a bachelor, he could take a date to Three River Stadium, and all the users would know him, and he could, you know, um sit near the field and and like wave to one of the players and they'd be like, Hey Dale, how's it going?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the whoever whatever girl he took to the game that night would be like, Oh my gosh, you know the players.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um so so how would he go to a game not in his parrot like that?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, this is shift this is Shiftman's.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this shipman, not not.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say, like, it'd be pretty tough if he's getting dates in the parrot outfit.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm impressed.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you just sit here, I have to work for a few innings.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, no, no, I mean, and and well, and Coke, too, I'm sure, again, that went over pretty well with the ladies too.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, you know, I'm the pirate parrot.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no way, really?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so in the early 80s, I mean, both these guys, Shiffman and Coke, are on top of the world.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're young guys, they're hanging out with major league ball players, and they're just they're having fun all the time.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that they're doing during this time is experimenting with a drug called cocaine.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and cocaine was a drug, it really kind of taken off in the 70s, but it really goes to a whole new level with the introduction of crack cocaine in 1982.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, dealers had figured out that they could make more money uh than they could with just the powder, and they could also get people addicted faster, which meant they had to buy more and in faster quantities.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And cocaine quickly becomes kind of like the new fad.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a quote from um from an author named Jay McInerney.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: He says, in the space of a few few years, cocaine went from being something that was snorted off toilet stalls and grimy clubs to something that was being done on tabletops and chic restaurants by investment bankers.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that that was kind of the 80s with cocaine.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in in at the time, uh cocaine, and this is again the early 80s, uh, a lot of people still see it as a very benign party drug.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's a large number of people that believe that the drug doesn't really have any side effects, and there's people that believe it's not addictive.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's just hey, it's just having fun, it's not gonna really hurt you.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Even the DEA doesn't consider it a major concern, at least not yet.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yet.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Being the key word.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Pablo hasn't gotten in charge of this stuff yet.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So so let's talk about the Pirates during this era, during the early 80s.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they they're coming off a decade of dominance in the 1970s.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: They had won their division six times, they won the World Series twice.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think Steve, you mentioned this in an earlier episode.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Had it not been for the big red machine in Cincinnati, I mean the Pirates probably would have won as many, if not more, championships that decade than the Steelers did.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Would you agree?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Reds were kind of they were kind of the Houston Oilers to the Pittsburgh Steelers there.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: They were probably the second best team in baseball, but they just happened to pay play in the same league as the Reds.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: The Reds were in the West of it.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because they only had two divisions back there, back then, the East and the West, so the Reds were in the West.
• 10:58
  unknown: Right.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: They would always they lost to the Reds like four or five times, I think, in the 70s.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So right.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that was that was uh yeah, bad bad situation.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I guess they just would have lost them in the World Series, that would have been more embarrassing, but I don't know.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was it was just like you said, there's times in sports where you can be the second best team, but if there's a really dominant team, then it's just unfortunate.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um that being said, though, I mean they did win two World Series, so you can't it wasn't like a complete swing and a big thing.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, they weren't the Chargers, they were more like maybe the Raiders or the I don't know.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they just they were they were a good team, but they just could never quite match the you know the excellence of the Reds of the Because I mean wouldn't the Reds be the team of the 70s?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I guess the Dodgers and the The Dodgers won a couple World Series in the 70s, didn't they?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the Oakland Athletics were pretty good.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the A's were yeah, they won like two or three in a row.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: That was like early 70s, though.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: So so anyway, they I mean they have a let's let's just say they have a pretty good decade, right?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like they were they were one of the best teams.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Six out of the decades.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: They were definitely like very competitive every year, very in the hunt for the pennant, you know.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot better than they were, you know, the last ten years.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and winning the division six out of ten years, like you said, back then there's only two divisions.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Winning your division was really hard back then, and they did it six out of the ten years.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but but in the early eighties, they they're they're very much like the Steelers in the early 80s.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're no longer championship caliber, but they're still competitive, and they're putting together winning seasons, but by that point the Phillies and Cardinals have kind of overtook overtaken them in their division.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and again, very similar to the Steelers.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: They have this mix of aging guys that they had one with in the 70s, like Stargell, and then these younger guys they were trying to rebuild with.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, they were trying to make that transition into staying competitive by drafting and by signing these younger players.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and I want to talk about really three players during that era.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: The first guy I want to talk about is right fielder Dave Parker, the Cobra.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: He had been with the Pirates since 1973, and by the early 80s, he was a bona fide superstar.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: He wins the National League batting title in 78 and 79.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's the National League's MVP in 1978.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's very brash and outspoken kind of player.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: He is the first pro athlete to ever sign a million-dollar contract, which is really hard to believe that the Pittsburgh Pirates, out of all the four major sports, were the team that gave the first million-dollar a year contract.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot has changed since the 70s.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's unbelievable.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and Steinbrenner owned the Yankees by then, didn't he?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Weird.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, hard to believe.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a book that comes out in 1981 called The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And Parker's actually listed as one of the 100 greatest ball players of all time in that book.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of tells you how how good and how highly regarded Dave Parker was at that time.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that same year, 1981, Parker starts to slump, and it's a slump that'll last several years.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he hits 258 that year.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, he's the former batting champion, so 258 is really, really low.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he keeps getting injured.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: He was typically a healthy player most of his career.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: He keeps getting injured, and he's also gaining weight a lot.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: And people are like, what, what, why?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on with Parker?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe he's just in a slump or something.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody knows what's going on behind the scenes, is that he's heavily using cocaine.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: The second player I want to talk about from that era is a pitcher named Rod Scurry.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: He was a very young pitcher, and he had this really wicked curveball.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: People were actually comparing him to Sandy Koufax.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he he is a rookie in 1980.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: He appears in a handful of games as a reliever, but he's ready to make his first start on April 19th, 1981 versus the Houston Astros.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: And in that game, his very first Major League start, he pitches lights out.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: He shuts out Houston for the win.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And Joe Negro uh was the opposing starter for the Astros.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and he even says after the game how impressed he is with Scurry, which is high praise coming from Joe Negro because he played like 63 years in the major leagues.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he had seen Cy Young pitch and he saw like Clayton Kershaw.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he'd just been around for a long time.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: The Pittsburgh Press does a story about the game the next day, and the headline of the story is quote, Scurry can't sleep on major success.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And because newspapers love pun headlines, that was that was a reference to the fact that in the post-game interview, Scurry had remarked that he got no sleep not only the night before the game, but the two nights leading up to the game.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the reporter's like, Wow, you you didn't sleep at all?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Why not?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And Scurry's like, oh, I I was just so excited, I just couldn't sleep.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Harvey Haddock, who was the Pirates' pitching coach, and of course, had played for the Pirates in the 50s, he was the guy that threw that um 12-inning perfect game.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: He he was the Pirates' pitching coach at the time, and he even steps in and he's like, Oh, that's no big deal.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Back in my day, uh, we rode on the trains all night and we wouldn't get any sleep before a game either.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Little does Haddock's or the reporter realize that the real reason Scurry had not slept for two days is because he's massively high on cocaine.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third player I want to talk about is the Pirates Shortstop in that era, guy named Dale Barra.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: My dad had a great nickname for him.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: What was it?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Bobble the Ball Bear.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was horrible.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there might be might have been a good reason for that.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: So Barra was another young player.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: He had been with the Pirates since 77.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And Berra was the son of Yogi Berra and kind of trying to make a name for himself.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I imagine that that couldn't have been easy.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Yogi Berra won 10 World Series, won three MVP awards for the most celebrated franchise in baseball, the Yankees.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and not only not only was he a much heralded baseball player, yeah, his quotes, people always quoted him all the time.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think everybody knew Yogi Berra, right?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people liked Yogi Berra.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he was really in a big shadow there, being his son.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a story of um Dale Barra was going up against Don Sutton, the Hall of Fame pitcher, in a game.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And actually struck out three times against Don Sutton in that game.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he gets a call in the dugout from his dad, who's managing the Yankees at the time.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and Barrett gets on the phone, he's like, Dad, aren't you in the middle of managing a game?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I can see the box scores.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I look, I see you struck out three times.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: What what what happened?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, Dale Bear is like, well, Daunt and Sutton has a really good curveball.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: I just I just can't hit him.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And Yoga Bear is like, well, he's got to throw the ball over the plate eventually.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like he's he's grilling him about why are you striking out in this game as he's managing the Yankees?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: So probably was not easy being Yogi Bear's son.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And in 1980, Dale Bear is at a New Year's Eve party, and someone's like, Hey, you want to try this uh cocaine stuff?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And Dale Bear is like, sure, what the heck?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he gets very heavily addicted after that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: So all three of those players, Parker, Scurry, and Berra, become friends with Coke, and by extension, friends with Schiffman.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And all five of those guys, as we have already detailed, are very much into this new uh popular drug called cocaine.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: But what really sets them apart is Schiffman, he knows where to get the cocaine.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: He knows where to buy it.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And at some point the players, and it was mostly Scurry and Berra, but Parker and even some other players too, after a while, they start asking Coke to score them some cocaine via Schiffman.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And since Coke has access to the clubhouse being the mascot, he can basically take orders from the players and deliver right to them.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it's it's a good deal for the players because if you're a major league baseball player, you're well known in the city, uh, you don't want to be seen on some street corner in some bad neighborhood trying to buy cocaine, right?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And just like today, where I mean the ultimate convenience is having stuff delivered right to your door, uh, they can get it delivered right to their door by the mascot, by the pirate parrot.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And Schiffman, it works out well for him too, because he goes and buys it from local dealers and then he cuts out a share of the product for himself and then gives it to Coke, who then distributes it to the players in the locker room.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Schiffman had always said that his motivation wasn't really to make money, he wasn't he wasn't really doing this as like a business.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: His motivation was was was twofold.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: One, it was to get party favors without having to pay for them, because the players would pay for the coke and then he would just cut out a share for himself.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then also just being able to party with these celebrity ballplayers and be useful to them.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: So Shipman's the dealer and Coke is the delivery man, and the transactions would take place in like the bowels of Three River Stadium.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it'd be the runway outside the clubhouse.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: There were stories of even in the bathrooms and the bathroom stalls, is where they would exchange the drugs and the money.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Word even starts getting out to some of the other visiting National League teams.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And now Sheffman and Coke are even starting to frequent some of the downtown hotels where the other teams are playing in order to supply them with cocaine.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Coke talks about how he can never say no when one of the players asks him to get cocaine.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Again, he was such a baseball fan and a baseball junkie.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: He just is really living up this whole not only being around players, but like they need you, right?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: They need you for something.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know, Steve.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: I can kind of see again, being big sports fans ourselves, I don't know, I can kind of see it, right?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I mean, if I don't know, if your favorite like sports player started asking you for something that was relatively easy to get, I guess you'd be sucked in, you know, if James Connor really wants a glass of milk every once in a while.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I to deny him, you know?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: This definitely uh wasn't that ins innocent, I guess, though, unfortunately.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, no.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's you can kind of see the way this is this is like a movie where you can kind of see which way this is gonna go.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's gonna end up in jail on this one.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I get that get that vibe.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's it it's almost like almost a little got uh Goodfellas esque.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like like that scene in Goodfellas where they're um where he takes uh he takes Karen to the club for the first time and they they do that behind the behind the club behind the um behind them camera shot where they follow them into the club and oh yeah they get the best table and you know everybody knows who they are.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean again you can see these guys walking into the clubhouse walking into the stadium um like we said even with a date like like we said earlier and just really living up that lifestyle.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah when you go from waiting in line to not having the waiting in line yeah it's definitely going to be reinforcing that behavior.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes yes for sure cocaine use is really starting to become more rampant in baseball and and more rampant amongst the pirates.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's other players that start getting into this John Milner for the Pirates, Lee Lacey, Buddy J.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Solomon these guys are all starting to use cocaine as well.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And Scurry eventually goes back to the bullpen uh but he keeps pitching well and he believes that it really can't hurt his on-field production and he soon really like he I think out of all the guys that were into this Rod Scurry probably dove into it the most and he really becomes heavily heavily addicted and it it does in fact start affecting his performance.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: He kind of falls off of a cliff statistically in 1983.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: That year he often falls asleep in the bullpen and he just says wake me up if I if the if I need to go into the game and there's even one night where he goes to his friend's house to do drugs and they're they're sitting there doing cocaine and his friend just turns the TV on and his friend is shocked to hear well shocked to see that there's a live Pirates game going on at Three Stadium and as soon as they turn on the TV the announcer's like oh it's the it's the ninth inning and there's a lefty in the on-deck circle I wonder why Scurry isn't warming up.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: So like they're openly questioning why why aren't they putting Scurry into the game?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile Scurry's sitting next to him on the couch.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Scurry had actually left a live baseball game uh so that wasn't good uh and was sure to eventually uh attract attention and it all kind of culminates in a game on April 5th 1984 the Pirates are playing at San Diego against the Padres and they're in the fourth inning and the bases are loaded for San Diego and so the Pirates put Scurry into the game with the bases loaded.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you want to do with the bases loaded right you can't you have to throw strikes can't walk anybody and Scurry walks the first guy on four pitches and he walks the second guy on four pitches and nothing is even close to the plate.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: In fact the second guy was Craig Nettles and he actually almost hit him on three of the four pitches and it's pretty obvious that something is seriously wrong that he can't even come close to the plate so they instantly yank him out of the game after just two batters and he can't throw a strike.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a couple different versions of what happens next uh one story is that that night Scurry destroys his hotel room because he thinks snakes are coming out of the TV and Tuck Tanner says that's enough Tuck Tanner was the Pirates manager.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Tuck Tanner says that's enough you have to go to rehab and then there's another version of the story where Don Robinson who was another Pirates pitcher and and Scurry's teammate kind of gives him an ultimatum and and he goes into rehab whatever whatever happened Scurry goes into rehab after that after that game.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of prompts the FBI to start investigating this problem of cocaine in baseball and and around this time we had mentioned how there was a time when cocaine was just not seen as that big of a deal by 1984 that's changed dramatically the dangers of cocaine are really starting to enter the public consciousness.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And Steve you and I grew up in this era I mean you remember right we were just inundated with the just say no Nancy Reagan the very special episodes of our favorite TV shows the PSAs I mean right we were What you talking about Miss Reagan?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Always different strokes I mean well Todd Bridges huh uh I I yeah I mean it was definitely the just say no which I mean it's not the worst worst slogan in the world.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know people like to make fun of Nancy Reagan for it but it was obviously geared towards people our age not the people that were already addicted you know right so I think that's where people kind of miss the boat on that one.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: No and I and I no and I'm certainly not saying it was a bad thing.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying I remember that being such a sort of all of a sudden that was like the biggest crisis in the country was cocaine.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that I mean that could have been a result of you know you just learn more about it right like now we've seen it's been around for a few years it's it's gone into that crack format and we're seeing a lot more damage from it right you just you don't know if something's a problem until it until you have some time and space.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like any addiction like like when it becomes like an epidemic like that like there's violence in the street you know all the signs of addiction families are broken apart children are neglected I mean this happens all the way back to like the 18th century with the 1700s there was a big gin epidemic in England that everybody forgets about and it's all like you read the same kind of stories that you do like anytime like a society or a large group of people get like really addicted to a substance it's all kind of the same thing unfortunately you know just with different levels of whatever substance you're into so yeah I mean it's just it's kind of a sad story at the end of the day.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah it is it is and and like you said they were definitely targeting they did not want the next generation to be hooked on this and I and I think it I mean I think we got the message as kids right I mean not all of us uh you know stayed drug free the rest of our lives but I think we definitely heard it enough times and and were inundated enough with it to understand that this is something that could mess up my life.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway yes I mean point being that um certainly was a a big deal at the time and and uh because of that you know there's there's these rumors kind of going around like hey this is rampant in baseball and so now now the federal government is taking much more of an interest because of that the the other thing is happening during this time other than just you know it's attracting attention there's also some other um local dealers that kind of jump into this little cocaine dealer ring uh there's a bartender at a place that the players frequent there's an there's an HVAC repair guy who was a friend of Scurry there's a guy that traveled from PA to other cities to distribute uh so there there's just kind of these average Joes that just like Schiffman being the the part-time photographer that have some connection with the players and they kind of get in on this too because just like Schiffman they they can get these guys drugs so so it it develops into like this little ring.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a there's also a guy in Philadelphia named Curtis Strong he was the caterer for the Phillies and he has basically the same access to the Philadelphia Clubhouse that Coke has to the Pittsburgh Clubhouse and he consolidates that dealer delivery guy job in one role he gets the drugs and because he works in the clubhouse he can deliver the drugs.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: So now this is not only happening in Pittsburgh but other people are saying hey I could do that I could do that in my hometown with my team and so now it's even happening in Philadelphia.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: So as we said the FBI starts to investigate in 1984 and Rod Scurry is kind of patient zero in the investigation.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's the first person the feds talk to and when they talk to him they have no idea the scope of this thing and the the investigator one of the investigators Wells Morrison he says quote at the conclusion of that interview with Scurry we had a list of the drug dealers and a list of the professional baseball players to whom they were selling cocaine.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: So Scurry tells them a ton and they're kind of uh taken aback they have no idea that it's so rampant and that there's all these guys involved in it.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: They start interviewing other players who tell them more about their use and more importantly for the FBI more about where they're getting the drugs.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the the law enforcement policy then was to go after the dealers rather than the users.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so the FBI offers players immunity from prosecution if they agree to testify against the dealers who provided them the drugs.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the grand jury there's a grand jury and they end up indicting seven people and the biggest charge is against Schiffman Dale Schiffman he gets 111 counts levied against him that's unreal yeah yeah and I think I think something like 108 of those were for delivering cocaine I forget what the other four were like interstate something something phone use but I mean most of those are for dealing the drugs and and they have lots of evidence against Schiffman.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: They have the players testimony but they also have Shiffman on tape.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason they have him on tape is because he's set up by his best friend Kevin Coke.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: The feds go to Kevin Coke and they say hey we have you on these charges and and at first Coke thinks he actually thought this this is kind of funny of you know maybe where where he was in his life at this point he actually thinks he's not doing anything that's illegal because he's only delivering the drugs he's not buying the drugs like oh I just the guy gave them to me and I gave them to somebody else and they're like no we have you on interstate drug trafficking that's a felony you'll go to prison for a long time but we will give you immunity if you wear a wire and meet with your your friend and get him on tape saying that he's going to buy drugs.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what Kevin Cook agrees to do.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: He he totally kind of throws his friend under the bus.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And on May 31 1985 the feds show up at Shiftman's house in Bethel Park and they they haul him off to jail and and now everything really hits the fan uh this is this is out in the open and uh all these guys that were involved in this are now charged with uh with crimes I I remember this like in in the paper this was a huge deal back in like the mid 80s so I remember my dad every day like reading stories out of the paper the pirate parrot was dealing it oh my goodness like like oh where was he keeping it in his nose or you know just like dumb jokes that my dad would make but well and it and and again going back to the um where we were as a society at that time I mean the the timing couldn't have been worse because the the the that was the time when all these public service announcements were on the air right and like you said Steve they were going after our generation well who do our generation look up to athletes baseball players for sure baseball players and now you have baseball players caught up in this cocaine scandal so yeah it was a big deal and and now you have Schiffman and Koch these guys that you know there were just fans caught up in this and now they're well not Koch because he got immunity but Schiffman is facing a pretty hefty charge of 111 counts against them.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: So Schiffman ends up um pleading guilty trying to do a plea deal same with four of the other guys that they indicted and so at first it looks like well they're just all going to do plea deals there's not going to be a trial you know they arrested them this thing's just gonna just kind of gonna fade away but um Curtis Strong that the guy that was the Philly's caterer he does not plea deal.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Strong's represented by a lawyer named Adam Renfro who not only wants to go to trial but he really wants to put on a show.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: So this lawyer Adam Renfro he's Harvard educated he's very smart he's very flashy um he's he's almost like a Johnny Cochrane type if you remember the OJ trial and he again nobody knows this at the time he's actually addicted to cocaine himself so he's a he's a huge coke addict also and he right away comes out in the media and he bashes the feds for going after Curtis Strong he says he says the feds know that there are million dollar drug dealers out there that would cut the throats of them and their families so they decided to blame it on this this caterer.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Renfro decides that if his client is going down baseball's going to go down with him and he even says baseball's on trial here that's that's what he wants to do in trial he wants to put baseball on trial.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is a trial with held in Pittsburgh in September of 1985.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Renfro is determined to put as many players on the stand as possible and because of this there ends up being some real bombshell testimony that comes out of this trial.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: And remember the players are all given immunity so the more that they kind of are open and talk the better for them but not so good for baseball.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So some of the some of the testimony that comes out Keith Hernandez the um all-star for the Mets says that he doesn't even remember the entire 1980 season which was the year he was the reigning National League MVP because he was so high that year.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he also estimates that about 40% of players in the big leagues were using cocaine which is pretty shocking.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he's basically saying about half of players are using Dave Parker testified that he took a guy on road trips with the Pirates so that he could procure cocaine for him.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Dale Barra claims that Willie Stargewell and Bill Madlock supplied teammates with amphetamines around the start of the decade.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: So Dale Barr is implicating Willie Starjo who's a pirates legend.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hall of Famer Tim Raines for the Expos testifies that he always kept cocaine in the back pocket of his uniform pants during games he always kept a vowel cocaine because I think he was afraid to leave in the locker or in his car somewhere it could have been found.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: He always wanted it on him.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: So he actually keeps it in the back pocket of his uniform and Tim Raines was a stolen base guy.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: He had a lot of stolen bases and so he said he would always slide headfirst into a base because he didn't want the vowel cocaine to break in his back pocket.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Smart.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I mean practical right isn't there like a baseball card with him sliding head first I don't think you can see the cocaine in his pocket though.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Lonnie Smith has to take himself out of the game because he can't stop shaking John Milner for the Pirates he says that when he played with the Mets in the 70s he took liquid amphetamine from Willie Mays's locker which was next to his and and the lawyer even stops at that point he's like wait wait who did you say Willie Mays?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: So now Willie Mays is implicated in this Milner also says that there were dealers inside the Pirates Clubhouse during games so this is pretty I mean like to your point Steve about your dad reading the paper every day this is shocking stuff.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean for for baseball and baseball was always the all-American sport you know people had watched baseball for generations and by that time in the city I mean the people that were Pirates fans were people that had lived through the the Bill Mazarovsky home run and the Clemeni and Stargill eras I mean there was a romanticism around baseball and now you're talking about drug dealers in the locker rooms and guys having to slide head first so they don't break their cocaine vial.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: That had to have been pretty shocking at the time uh yeah it definitely was probably a shattered kind of innocence it's it's definitely gotta be a huge it was a huge scandal and like it just like I think it just became an embarrassment.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: It really did that all these players were addicted to cocaine and playing baseball but uh I don't know I don't know what to tell you I mean yeah which is worse is this worse than like you know performance enhancing drugs I don't know I mean yeah I mean good question but I mean I guess I guess you could say this this was for like they didn't have that comparison at the time right I guess I think yeah you have no I I guess we'll get into that later right yeah yeah but I just I just think at the time like you said I I think that's a good a good way to describe it like a lost innocence you know this isn't the the you know ball player that you might have looked up to before now that a lot of these guys are not the and remember this is before the days of the internet this is before the days people are on Twitter you know you oh yeah I couldn't I couldn't imagine if this happened now like just like the Photoshops and stuff like you see like the parrot like doing coke or something.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well and I think there's there's more of a cynicism today.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think people realize that athletes are flawed people like everybody else and maybe back then there was still some of that like athletes are role models and athletes are I don't know some on some kind of love level that's different or should be on some level that's different.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: So so Renfro you know puts on quite a show with his trial uh his theatrix are not enough to save his client because Kurt Strong is found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in jail.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: But it is enough to attract a lot of national attention on the players and their testimony and it and honestly that was probably Renfro's goal anyway of going to trial because all a lot of those other guys plea dealed and if if he you know probably what was in the best interest of his client was to do a plea deal and not get 12 years in jail.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: But you know I think it was more important to Renfro too to take down baseball.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: And Renfro wants to stick it to the players who you know he thinks are getting off scot-free while lowly guys like Schiffman and Stronner are taking all the blame.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: He he really does a lot to spite the players even during the trial he calls lunch recesses in the middle of some of their testimonies just because he knows they like they have a game that night and he doesn't want them to get back in time.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: So he'll call lunch recess just to keep them there longer.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: And even after the trial he actually serves 30 days in prison on a contempt of court charge because the judge kept ordering him to not reference the immunity that the players were getting and he just ignores the judge's orders and just keeps bringing up the fact that like hey you're getting immunity for this right yes I am so all seven of the guys indicted received sentences um five of them pled guilty and strong and one other guy were convicted via trial there was actually a second trial for one of those other seven guys that's why when you hear this referred to it's the Pittsburgh drug trials plural because there was actually more than one but that second trial did not have anywhere near the um the kind of the pomp and circumstance that the first trial had with all the players testifying.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: And Schiffman ends up with a with a really harsh sentence he gets 12 years.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: And remember he pleaed into this he still gets 12 years and he kind of feels like he's been unfairly punished.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: He's dealing grams of cocaine not kilos of cocaine I mean there was you know you mentioned Steve kind of like the South American stuff there was much bigger stuff going on than this part-time photographer in Pittsburgh dealing to ball players and and the way it's described in the media at the time is was by some people is um it's being pinned on quote the schmucks from the South Hills for were who were just wannabes and starstruck and hanging out with their favorite ball players and it was really only because of who they were dealing to not you know not really what they were dealing.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you're saying if they just would have been dealing to their friends or just the public in general it probably wouldn't have been you know a fine or you know at most yeah I mean I I I don't know what the penalty would have been but it wouldn't have been 12 years in prison probably it probably wouldn't have been 12 years in prison.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean uh and and they probably wouldn't have been dealing to their friends because if they were if they were dealers they would have been making a business out of it they were really just wanting to latch on they were groupies wanting to latch on to these players they weren't and that's how they got to be friends with the players yeah exactly exactly they weren't they weren't high level dealers they were just they knew deal they knew where to get the cocaine and they could just procure it for the players because the players did not want to be in the middle of those transactions for obvious reasons.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and there and there are 21 players that are implicated 21 major league baseball players that are implicated not one of them went to jail not one of them even missed a game due to suspension and Keith Hernandez his first game back in J Stadium they gave him a standing ovation so very classy move by the New York fans there.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: He was also in Seinfeld later I I so want to I'm still trying to find a way to tie that into this episode because every time I hear Keith Hernandez all I can think of is Newman going Keith Hernandez
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um He was he he he was not the spitter
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: though that was no Roger McDowell was the second spitter on the gravel in the road so I mean and and and this was controversial at the time and like we said the standard way the government handled drug cases was grant immunity to the buyers so that you could go get the dealers and and I get that right Steve like if if I had a swimming pool in my backyard and there was a branch from a tree hanging over the pole and it kept dropping leaves into the pole would would I go out there every day trying to trying to fish out all the leaves one at a time or would I want to cut the branch off to to eliminate the problem altogether right that was the mentality and and I think that made sense when you're talking about like drug dealers and drug users in general but in this case the quote unquote dealers were you know part time photographer and a air conditioner guy and a caterer and the the users were multiple Multi-million dollar superstar athletes.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and it wasn't like, you know, shouldn't you be going after the people that these middlemen are dealing from rather than even the players or that, you know?
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, why are you even wasting your time with you know million-dollar ballplayers and the minor league people that are just basically buying it and giving it to them?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're not bringing it in from you know Colombia or Mexico or wherever they grow the stuff, you know.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, so so I mean, let's speculate on that, right?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it could have been just because it was an easy win.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, that this is high profile too.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: You get to say, oh, I had made Keith Hernandez take immunity, you know.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's high profile.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: It makes it look like look, number one, look how big the problem is, and then number two, look what we did about it.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: We we cut off the supply to baseball players, and a lot of people paid attention to that.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you cut off the supply to some inner city neighborhood, you know, was that going to get you a lot of like people saying, Oh, yeah, good job.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that could have been a reason.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was just an easy, easier win.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what the lawyer Renfrew was saying.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: He said that you know, there's there was also risk going after some uh some some foreign drug dealer who or some cartel that actually could have you know inflicted violence and and revenge on you versus you know the the photographer from Bethel Park.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I don't think I don't think I think that was a decent point.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean you can't can't argue they the well prosecutors mostly go after the easier targets anyway, because they're easier targets, like you said.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: What what's a photographer from Bethel Park gonna do to you?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: The whole thing's a blade on baseball, but I it's even more of a blight on the pirates and on the city.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this was not a good time for the city of Pittsburgh in general, very depressed time economically.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that had really started in the 70s when all the steel mills were closing.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: But at least in the 70s, the the the sports teams were kind of a bright spot.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now people are leaving in droves, and and you know, the Pittsburgh people are always very proud, right?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're always very proud of their city, and they're always very proud when the city gets any kind of national attention.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in the 70s, it was like, well, yeah, oh yeah, Pittsburgh, the city of champions.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: And now in 1985, oh yeah, the city where all the baseball players go to buy cocaine.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: Road trips to Pittsburgh, yeah.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Not a good look for the city.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Pirates, meanwhile, lose 104 games that season.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just an awful, awful team in 1985.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: And just a couple of stats from that year.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: They never had a winning streak longer than three games.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: They had six starting shortstops before the 4th of July.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: They had they only had two pitchers that posted more than five victories.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think one of those was uh Rick Ruchel, who had like 14 wins.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: He he literally had like 30% of the Pirates wins.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: And and they even had a pitcher that lost 19 games, which is hard to believe.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they had no player that hit more than 12 home runs.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's an awful team on the field.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: The average attendance at Three River Stadium that year, Steve, 9,000 people.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what did that stadium hold?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like 60,000?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was before the TARPs, too.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it was 50, 60,000.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 9,000 people a game is and I think Willie Stargeord retired in what '83 maybe.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was gone by then, yeah.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they had no real draw.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So so nobody's coming to watch the games.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Bob Prince had died that season.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was just it was so it was a bad season, and certainly there's been other bad seasons for the pirates, lots of bad seasons, actually, for the pirates.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: But but then when the drug trials happen in the middle of the season, that just really explodes things.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I I would say that in 134 years of operation, the pirates have probably never been at a lower point than they were in 1985.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the Galbraith family, who had owned the Pirates for the previous 40 years, they announced actually before the season that they were going to put the Pirates up for sale.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: But when they do that, they say, you know, we're only going to sell to someone that's going to keep the team here in Pittsburgh.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, after all this happens, now the Galbraiths come out very publicly and say, we'll take the first acceptable offer.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter if it's somebody from Pittsburgh, somebody from Denver or Miami or these other cities that at the time did not have teams, you can have them.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Steve, I would say the 1985 pirates season was probably the worst single season in the history of any Pittsburgh sports team.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's hard to argue.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, now that you put it that way, and it feels bad because like I know in a previous podcast I talked about the Galbraiths and how successful 40 years.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be go back to what, 1945?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: So like they had a very like from like 1960 to 1985, those last 25 years, they won three World Series, all those division titles.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: They had Roberto Clemeny, Willie Stargel, Steve Blass, you know, all the Parker and all the great players of that era.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I mean just they're a very successful franchise under that ownership.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a shame that they they wanted to get out.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I guess that would, you know, the Pittsburgh drug tiles were just obviously, you know, they were obviously thinking of getting out of baseball before 1985, but like you said, I guess the uh this whole cocaine thing just drove the business to such a low level they they decided to you know hang it up, which is a shame for for that family in the uh in the in the pirates too, but I mean at 10,000 a game, I mean, ouch.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's average too.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that means there were days where it was under 10,000.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's kind of scary.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the the the Post Gazette and KDK Radio at one point even have like a um a drive.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a game in June.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, hey, everybody show up on June 24th or whatever, it'll be like a save the pirates night.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think they even got that many people for that game.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: People just people were checked out, and and again, like we said, people had bigger problems back then in Pittsburgh, but I mean the Steelers were still doing okay.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and I I think just whatever whatever people had left for the Pirates, now now they're a drug trafficking ring.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like the Pittsburgh Pirates are a drug trafficking ring.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think too, like the point that like Pittsburgh, like gotta remember in the 80s was shedding population pretty bad.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, you just the I mean all the steel mills had pretty much closed or were yeah, I mean, by 85, I mean that definitely was probably a low point just for the city in general, just as far as population and the economy.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that definitely played into, you know, if you don't need to have a job or you're you're moving out of town, you're not gonna attend baseball games.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: So well, and and if you have if you're crunching uh pennies to begin with, right?
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I gonna spend my money on million-dollar baseball players that smuggle cocaine in between innings?
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: So and and and the Galaries, I mean, they tried to do the right thing.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: They were like they I think they did not want their legacy to be again, like you said, Steve, they owned the Pirates for really all the significant years of the franchise.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: I realized like they had some good teams in 1909 and all that, but the the thing that most Pirates fans will remember about the Pirates and the Glory years was the Clemeni Star Joel Three World Series era, and they did not want their legacy to be sell it to some clown in Denver.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but after all this happened, I think they were just at the end of their rope.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, okay, whatever, take them.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that was that was bad.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't know if people remember how bad it was.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's pretty low.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was scary because it was a legitimate concern that the pirates are going to leave town.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think just if it would have been any other time, it would have been the 50s or 60s, maybe it wouldn't have been as bad.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think because it was the 80s and all the steel mills and other businesses were leaving, it was like, well, here's another business that's leaving town.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: So and if you didn't have the drug trials, I think people might have rallied more.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: But again, who's gonna rally around yeah, what's there to rally around?
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Cocaine?
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite base, my my team that I've loved since childhood, that I went to the games at Ford Field has now become a drug trafficking ring.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it definitely had more of a stigma then than it does now.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: That that generation definitely like now be like, well, they need treatment and help.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: Back then it was like, oh, you're a bum.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have no self-control.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're you know, there definitely was a different attitude in society towards drug use than there is now.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and who and who are you taking to the game?
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're taking your kids to the game, right?
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And because you wanted them to turn into the game.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Daddy, why did Dale Berra make an error again?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you see, son, when you do a lot of coke in the second inning.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, that's that's pretty bad.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that that's probably the worst.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: You will not can't find a worse season than the team's about to leave town and all the players are implicated in a drug ring led by uh two fans, and you know, that's causing a major scandal.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: I you just you're you're gonna find some bad teams in Pittsburgh Sports Lore, but never quite anything to this degree.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: So things are bad for the Pirates.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, baseball also has a big problem on its hands, courtesy of Pittsburgh, because now you're welcome.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're welcome.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: We did something, we contributed.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because not only are fans and pirates gonna have that attitude, or fans in Pittsburgh gonna have that attitude, but fans across the country are gonna start thinking the same thing.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, wait a second, you know, I'm I'm paying money to see these coke users, right?
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, there was that stigma there.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Peter Uberoth was the commissioner, he hadn't been named the commissioner in the year before, and and Uberoth came in with a pretty sterling reputation.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: In 1984, he's actually named Times Man of the Year, uh, because he was the guy that had organized the Los Angeles Olympics.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you know who else was Times Man of the Year?
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying, you know, I mean, it's I don't even have to go back like that far.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's his name?
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yasser Arafat and Adolf Hitler were both Times Man of the Year.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, maybe it's a good thing I've never been Times Man of the Year.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've been close a few times, I think.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't have any evidence.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you want to join that Motley crew, God bless you.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: The point being, though, that he I mean, he had a pretty good resume.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh now he's you know he's not even a year into his job, and he's presented with the biggest baseball scandal since the 1919 Black Sox.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: So Uberath, he wants to get in front of this.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: He goes out, he makes all kinds of grand statements about how he's gonna remove drugs from baseball forever, how they're gonna be the first sport to be drug-free.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he says, quote, someone has to say enough is enough against drugs, baseball's going to accomplish this, we're gonna be the example.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that baseball has the single toughest union out of any of the major sports leagues, and they're not gonna agree to things like random drug testing.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: And Uberoth kind of knows his hands are tied.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: He tries to suspend several of the players implicated for the entire 1986 season, but even that he has to revise to, well, they're not suspended as long as they do some community service and uh donate to an anti-drug program.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he also says that those players that were implicated have to be drug tested.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but Lonnie Smith later says that he was never tested once that next season.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: He calls it a farce.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, Ubroth is kind of out there trying to make it look like that they're cleaning things up, but really nothing's happening.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, what's the aftermath of all this?
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now we talked about how you know it was a bad look that these quote-unquote little guys got busted and the players went off scot-free.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not all these players came out of this totally unscathed.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Rod Scurry, the pitcher, he bounces around to a couple of different teams uh but ends up having a pretty short major league career.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: And October and on October 29th, 1992, he's living in Nevada, and the police get a call from Scurry's neighbor who says he's acting very erratically.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: And when the police show up, Scurry says that there are snakes in his house uh crawling on him and biting him.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he then becomes violent with the police officers and they have to restrain him.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: As they're restraining him, Scurry loses consciousness and never again wakes up, and he dies at the age of 36.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do drugs.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's really sad.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean another another life cut short, another promise.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: A guy never really reached his potential due to um, you know, uh substance abuse, and that's that's a real shame for him.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't can't we can't really uh put that too lightly there.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's it's tragic.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and I even found there was an article in Sports Illustrated in the mid-80s that talked about how he went to rehab and he got all better, and it was like this feel-good, you know, Scurry's gonna revive his career, and and you know, again, that there's that that that's a lifelong thing when you're in recovery like that, and he just couldn't he for whatever reason uh he just went back to it and couldn't shake it.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: Dale Barra is arrested for cocaine possession in 1989.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: A couple years later, his dad and his brothers do an intervention.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: And according to Dale Barra, at least, he has not had a drink or a drug since that day.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's at least a good story for Dale Barra.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Dale Barra's still with us, I guess.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: He is still with us, yeah.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I would imagine he's at least cut back enough where he doesn't have the issues that some of the other people in the story have had.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: I believe his full-time job now is managing his father's um I don't know if a state is the right word, but like, you know, when people need to like use his likeness and all that.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think that's what he does now.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Dave Parker is not in the baseball hall of fame, despite being named the 100 one of the 100 greatest ballplayers of all time uh when he was in his prime, and he believes it's because of the scandal.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh also the Pirates sued Dave Parker for breach of contract to try to stop payment.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: A$5.3 million owed to him in deferred compensation.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: I could never find if they won that suit or not.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but they pirates try to recover some of their money because they they feel like that he's cheated them.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of odd with Dave Parker, Steve, because there's a lot of friction between him and the fans and him and the team.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, teams sued him.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: But like he's kind of well liked today.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like they have they bring him back to PNC Park all the time, and he gets you know teared.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I I mean, I guess time heals all wounds.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he he's sick now, too.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, doesn't he have Parkinson's?
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: Parkinson's, yeah.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I mean I I I mean, boy, he really, you know, it took a toll, I guess.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: How many home runs did he finish?
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: He finished for like only 200 and some home runs, though.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think he even hit 300 home runs.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but he also, again, he won two batting titles.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he could hit for average too.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I you know he had a good arm.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there Oh man, uh my I mean you see some of the like that like that's on YouTube, that's like a classic.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, he does have three hundred and thirty-nine home runs.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean that's a respectable amount.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's like a borderline case.
• 1:00:14
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because of that that not having because like you like the magic numbers would either be like hitting over 300 and hitting 500 home runs or 2,000 hits, or is it 3,000 hits?
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's normally the numbers that get you into the baseball hall of fame.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: But he definitely was a very talented player, and you know, it probably took a little bit of you know some numbers away from him in some years.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he would have had those extra stats and would have been in the Hall of Fame already, not for some of those wasted years.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he did revive his career later with the Reds.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: He was a really um top-notch player for Cincinnati in the mid to late 80s.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he did have like a comeback, like, you know, obviously, you know, he got himself right.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I don't know.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's hard to say whether he would be in the Hall of Fame or not, but certainly the scandal does not help because people will remember that when they're voting for you.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Chuck Tanner, the Pirates manager, uh, he was fired after the 1985 season.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Tanner, Tanner was the manager of that 79 team.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: So he had been the manager for a long time.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: He was a pretty good manager.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's fired.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: His philosophy was to treat the players like adults.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: He once said that the Yankees, if the Yankees would have put a curfew on Babe Ruth, then Babe Ruth wouldn't have been in the Hall of Fame.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that was his philosophy, is like, hey, these guys are adults.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: When I treat them like adults, I'm not gonna treat them like little kids.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: And right or wrong, um, that kind of comes back to haunt him because people are like, oh, you could have stopped this.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these guys were doing this in the room and you had no idea.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, I guess there's a line like if I don't see it and it's not going on in my workplace, I'm not gonna follow you home and like bust up a party in your own living room.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're bringing it to the stadium and doing it there, then it's gonna be an issue.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I would have kind of drawn the line.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just me.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I I totally agree with him.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're adults, you know.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna sit here and babysit some you know 27 to 30 year old person.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you can't keep yourself straight, you're gonna just, you know, you're either gonna be able to play the game and keep it together for eight hours or not, you know.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: Fair point.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Adam Renfro, the lawyer, he's convicted in 1986 of attempting to bribe a witness and is sentenced to five years in prison.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's subsequently disbarred.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: The Pirates are purchased by a group of local corporations in an effort spearheaded by late Mayor Richard Caliguri, uh, and that actually saves the team and keeps them in Pittsburgh.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: The Galbraiths actually do not make any money on that sale, which is kind of I mean, think about that.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: Selling a major league baseball team, and you didn't make uh any money on the sale.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's your day.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why would you sell the team then?
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: It I mean, I would just keep it.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like at that point, like the team's either gonna go out of business or I don't know, you know what I mean?
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know, I don't know all the reasons behind that, but I think I think it definitely shows how much they just wanted out, yeah.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: And how much in the toilet the pirates were.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the one thing that you know when they do make that deal with Caladuri in the in the local companies, you know, the Galbraiths are are widely lauded for that because, hey, you know, they they maybe took a deal where they didn't make as much money because again, it was important to them to keep the team in Pittsburgh, which it was because they had said that the year before.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, from the cynical side of things, you could also say, well, maybe they just weren't getting offers from the people in Denver or Miami or wherever.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like they just didn't have anywhere else to sell to.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point, again, after everything that had happened, maybe they just wanted out.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't care.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as bad as that 1985 season was, the one highlight was in the the Major League Baseball draft that year.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: The Pirates selected a gentleman named Barry Bonds in the first round.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they do rebuild around him in the late 80s, and um, by the late 80s are a contender again, and probably more importantly for the team are filling up the stadium again.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's funny, Steve, because 79 they win the World Series, and just like that, a few years later, 9,000 people a game, and they're they're you know potentially going to move.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then just a few years after that, they're winning their division and and setting attendance records at the River Stadium.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's funny how that can happen in such a short period of time.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Uberoth declares victory.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, he says baseball's drug-free, and the next season, uh Mark McGuire is bashing home runs, and Roger Clemens is mowing down people from the mound.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: All drug free.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: All drugs, no drugs.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, what it what happens, of course, is everybody knows the players just go from drugs that hurt their performance to drugs that help their performance.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the commissioners and the owners and the media do nothing about it.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: They just all look the other way.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not until the year 2012 that the Major League Baseball Players Association agrees to random drug testing.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this whole cocaine scandal really bursts, Steve, you mentioned it earlier, really burst the steroid era, right?
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_01: They just the players are just like, wait, why are we why are we hurting ourselves with drugs?
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's take something that'll help us and make us more money.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: And well, yeah, it makes sense.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, there's millions of dollars on the line.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't you?
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Yep.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's really a debacle.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the baseball had a chance to nip that in the bud and say, you know what, no, we're not going to be a sport that abuses drugs.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you know, they become the sport that abuses drugs.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't just ba like football had this problem too with the Steelers of the seventies, you know, doing steroids and stuff like that.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, with Steve Corson and some of the other players.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh football, the NFL had to get serious about it somewhat too.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, as much as like, I don't know like how baseballs work, but I've heard the NFLs is pretty much a joke, too.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, they tell you, well, you'll be tested in the month of May, you know.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody knows, you know, you need to get clean in April to be ready to, you know, randomly tested in May, you know.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: So can you just lay off like, you know, even like in maybe the first two weeks, you know, so that really narrow it down.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I guess for some people that wasn't good enough.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think they got didn't they get rid of because I don't know how they can enforce like like marijuana or anything because it's completely legal in so many states.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can you have a policy that I don't know?
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and and that wasn't something that was ever I mean, cocaine was such a much more powerful yeah, than than just smoking you know weed.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and plus two, like, you know, you're not operating an airplane or you know, some piece of machine.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: I guess you're throwing a ball at 90, 100 miles an hour.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: That that could hurt somebody, but yeah, but you're right, it's it's a different thing.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I think and I think with like you made the comparison with the NFL.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I the NFL, I remember I remember, I mean, I there was a few examples.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_01: I one notable example I remember is um Dexter Manley, who was the defensive lineman for for the Washington Redskins, who was a really good player.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: He he got suspended for a whole year.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's because football didn't have the union that baseball had.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: And football had a very um sort of weak union.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they they went on strike twice in in that decade and they had sort of caved both times.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: They did not have the same union, and the NFL was able to enforce those kinds of rules, and baseball probably could have if they would have fought for it, but they they just didn't.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's so I always think it's so hypocritical that you know, you know, well, we're not gonna put Barry Bonds in the Hall of Fame or Roger Clemens in the Hall of Fame.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, fine, but then you let them do that all those years.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why didn't you stop them then?
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we didn't, but now we're not gonna let them in the Hall of Fame, and that's that's justice.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, it's really not.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just a joke that they let that happen after this.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you could claim ignorance once, but then twice.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of what happened to everybody.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: So so what about the two fans that started this mess?
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these two guys, all they wanted to do was was watch baseball and and be fans of the pirates.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_01: They love the pirates.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: And here they are, you know, now they find themselves starstruck, they're part of the team, they know the players, and they're getting them drugs, and it leads to this scandal that, as we detailed, literally almost takes out the pirates out of Pittsburgh forever.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, what happened to Dale Shiffman and Kevin Koch?
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Kevin Koch is fired by the Pirates because you know they don't they really can't keep the pirate parrot on staff after it's revealed that he's the guy trafficking cocaine to the players.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: And he really regrets the decision to betray his friend Schiffman.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he says that if he could do it all over again, he says, I just would have told the FBI, okay, charge me, because I I can't sell out my my friend.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: But at the time he was scared, he was addicted to drugs, he just wanted to save himself, and he really regrets that.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: He actually falls into a pretty deep depression and and alcohol problem.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: Schiffman we meanwhile goes to prison.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: He does give his life to Christ in jail, and he really latches on to this Christian principle of forgiveness.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_01: He believes that if Jesus forgave him, he can forgive his friend.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so when he gets released from jail, he actually goes and sees Kevin Coke and tells him that he forgives him.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_01: And by all accounts, those guys are on good terms with each other today, and they've both really turned their lives around, they both have families and good jobs and all that.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I think it's a happy ending for those two guys after just the mess that they were involved in.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, good for them for uh getting through it, and uh you know I guess they just have regular nine to five jobs without uh not so much hanging out in locker professional locker rooms anymore.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think you don't think this could actually happen again.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, well, I guess if you know a player and a player knows you, what's to stop you stop them from giving you a pass or something to get, you know.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I I guess you would have to know them.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you couldn't just be like a random person.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't like the 70s and 80s where you just be like a random person hanging around PNC Park.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I I think too that I mean, yeah, I I don't know.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: It'd have to be a pretty big I could see that happening on a one-off basis, but but where it became you know multiple players and then players from other teams and it turned into this whole drug ring.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think with the 24-7 intense focus on everything sports, it would be a lot harder to have that happen today.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think players too are so much more conscious of image today because of that 24 by 7 coverage, that I don't know that they would they would take that risk.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Also, players have a lot more probably a little more disposable income than they had back then, so they would probably find a a better or more secretive way to do it.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I just I wouldn't see that happening again.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it it would just be too out in the open.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, who knows?
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's a pretty amazing story, isn't it?
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think there's too like even if it is going on, there's definitely it's probably easier to sweep it under the rug, especially with the teams and the players having so much more money, it you know, it's easier to you know pay people to hide that or clean up the mess if you make a mess.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I just I just keep thinking about I mean we're two fans, right?
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I just keep thinking about like these guys were just they were just two fans.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And to be in a position where you could potentially like like all of a sudden, you know, there's trials and there's like the the the the owners are saying we're gonna we're just gonna sell it to somebody out of town because the whole franchise is at the bottom of the pits.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, oh man, would that be a lot?
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like just just you could just see them saying, like, I just we just wanted to hang out with the players and have fun and party, and we never expected it to turn into what it turned into, I'm sure is what they were thinking.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Cautionary tale, that's for sure.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think to your point earlier, it would make a I think it would make a good movie.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody should make a movie out of that someday.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of feels like like the good fellas, like you said.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: It really does.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_00: You want to see helicopters, you want to see some home runs?
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I take this, you'll see home runs.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a mascot.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Of the movie.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_01: All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, please check out our website or our Facebook page or our Twitter feed.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: All those links are in the show description.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Please tell your friends, please leave us a review because that's how um people can find us.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll see you next time.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Bye bye.