Covid concerns cancel 60th anniversary celebration of 1960 World Series Game 7

Herb Soltman isn’t sure what he will do Oct. 13 on the 60th anniversary of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series.

But he has a good idea.

“I might sit home and cry,” he said.

Breaking with a cherished tradition, Soltman and other members of the Game 7 Gang — he is their 85-year-old president — won’t meet at what remains of Forbes Field’s left-field wall to listen to the NBC radio broadcast of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ victory against the New York Yankees. The gatherings date to 1985, but the Gang has been meeting there every Oct. 13 since 2007 to relive one of the great moments in Pittsburgh sports history.

Soltman said he canceled this year’s event because of covid-19 concerns.

“Every day, there’s a different state or county or city regulation on the amount of people you can have at an event,” Soltman said. “It’s just too much aggravation to try and get it all organized with those kind of circumstances.

“There’s a possibility we could have done a virtual event. But if we do a virtual event, we’d have to do a video of the game. Technology is not my strong suit. Believe me.”

Crowds of up to 300 or so have met annually at the base of the wall to celebrate the Pirates’ 10-9 victory, their first World Series championship in 35 years and Bill Mazeroski’s historic blast, the only Game 7 ninth-inning walk-off home run in World Series history.

Soltman, who has gone to the wall nearly every Oct. 13 since 1993, said the tradition started in 1985 with a quiet, unassuming man from Squirrel Hill named Saul Finkelstein.

“He had a cassette of the game, and he was having a bad day at home,” Soltman said. “As the story goes, he decided to go out to the remaining portion of the Forbes Field wall and just sit there at the base of flagpole and listen to the game.”

Like a baseball pied piper, Finkelstein attracted a following, and people started to sit with him year after year.

Soltman, a retired salesman from Scott Township, first heard about Finkelstein on the radio one Oct. 13 while he was making sales calls in Fox Chapel.

“I slammed on the brakes, made a U-turn on Freeport Road and headed right to the wall,” Soltman said.

Soltman was there for the 40th anniversary in 2000 when a white stretch limousine pulled up to the wall while the broadcast was in the second inning. Out stepped Mazeroski.

“The crowd went completely nuts,” Soltman said.

Ten years later, at the 50th anniversary, 11 members of the 1960 team showed up at the wall while they were in town for a fundraiser.

The game is personal to Soltman for a good reason: He was there in 1960 with his parents and grandmother, Rachel Stewart. They sat in an $11 reserved seat behind the Pirates dugout.

“Grandma didn’t know third base from a called strike,” he said.

When the baseball sailed over the wall, Soltman, then 25, burst past security and was among the crowd of people greeting Mazeroski as he rounded third and headed for home.

After the game, he escorted grandmother Stewart back to her apartment at the Webster Hotel, two blocks from Forbes Field.

“We were sitting there talking, and I said, ‘Granny, what did you think of the game?’

“Her exact quote was, ‘You know, Herbert, it was most exciting.’ “