The day Pirates catcher Mike LaValliere finally cussed out the 1992 Game 7 umpire

On Friday night, the MLB Network replayed the painful seventh game of the 1992 NLCS.

"I was hoping those people in left field were blowing on my back to give me some tailwind." - Sid Bream

Watch the @Braves' thrilling 1992 NLCS Game 7 win at 10pm ET on MLB Network pic.twitter.com/qB0fNZFUqW

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) April 4, 2020

Yup. That one.

Pirates. Braves.

Bottom of the ninth. Blown lead.

Jose Lind booted it. Stan Belinda pitched it. Francisco Cabrera hit it. Barry Bonds threw it.

Sid slid. Barry went to San Francisco. Andy Van Slyke is still sitting in the outfield.

Yada yada yada. Two decades of darkness and despair.

Because quarantining yourself from the greatest threat to humanity of this lifetime wasn’t enough. Now the MLB Network gives us that, too?!

True Pirates fans know that the biggest villain of that series wasn’t Bream or Cabrera. They were just doing their jobs. And I don’t mean Lind’s error or Belinda’s blown save.

I’m talking about home plate umpire Randy Marsh.

No, not the call of Bream’s slide. Bream’s creaky knees beat the throw. It was off-line. Catcher Mike LaValliere made a great swipe to make it close, and Bream’s foot bounced right over the plate. Whether he got the front edge of the plate before it bounced up or LaValliere got the back leg, who knows. I think Bream got it.

But no umpire would’ve ever made a different call than that. And in the pre-replay era, what are you going to do?

Rather, I’m talking about Marsh’s strike zone when Braves catcher Damon Berryhill was at the plate.

Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment. pic.twitter.com/j17NJvWpKI

— Matt Gajtka (@MattGajtka) April 6, 2020

Marsh called that a ball.

A ball. As in “the opposite of a strike.” That was the second squeezed call of the plate appearance by Berryhill.

So Berryhill walked, reloading the bases and buying an extra out so Cabrera could get to the plate.

And the rest was history.

Twenty years of history … as it … turned out.

I saw a number of my friends and media colleagues tweeting about the game over the weekend. And it jogged my memory about an interview I did with LaValliere on 105.9 the X back in 2012.

It was the 20th anniversary of the game, and the Braves gave out a triple bobblehead of Bream sliding past LaValliere’s tag with Marsh making the safe call.

LaValliere and the Pirates gave their blessing. The Braves held a big bash before the game in June and gave all the fans in attendance the bobblehead. I called LaValliere to get his thoughts, and to see if he was still bitter about the game.

Shockingly, he seemed diplomatic about most of the game.

Well, except for Marsh’s strike zone. It’s a grudge that apparently simmered pretty close to the surface for LaValliere for about 10 years.

“Spanky’s” former teammate, Lloyd McClendon, was hired to be the Pirates new manager in 2001. Not long after taking over, he made LaValliere a roving catching instructor.

Marsh was working a Pirates spring training game. When LaValliere saw Marsh, he lost his mind and excoriated the ump for his strike zone … from a decade earlier.

Long before the national anthem was played at a random spring training game.

“I just lost it,” LaValliere told me. “I just started screaming. And all these (young players) are looking at me, like, who is this screwball?”

So what did LaValliere call him?

“It was a bunch of words we could never repeat on the air.”

Apparently, the reason for LaValliere’s tirade was lost on Marsh.

“Randy looked at me, and he had no idea what I was doing,” LaValliere laughed. “I’ve never been thrown out of a game. And that was the closest I ever came. And I don’t know if that would’ve even counted because the game hadn’t started yet.”

You can hear the whole clip with LaValliere here. And the podcast where I bring myself back to the brink by reliving every, single, excruciating detail of that game.

Listen: Tim Benz relives the Pirates’ 1992 NLCS Game 7 loss to the Braves