The Pittsburgh Pirates of 1960 will go down in infamy as far as any New York Yankee fan is concerned. Especially Bill Mazeroski, who of course hit the well-known homerun to win it all. But if you’re doing a replay of 1960 and have any concerns that Maz isn’t up to the task, you know you can always count on good ‘ol Fred Green.
Green, who was a B*Y reliever for the ‘60 Bucs, has a pretty amazing hitting card. He’s got five 1s, three 7s, three 8s, two 9s (going all the way out to 64), and even four 14s. What’s almost more interesting though is his lack of traditional groundout and fly out numbers. On his whole card, he just has a 52-27 and that’s it. He doesn’t even have a 25 on his card. APBA instead gave Green a 12-13.
All things considered, he earned his card, too. In his eight at-bats, he didn’t hit one homerun but two. Green also had a single plus a walk (one team was smart). Interestingly, if you look at his batting performance for every other year he played in the majors (1959, 1961-1962), he really stunk. Not only was he was 0 for 9 but he struck out all nine times.
| Year | Tm | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | BB | SO | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | PIT | 45 | 9 | 8 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 | .375 | .444 | 1.125 |
Fred Green did pretty well on the mound as a reliever in 1960. In fact, 1960 was his career year. His 45 appearances was second on the championship Pirates team behind Roy Face. Going 8-4 with a 3.21 ERA in 70+ innings, he definitely earned that B*Y grade.
Fred Green’s biggest legacy besides helping the Pirates get to the World Series (he did pretty poorly once they got there) might be that he’s the father of 1984 first round pick Gary Green. Gary was around for five seasons playing for San Diego, Texas and Cincinnati.
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Several of the 1960 Pirates had sons go on to play in the majors. Gary Green, of course, but also Joel Skinner and Vance Law, and I think there may have been a couple of others.
We loved playing APBA back in the late seventies early 80s. I always found Fred Greens card fascinating. My cousin would bat him cleanup. Nice info on his stats