RIP Joe Pignatano (1929-2022)

[Fman99]

Bullpen coach of the 1969 Mets and last surviving member of that team's coaching staff, at age 92. Godspeed Joe



https://www.amny.com/sports/joe-pignatano-obit-mets/https://www.amny.com/sports/joe-pignatano-obit-mets/

[kcmets]

I will dedicate my tomato planting later this afternoon to Joe. RIP

[Willets Point]

Suddenly the user name "Piggiestomatoes" makes a whole lot of sense.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, Pignatano's tomato patch was pretty close to the Mettiest thing there was.



It wasn't just tomatoes out there, either. There were heads!



https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CC45XjfWIAEPxmG.jpg:large>

[MFS62]

Didn't remember him from his brief stay with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

But I remember him as one of the munificent seven - the catchers on the 1962 Mets.

RIP Piggy.



Later

[Benjamin Grimm]

Until today, Piggy was the third-oldest living Met, behind only Dave Hillman and former CPF visitor Frank Thomas.



With Pignatano's death, Ken McKenzie moves into the top ten, Rick Herrscher into the Top Twenty, and Tom Parsons is now in the Top Forty.

[G-Fafif]

What a presence. Fourteen seasons a phone call away from every manager from Hodges to Torre (or closer, when he transferred to the first base box his last few years). The tomatoes indeed separated us and Shea from everybody else. The good humor was a trademark, too. I always felt he was the uncle left in charge when the skipper couldn't keep his eye on everybody. "They're good kids," Joe would assure us in his way. Legendarily, he ended his career by hitting into a triple play, guaranteeing the Mets their 120th loss of their first season -- as if it wasn't guaranteed when they took the field that day.



One isolated incident occurs to me. In 1975, John Stearns hit his first home run into the bleachers at Wrigley. Piggy took it upon himself to trot out to the crowd and arrange a swap of baseballs with the fan who caught Stearns's blast. The fan negotiated for a bat. Piggy complied, and Dude got his ball. What a wonderful bullpen coach thing to do.

[kcmets]

=G-Fafif post_id=93215 time=1653330923 user_id=55] Legendarily, he ended his career by hitting into a triple play, guaranteeing the Mets their 120th loss of their first season -- as if it wasn't guaranteed when they took the field that day.

[Edgy MD]

Got to coach his younger cousin, Pete Falcone.



With Piggy, Falcone, Joe Torre, Lee Mazzilli, John Pacella, and Joe Sambito, the Mets of the era were loaded with Italian-Americans from Brooklyn. It was like they had a recruitment office next door to the Sons of Italy Hall.

[Fman99]

Willets Point wrote: Suddenly the user name "Piggiestomatoes" makes a whole lot of sense.

I second this emotion

[Benjamin Grimm]

The Death of Piggy has inspired me to make a change at the UMDB. All players/personnel who are deceased will have a black border around their photo on https://leaptoad.com/mets/metannual.php?ThisYear=1969this page. This will allow visitors to tell at a glance who is alive and who is dead at the present time.

[Edgy MD]

Nice work.



Apparently Joe McDonald is not only alive, but was active enough in 2018 to collect a ring with the Red Sox (his sixth!).

[G-Fafif]

A few words on Piggy…



http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2022/05/24/forever-ours-joe-pignatano/http://www.faithandfearinflushing.com/2022/05/24/forever-ours-joe-pignatano/

[Edgy MD]

If you know the Pignatanos, you might want to give Mrs. Pignatano a call.



[media=youtube]xQs0S_a-KvA[/media]

[Edgy MD]

Piggie's passing leaves behind a surprisingly vigorous and populous roster of https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/List_of_living_Kansas_City_Athletics_players95 surviving former Kansas City A's.



It's an interesting bunch, topped by Reggie Jackson, but also including Hall of Fame managers (Tony LaRussa, Whitey Herzog), other managers (Rene Lacheman, Joe Morgan), big shot GMs (Hawk Harrelson, Sal Bando), longtime coaches (Dave Duncan), lots of sires of MLB families (José Tartabull, Diego Segui, Duncan, Ozzie Virgil) and lots of former Mets.



To be a KCA is to be a baseball lifer.

[Willets Point]

Oh, wow, there are still 3 living former Philadelphia A's too (all of whom moved with the team to KC).

[G-Fafif]

Richard Sandomir gives a prominent New York baseball figure the Times treatment he deserves.

“Piggy was the kind of friend to my dad who, if you fell backward, he'd catch you,” Gil Hodges Jr. said in a phone interview. “If a player had something negative to say about my father and didn't have the courage to say it to his face, he'd better be sure Piggy wasn't around.” In the bullpen, Pignatano oversaw relief pitchers as they warmed up — sometimes catching them himself — and telephoned Hodges or Rube Walker, the pitching coach, to say who looked good that day and who didn't. “He was very disciplined, a good company man who was also still young and pretty feisty,” said Jim McAndrew, a pitcher who joined the Mets in 1968. “He was opinionated about almost everything and wasn't everybody's favorite because he was Gil's sergeant.” In 1969, the year the Mets unexpectedly won the World Series after seven seasons as a losing team, Pignatano started planting tomatoes in the bullpen beyond right field. Up came cherry tomatoes, then beefsteak tomatoes. Eventually he grew pumpkins, cucumbers, eggplants, squash, zucchini, radishes and lettuce in a 30-foot long plot, with help from the pitchers who watered the plants. “I transplant the crops in the spring and we have it every year,” he told The Associated Press in 1977.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/sports/baseball/joe-pignatano-dead.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/sports/baseball/joe-pignatano-dead.html

[roger_that]

Edgy MD wrote: Got to coach his younger cousin, Pete Falcone.

But left too soon to coach his other cousin, Dave Idcone.