ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 2, 1997 TAG: 9702040021
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB TEITLEBAUM STAFF WRITER
MEMO: Library note: The evening paper was called The World-News, not The
Roanoke World-News.
STEVE DEMETER is honored for his championship clubs.
When Steve Demeter went to work for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1972 as the manager of their Class AA farm team, it was the beginning of the golden age of one baseball's oldest franchises.
The Pirates had just won the 1971 World Series and they would dominate the National League East Division for the rest of a decade that would culminate with a 1979 World Series victory.
While Pittsburgh continued to win until only a few years ago, thanks to some skillful managing by Jim Leyland, the lack of an owner willing to spend money for free agents would start Pittsburgh's descent into the small-market hell of major-league franchises.
Demeter, 62, is one of five employees with the club's baseball operation who worked for Pittsburgh 25 years ago. He will be one of five inductees into the Salem-Roanoke Baseball Hall of Fame tonight at the Salem Civic Center, where he will be honored for his three tenures as manager of the Salem franchise in the Carolina League.
Demeter's final stint as Salem's manager was in 1987 when the Buccaneers, as they were then known, won the club's last pennant. Since that year, Salem has had only a half-season of winning baseball.
The Homer City, Pa., native went into scouting the year after Salem's pennant and remained a scout until he agreed to return as Pittsburgh's minor-league field coordinator this past summer.
The only other employees with Pittsburgh's baseball operation since 1972 are Woody Huyke, the manager of the Pirates' rookie-league team in Bradenton, Fla.; Lenny Yochim, a longtime scout who is a special assistant to the general manager; former Salem player and a Salem-Roanoke Hall of Famer Pablo Cruz, the Latin America coordinator for Pittsburgh; and Jeanie Donatelli, the club's executive secretary who has served every Pittsburgh general manager since Joe Brown.
In this world where loyalties often can be bought with a bigger paycheck or a better title, how has Demeter remained faithful?
``If you're satisfied with what you're doing and what they're doing for you, I see no reason to move,'' he said. ``If someone can better themselves by going somewhere else, I don't blame them.
``I don't look to move. I try to do the best I can within the organization. I've come close several times to moving when changes were made. But if you stick it out, the new people find out what you're capable of. You can regroup and move on within the organization.''
Demeter was close to leaving when Syd Thrift came on to rebuild Pittsburgh's sagging franchise in the 1980s. Thrift, a longtime baseball man, was given the freedom and money to make the Pirates a viable franchise once again.
``He was bringing his own people in and I really thought I was going to move,'' Demeter said. ``I approached Syd about terminating me, paying me off. I was on the outside ... part of the older regime.''
Meeting with Thrift was the best thing that could have happened to Demeter and Salem.
``Syd became a booster of mine,'' Demeter said. ``I thought at the end of 1986 I'd be leaving the organization,'' but instead he was assigned to return for his third stint as Salem's manager.
It proved to be a good fit. Salem won its division in the second half of the Carolina League season and beat Kinston for the Mills Cup in the playoffs. The pennant ended years of frustration for the franchise.
What about Demeter the man? He has a dry wit and, like all baseball veterans, a ready supply of anecdotes - some of which have been embellished over the years.
Branch B. Rickey, grandson of the famed Dodgers and Cardinals executive, was the Pittsburgh farm director who assigned Demeter to Salem in 1986. He offers this tale:
``I was going to Shreveport, where Steve [once] managed,'' Rickey said. ``Larry Demery [a major-league pitcher] was there on rehabilitation. I got to Shreveport the day before the team, which was on the road and taking a bus back.
``Demery had taken his [major-league] meal money to buy a guard dog while they were on the road. They started to get on the bus when Steve, who doesn't want to ride with the dog, tells Demery: `We're going to have this one of three ways. Either you and the dog will get on the bus and I'll stay; either you and I will get on the bus and the dog will stay; or the dog gets on the bus and you and I will stay.'''
Demeter recalls the Doberman was a puppy, and all three got on the bus back to Shreveport, La., though he did question the wisdom of Demery buying a guard dog.
Demeter could raise a storm with umpires, too. In his first Salem tenure in 1973, plate umpire Les Treitel ruled a ball hit by an opponent had left the park fair for a home run. Demeter was sure it was foul and was ejected after a heated exchange.
Between innings, Demeter had pitcher Charlie Janes, who was in street clothes, hang a sign that read, ``Foul Pole'' on the left-field fence by the foul pole to help Treitel with future calls.
The next week, The Roanoke World-News, ran a cartoon about the incident, showing Demeter standing on the foul line with the umpires trying to find their way along the line.
During another game, Demeter left the dugout to argue a call and came right back after one or two words. The umpire ``admitted he blew the call, so what else could I say?'' Demeter said.
``One time there was an umpire who had real bad breath. I went to argue and I told him, `Your breath is so bad, I can't argue with you.'''
Players also felt his wrath. Former Salem outfielder Eugenio Cotes was at Shreveport with Demeter.
``He was like a sore thumb,'' Demeter said of Cotes. ``It was always, `Me go home, me go home,' when he didn't like something. You didn't pay much attention to him.
``After one game we had just lost, he started, `Me go home.' So I went to the locker room, packed his bag, threw it out in the hallway and said, `You go home.' He got his bag and left. The next day he was there again and I never heard, `Me go home' again.''
Demeter thinks he had one chance to be Pittsburgh's major-league manager when he was guiding Class AAA Charleston (W.Va.) in 1974. What chance he had, though, disappeared when he managed former major-league pitcher Steve Blass, who was sent to the minors to try to regain his control.
``I was fired or reassigned as manager of Charleston because the people there didn't understand what we had to do with Blass. He worked hard and tried,'' said Demeter, who had to keep using the pitcher in hopes he would find the control that made him a standout in the 1971 World Series.
Today, Blass is an announcer for the Pirates and has a lot of stories, just like the ones that surround Demeter.
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: The Roanoke World-News ran a cartoon about a 1973by CNBincident when former Salem Buccaneers manager Steve Demeter had a
pitcher post a sign on a Municipal Field foul pole after arguing
with an umpire that an opposing home run should have been ruled
foul.