Apr 29, 2017 5 min read

How many times have you seen Bill Mazeroski’s home run that beat the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series?

The number depends on how old you are because it’s safe to say every person reading this has seen it multiple times.

I saw it live on television because I’m old.

It’s probably easy for you to get a picture of it in your mind’s eye. You can see Yankees left fielder Yogi Berra turn away from home plate and head for the wall while hoping to field what he thought would be only an extra-base it.

Until Tuesday, there was one man on the planet who had a view of the greatest home run baseball history that nobody else had.

On Oct. 12, 1960, Dick Jeffers, known to everyone as “Shakes” was leaning out of a window that was inside the Forbes Field scoreboard, just above that left field wall.

Shakes died Tuesday night after a short illness. He was 72.

If you live near Peters Township, you’ve probably met him. If not, you’ve definitely seen him. He was the guy who always had three beautiful golden retrievers hanging out of the windows of his SUV. He referred to them as “the kids.”

I wrote two books, “Just Watch The Game” and “Just Watch The Game (Again).” I have since combined the two volumes into one simply called “Just Watch The Game.”

It’s a total of 69 short chapters recalling interesting people and events that I encountered/covered in my 40-plus years in the Pittsburgh media.

The chapter on Shakes is probably my favorite.

Shakes happened to mention to me that his dad, John, was in charge of the Forbes Field scoreboard in the 1950s and early ’60s and that he went to work with him for every game.

I immediately started pumping him with questions and, for a kid who grew up watching Pirates games, the answers were priceless.

And Shakes, a lifelong fan of all the Pittsburgh sports teams, including the Penguins long before it was cool, loved telling the stories.

There was a four-man crew working inside the scoreboard. Shakes’ dad, whose name was John and was known as “Jeff,” would sit by the ticker and call out scores. The other guys would put the plates in the inning holes on the board and fans were able to follow every big league game inning by inning.

Jeff Jeffers made extra money by loading up on concessions on the way into work every day and then selling them to visiting players who would come in from the left-field bullpen.

There were hot dogs on the grill and they usually had beer.

A ball that was hit into the left-field corner and bounced through the door into the scoreboard was a ground rule double.

Shakes turned a few Pirates doubles into triples by kicking the ball back on to the warning track.

He and Pirates left fielder Bob Skinner worked out a way to communicate whether a ball was playable or going to hit the scoreboard based on a shout from Shakes.

Shakes said the only visiting left fielder who got help was Stan Musial because, “He was from Donora.”

When he found out that a large group of bookies from Bloomfield liked to sit in the left-field bleachers and that they liked to bet on Yankees games, Shakes would mess with them by putting a 5 or a 6 in one of the innings to see their reaction.

Then he would pull it out and put up a zero.

He was thrown out of a few games for that.

For Game 7 in 1960, it was standing-room-only in the scoreboard. Shakes, always thinking ahead, even managed to find a spot for his high school guidance counselor.

Since there was only one game on the scoreboard, the guests had plenty of holes for watching the game.

Shakes went to the spot at the end of the board. You couldn’t see that window from the field because it actually looked out over the wall.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Maz swung at Ralph Terry’s second pitch. “My first instinct was that it wasn’t going to clear. I looked at Yogi Berra and he wasn’t moving very fast.”

He was the only guy on the planet who watched Berra watch that ball heading for history.

“Everybody comes running toward the end of the scoreboard yelling “Is it gone? Is it gone?”

“I can’t talk. The ball is about 10 feet away. I heard it hit something on the way out – ivy on the top of the wall or leaves on the tree. I thought that baby’s not gonna make it.”

“It just snuck out.”

A couple of years ago, Shakes got somebody with the Pirates to get him a tour of the scoreboard at Wrigley Field, which is a near replica of the one he worked in at Forbes Field.

He watched a Pirates game from there and enjoyed telling war stories with the crew.

A Pittsburgh newspaper just happened to feature a huge picture of the scoreboard on the front of its sports section the next day. You can see one head sticking out of an empty inning window.

Shakes, of course.

Glad he got to check that off his bucket list.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.