Ron Cook
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PITTSBURGH — Neil Walker asked for a few minutes when I called him Tuesday morning to talk about the passing of his dad. He was getting his son, Nolan, ready for school. I thought about that little Walker boy as I waited. He won’t turn 4 until next week and isn’t really old enough to remember too much about his grandfather. He missed out on something really special.
Tom Walker, a former big-league pitcher, died Monday morning at 74 after a rough fight with pancreatic cancer. He was one of the kindest, friendliest people I have met in sports, the kind of granddad every kid would love to have. He also might have been the most interesting for many reasons, three that really stand out:
One, Walker had a son who followed him into baseball and became a star for the Pirates, the hometown team.
Two, Walker was with Roberto Clemente in Puerto Rico shortly before Clemente died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve, 1972.
And three, Walker is the only pitcher in organized baseball to throw a 15-inning no-hitter.
Fascinating, all of it.
It was a steamy August night in New Mexico in 1971 when Walker pitched that Double-A Texas League gem for the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs against the Albuquerque Dukes.
“No one knows for sure how many pitches I threw because no one kept pitch counts back in those days,” Walker said. “I’ve heard 168 or 176 or 193. I’m saying it was 193.”
Who wouldn’t say it was 193 pitches?
“Sounds to me like maybe it was a big-fish story,” Neil Walker said, giggling.
“You know what hit me every time I hear that story? He had two hip replacements, two knee replacements and was supposed to have a left shoulder replacement. The only part of his body that was intact and still good when he passed was his right shoulder.”
Tom Walker’s story about Clemente amazes me every time I hear it.
Walker was pitching for Clemente’s winter league team in Puerto Rico and helped Clemente load a plane with relief supplies for Earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua. The old, overloaded plane crashed shortly after takeoff.
“I told him I would be glad to make the trip with him to help him unload,” Walker said this past New Year’s Eve on the 50th anniversary of Clemente’s death. “I even volunteered to lay down in the aisle because there was no room in the plane. I can still hear him say, ‘No. Stay here. Party.’ “
That story is just one of many reasons Neil Walker is proud of his pop.
“His selfless personality and what he stood for, it doesn’t surprise me that he was one of the guys who put his hand up and said, ‘Let me help.’ “
Neil is the youngest of Tom Walker’s four kids. Tom loved that he and his wife, Carolyn, could leave their Gibsonia home and be at PNC Park in 32 minutes — “exactly 32 minutes,” he would say — to watch Neil play for the Pirates. It was one of the great joys of his life to see his son become a face of the franchise, along with Andrew McCutchen, and help the team finally win in 2013 after 20 consecutive years of losing.
“All of a sudden, he’s on ‘SportsCenter,’ ” Tom Walker told me years ago. ” ‘There’s Neil on TV. This can’t be happening.’ You can’t wait to see it again and again. You can’t get enough of it.”
Neil Walker played for the Pirates from 2009-15 before finishing his career in 2020. What a resource his dad was for him. Tom Walker spent six years in the majors with Montreal, Detroit, St. Louis and the California Angels.
“It’s funny, sometimes after games you’d be sitting next to a guy on the bus, and you’d hear his dad on the phone say after 0-for-4 night with three strikeouts, ‘Why did you swing at that pitch?’ ” Neil Walker said. “That was never the relationship I had with my dad. If he knew I was struggling, we wouldn’t talk about why. We would talk more about preparation and things that were going through my head. He would always ask, “Are you being a good teammate? Are you being a leader?’ As a young player, I would think, ‘What does it matter? I’m not getting hits.’ But the more I played, the more I realized that taking the thoughts off yourself and focusing on others and being a good teammate is such a valuable thing. I learned that from him at a young age.”
Neil Walker said he was touched by the number of people he heard from after his father’s death. Not just his former manager, Clint Hurdle, and former teammates such as Gerrit Cole and Pedro Alvarez, both of whom frequently visited the Walker home for Sunday dinner after home games. “But people at Giant Eagle and Ace Hardware, people he would talk to when he made his rounds … I heard from one guy in Florida who was a batboy with the Expos back in the day. He had lost his dad at a very young age. My dad took him under his wing and was kind of a father figure to him, a big brother to him. Stories like that really warm my heart. He was such a great guy. He really lived an incredible life.”
Neil Walker’s older brothers, Matt and Sean, and his older sister, Carrie, all have three children. Neil’s two kids, Nora, 7, and Nolan, are the youngest and make 11 grandchildren. Their grandfather got such a kick out of watching all of them in their activities, every bit as much as he got from watching Neil in the big leagues.
“He tried hard every day to be involved, to preach positivity,” Neil Walker said. “We’re really going to miss him.”
A lot of us will.
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