Honus Wagner

• After going 91-49 in 1903, the Pirates met the Boston Americans in the first World Series. They lost the best-of-nine affair five games to three, with pitcher Deacon Phillippe throwing five complete games, winning two. The Pirates won the World Series in 1909, besting the Detroit Tigers and Ty Cobb in seven games. This Pirates club featured the great shortstop Honus Wagner, who had been with Pittsburgh since 1897 and was by then 35 years old. Wagner was one of the first five men inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1936, along with Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson and Cobb. A shortstop, Wagner hit .327 lifetime with 1,732 runs batted in. He won the National League batting title eight times, finished with 3,415 base hits and stole 722 bases.
  
  

1920s

• The Pirates won two pennants during the 1920s and one championship. They met the Washington Senators in the 1925 Series and came back from a three-games-to-one deficit to beat the Senators four games to three. In 1927, they also took the National League flag, but were swept by the powerful New York Yankees in four games in the post-season. These Pirate clubs had great hitting, with the likes of Kiki Cuyler, Pie Traynor and Paul and Lloyd Waner. The Waner brothers were a feared duo. Paul spent 15 seasons as a Pirate and hit at least .321 in a dozen of them. Lloyd hit .316 lifetime and was a top run scorer. Traynor was a fine-fielding third baseman who batted .320 over his career and seven times knocked in over 100 runs (without hitting more than 12 home runs during those seasons). Cuyler, who along with the other three mentioned went to the Hall of Fame, hit .321 lifetime and stole 328 bases.
  
  

Ralph Kiner

• Pittsburgh rarely contended during the period from 1934 through 1960. One of their lone bright spots was an outfielder named Ralph Kiner. The right-handed hitting Kiner was the home-run champ in the NL for seven consecutive years from 1946 through 1952. In two of those years, he shared the title with Johnny Mize of the New York Giants (1947 and 1948). Kiner hit over 40 home runs five times, with a career-high 54 in 1949. A bad back forced him to retire at the age of 32 in 1955 and he was admitted into the Hall of Fame in 1975.
  
  

Roberto Clemente

• Roberto Clemente-www.biografiasyvidas.com
  
  The next great Pirate was Roberto Clemente, a Puerto Rican native that came to the club in 1955. Clemente was a right fielder with a very powerful throwing arm. He had over 20 outfield assists in a season five times and finished with 266. Clemente won the NL batting title in 1961, 1964, 1965 and 1967 and was a lifetime .317 batter who won the Most Valuable Player of the NL in 1966. He played on two title winners. In 1960, the Pirates beat the Yankees in seven games in the World Series despite losing games by scores of 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0. In the climatic seventh game, second baseman Bill Mazeroski broke a 9-9 ninth inning tie with a home run over the left-field fence at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field. In 1971, Clemente had a hit in every game of a seven-game Series with the Orioles. Pittsburgh won that one when pitcher Steve Blass beat Baltimore 2-1 in a complete game effort in the deciding tilt. Clemente had exactly 3,000 hits in his career. He perished in a plane crash off the coast of Puerto Rico on December 31st, 1972 while trying to bring needed supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. He was taken into the Hall of Fame the next year under a special exemption of the five-year waiting period after retirement.
  
  

Stargell and Bonds

• In 1979, the Pirates once again took the Series in seven games over the Orioles, with slugger Willie Stargell, a future Hall of Famer, hitting a deciding home run in game seven. Stargell hit 475 home runs in 21 campaigns with Pittsburgh before retiring in 1982. The Pirates won three NL East titles from 1990 through 1992, but failed to advance to the World Series each time. Barry Bonds was their standout player during those years. Bonds hit 92 home runs and had 333 runs batted in during those division-winning years, but left Pittsburgh via free agency to play for the San Francisco Giants after the 1992 season. The Pirates fell on hard times after that. Being a small-market club, they were unable to build the revenue to attract top-notch free agents such as clubs like the Yankees and Dodgers can. Pittsburgh was realigned into the Central Division of the National League in 1994; their best finish was second in 1997.