Any baseball fan could have fun being around Richie Hebner.
Less than two weeks after turning 77-years-old, Hebner escapes the cold New England air in his native Boston bound for Southwest Florida. Baseball, a career that was an 18-year run with five American and National League clubs, is calling. Last lacing up his spikes and oiling his glove 40 years ago, Hebner returns to an old haunt—Pirate City in Bradenton. He is scheduled for a week’s worth of contributing to making fans of the game have the ultimate on-field (and clubhouse) experience.
Appearing at the “Southern Home of the Pittsburgh Pirates,” where the National League Central club has held their spring training since 1969, Hebner, along with 15 other alumni from the club, are participating in a weekslong fantasy camp. Fans of ages 30 and up, for a fee, get to live out their life-long dream of putting on an official MLB issued uniform, and be treated as those who are signed to any club’s 26-man roster.
Appearing physically no different than at his playing days’ weight of 200 pounds, Hebner is energetic and has a spring in his step at Willie Stargell Field. At 9:40 a.m. on the camp’s first day of workouts, Hebner, along with his fellow former Pirate Don Robinson, is the first to report to one of four fields that will be busy with two games planned daily all week. The 60-degree weather has Hebner, who spent nine of his 18 MLB seasons with Pittsburgh, eager to begin evaluating a number of the 93 campers who have made the journey.
“I walk three miles daily,” Hebner told The Epoch Times earlier this week during a phone conversation about his routine back home in Walpole, Massachusetts. “Once in a while, the ice on the sidewalks interrupts my routine.”
Hebner is a man who embraces routine. Perhaps the former infielder still connects with fans who years back rooted for him because of his “regular guy” reputation. Joining the Pirates in 1968 for the first time, as a September “call-up,” and being a member of the club’s 1971 World Series championship squad, like a majority of the campers, Hebner had to work a “regular job” in the off-season to make ends meet.
“I had to have a job once the baseball season ended. My first year’s salary was $6,000. When I got paid, I'd cash my check at a convenience store, buy a drink and a sandwich, and thought I was doing well.”
With the salary structure as it is today where the minimum wage of MLB contracts is $760,000, current ballplayers don’t need to scramble for seasonal employment. However, the line of work Hebner pursued, and would remain at for 40 continuous years was an interesting choice. Along with his brother Dennis, the Hebner brothers were gravediggers at a West Roxbury, Mass. cemetery that their father Bill Hebner was managing.
Most, if not all of the 93 campers pretending to be Pirates for the week know of the hard work that their guest instructor for the week gladly pursued for decades.
“There was no backhoe,” Hebner explains of the tools he and his brother were given for their daily assignments at the cemetery. “Me and my brother had shovels. That was it. I'll never forget the Blizzard of 1978 when more than two feet of snow fell. Burials didn’t stop in the winter.”
Joe Billetdeaux, who has been with the Pirates’ organization for 37 years and has coordinated the past 18 annual fantasy camps in Bradenton, tells of enlisting Hebner at least a handful of times to serve as an ambassador for the ultimate fan experience. The former Pirate states that he has been involved with other organizations’ fantasy camps but singles out Pittsburgh as going the “extra yard” in making it as professional as what he experienced as a player. Putting on his Pirates’ uniform, with his familiar No. 3 on the back of his jersey, seems fitting to the loyal fan base taking early morning batting practice.
While most campers are familiar with Hebner’s gravedigger days, few are aware of his routine for the past 30 years of driving a hearse for funeral homes. Hebner, who served as a major and minor league hitting coach after the 1985 season, finds comfort in driving the dearly departed.
“I get no complaints on the type of music I play, while going to the cemetery,” Hebner said, chuckling.
Making dreams come true for campers and having them go home with memories of a lifetime is something Hebner takes very seriously. He recognizes some faces within the sea of Pittsburgh uniforms surrounding him. Many attending the week-long event are repeat customers.
“People pay good money to come here. You want to make sure they have fun. Times goes by fast, and before you know it, we’re all back on the plane going home,” says Hebner.
Going from rookie wages of $6,000 to contracts calling for him to be paid several hundred thousand dollars per season when retiring after playing in his final two seasons with the Chicago Cubs, Hebner is content, if not proud to have come up in the game during the era that he did. Signed as a teenager out of high school, making his debut with Pittsburgh when he was 20 years old, and experiencing five National League Eastern Division titles along with the World Series ring that he earned, Hebner can converse with people of all economic backgrounds.
To the campers, Hebner is the guy whom they want to autograph the baseball cards they have been collecting since childhood. As the other Pirates’ instructors begin filtering to the four playing fields for player evaluation, Hebner is watching the grounds crew watering the grass and raking the dirt at home plate, and the pitcher’s mound. The gravedigger in him has also made the trip south. Working with his hands; manual labor remains as attractive to him as a day’s work the same as swinging a wooden bat in a ball game.
A lifetime of hitting more than 200 MLB home runs, and standing in the batter’s box in such iconic workplaces as Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, and Wrigley Field, hasn’t changed who Hebner is. Thank goodness, for the fantasy campers at Pirate City, such a man is in their lives for one week.
