CINCINNATI -- For the youngest generation of baseball fans, the 1990 National League playoffs between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati will be a novelty.
But for the baby boomers who produced today's kids, the matchup is as familiar as a Johnny Carson rerun.
The Pirates and Reds were the only National League teams that didn't make the playoffs at least once during the 1980s. But they seemed to be the only teams allowed in during the '70s.
The series they begin Thursday night is their fifth head-to-head postseason meeting, making it the most frequent matchup since baseball began divisional playoffs in 1969.
Between 1970 and 1979, each team made six appearances in what was then a five-game series. They played against each otherfour times. The only divisional playoffs in which their comingled fans of western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia had nothing to cheer or argue about were in 1977 and 1978.
The Reds dominated their playoff matchups with Pittsburgh, winning three of four series and nine of 14 games. But the action usually wasn't as lopsided as those statistics indicate, for both teams were true powerhouses throughout the decade.
Pittsburgh and Cincinnati each won two World Series during the 1970s, the Pirates in 1971 and 1979 and the Big Red Machine in 1975 and 1976. Veterans of Pittsburgh's '71 team believe they might have won back-to- back championships, too, but for one heartbreaking wild pitch by the late Bob Moose that ended the fifth and decisive game of the 1972 playoffs.
That series was by far the most exciting and competitive of the four.
Pittsburgh won the first game 5-1 in Three Rivers Stadium behind the eight-hit pitching of Steve Blass and Ramon Hernandez and the hitting of Al Oliver, who was 2-for-4 with an RBI triple and a two-run homer.
Cincinnati rebounded to win Game 2 5-3. The Reds scored four of their runs in the first to chase Moose before he retired a batter, but it was the winning relief work of Tommy Hall that made the difference. He came in for Jack Billingham with two out in the fifth, the Reds up 4-2, two Pirates on base, and a two-ball, no-strike count on Willie Stargell. Hall got the slugger on a called third strike.
Pittsburgh came back from a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2 in Game 3 at Riverfront Stadium, but Cincinnati evened the series with a 7-1 thumping in Game 4.
The Pirates took a 3-2 lead into the bottom of the ninth of Game 5, and Manager Bill Virdon called on right-handed relief ace Dave Giusti to protect it against the Reds' right-handed power hitters. But Giusti proved to be pitched out: Johnny Bench greeted him with a score-tying home run, and Tony Perez and Denis Menke followed with singles. Virdon replaced Giusti with Moose.
Moose got Cesar Geronimo on a fly to deep right, and George Foster, pinch-running for Perez, took third. Darrel Chaney popped out and Hal McRae came up to pinch-hit for reliever Clay Carroll. Moose then threw the infamous wild pitch that bounced in front of home plate past catcher Manny Sanguillen, and Foster scored to give Cincinnati the pennant, 4-3.
The Reds swept the Pirates in three games in 1970, but it took 10 innings for them to post a 3-0 victory in Game 1. Their next two triumphs also were nail-biters decided by 3-1 and 3-2 decisions.
Cincinnati also swept Pittsburgh three games in 1975, but a 21-year- old rookie southpaw named John Candelaria allowed Pirate fans to go home feeling good anyway.
The Reds took the first two games by scores of 8-3 and 6-1, but the Pirates, inspired by Candelaria's heroics, battled bravely before conceding the pennant in the 10th inning by a 5-3 score.
Candelaria took a 2-1 lead, a one-hitter and 12 strikeouts into the eighth and then struck out the next two batters for a playoff-record 14 Ks. But then his control left him: He walked pinch-hitter Merv Rettenmund and Pete Rose followed with a two-run homer for a 3-2 lead.
Pittsburgh tied the game in the ninth on Rawly Eastwick's bases- loaded walk, but the Reds scored twice off Ramon Hernandez to win the game and the pennant in the 10th.
Four years later, Pittsburgh fans got even when the aging Stargell, now called 'Pops' by his younger teammates, led 'The Fam-A-Lee' to a three-game sweep of the Reds.
Cincinnati, however, did not yield easily. It required extra innings for the Pirates to win the first two games at Riverfront. Stargell produced a three-run, 11th-inning for a 5-2 victory in Game 1. Dave Parker singled in Omar Moreno for a 3-2, 10th-inning triumph in Game 2.
Back home at Three Rivers for Game 3, the Pirates finally struck with a 7-1 triumph as their black and gold-bedecked wives climbed onto the dugout roof to lead the fans in a sing-along to the Pirates' disco them song, Sister Sledge's 'We Are Family.'
