On August 7th, 1958 the Pittsburgh Pirates signed 18-year-old Willie Stargell.

Willie Stargell finished his 21-year Hall of Fame with 475 homers. All of them for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

One of the highlights for me of my trip to Pittsburgh and PNC park last week was seeing the Willie Stargell statue.

I like when teams put statues of iconic players and managers outside their ballparks. The Twins have statues of Kirby Puckett, Tom Kelly, Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, Kent Hrbek, and others.

When you visit Wrigley Field, there is a statue of Ernie Banks. Outside Camden Yards there is one of Brooks Robinson and Cal Ripken. Lambeau Field in Green Bay has a great one of Vince Lombardi.

Stargell is a player that definitely deserves a statue. As a fixture and leader on so many great Pirate teams for so many years he is the very definition of an iconic player.

I never got to see Stargell play in person. By the early 1980s, when I was living in Chicago, he was retired. Baseball Reference lists Stargell as 6-2 and 188 pounds. In my minds-eye I always thought of him as twice that size. More like 6-5, 230-pound right-fielder Dave Parker. Stargell seemed like he should always be the biggest man on the field.

Stargell died in 2001 at the age of 61. In Pittsburgh and in the minds of baseball fans like me, he will always live on.