Post-Gazette Thrift on the day the Pirates hired him in 1985. Click photo for larger image.

From the beginning, you just knew he was going to be a little different. How many people are named Sydnor? And, really, who spells Syd with a y?

"It ain't easy resurrecting the dead," Sydnor W. Thrift Jr. said memorably in his country bumpkin kind of way, not long after becoming the Pirates' general manager in the fall of 1985.

Pittsburgh had just endured the baseball drug trials. The Pirates had lost 104 games and attracted 735,900 fans to Three Rivers Stadium. There was speculation about the franchise moving.

Five years later, the Pirates won the first of three consecutive division championships.

You might say the resurrection was a success.

"You had to bring that comment up, didn't you?" Thrift asked this week after announcing his retirement after nearly 50 years in baseball. "I was just making an offhand remark, but I got a real chewin' out from [Pirates chairman of the board] Doug Danforth. He didn't like it at all."

As it turned out, Danforth didn't like a lot of things about Thrift. He fired him after the '88 season. In fairness to Danforth, Thrift had an enormous ego. He was good at what he did and knew it and didn't like answering to anyone, least of all the suits. He won a power play with Pirates president Mac Prine after the '87 season, but he picked the wrong fight with Danforth and president Carl Barger a year later.

It still seems a shame Thrift wasn't around to enjoy those three division titles. He might have sounded a little slow with that Southern drawl, but he was a shrewd baseball man. He did the heavy lifting when that Pirates' team was built. He traded for Doug Drabek and Bobby Bonilla and, in his most memorable deal, sent popular Tony Pena to the St. Louis Cardinals for Andy Van Slyke, Mike LaValliere and Mike Dunne. He also discovered Jim Leyland.

	Post-Gazette Said Jim Leyland of Thrift -- "I'll always be indebted . . . because he was the one guy willing to take a shot on a nobody." Click photo for larger image.

"The saddest day of my life was when I had to leave Pittsburgh," Thrift said. "My wife cried all the way back home to Virginia. Pittsburgh was always our No. 1 place ...

"There were so many wonderful people there. Mr. [Art] Rooney. ... He always had impeccable timing for showing up in my office when I needed picked up. ... Mayor [Richard] Caliguiri was so supportive. ... Eugene Litman, one of the old owners. ... He had the idea of signing Barry Bonds to a 10-year contract. Everyone thought he was crazy."

Thrift was in a reflective mood, having a hard time believing his long career could be over so quickly. To him, it seemed like yesterday that the Pirates gave him his full-time job in baseball as a scouting supervisor in '57. Yes, he was at Forbes Field when Bill Mazeroski hit the home run in '60. Who knew then that he one day would negotiate contracts with Bonds (although not the one Litman later suggested) and Sammy Sosa, among others, and answer directly to Charles O. Finley and George Steinbrenner, not to drop names?

"Ewing Kauffman, the old owner in Kansas City, was my favorite person to work for," Thrift said. "You know, I believe he was the last owner in baseball to actually have a vision."

The result was the Royals Baseball Academy, an instructional school that Thrift ran for nondrafted players for three years in the early '70s. It produced 14 major-league players before Kauffman pulled the plug.

Thrift worked for Finley in Oakland in the mid '70s. "He was a man who liked new ideas." Thrift did not speak so highly of Steinbrenner. Theirs was a doomed relationship right from the start in '89. Steinbrenner might have the only bigger ego in baseball. "He is what he is," Thrift said. "He wants to win every game."

Later, there were stops in Chicago, where Thrift was a part of the Cubs' management team that heisted Sosa from the crosstown Chicago White Sox, and in Baltimore, where Thrift couldn't build another winner despite owner Peter Angelos' deep pockets.

The truth is, Thrift never was better than he was in Pittsburgh.

"He wasn't just a sharp baseball man. He had nerve," Leyland said. "He wasn't afraid to do or try anything."

The Pena trade proved that. So did the Leyland hiring. Leyland, then a little-known third-base coach for Tony La Russa with the White Sox, had spent 11 years managing in the minors.

Post-Gazette Syd Thrift with then-Pirates youngster Barry Bonds around the batting cage in 1988. Click photo for larger image.

"I'll always be indebted to Syd Thrift," Leyland said, "because he was the one guy willing to take a shot on a nobody."

The two met at the Green Tree Holiday Inn.

"Five minutes was all I needed to realize Jim was going to be my manager," Thrift said. "I knew he was going to be great because of his energy and his knowledge of baseball from the ground up. ...

"I had to call Joe Torre back and tell him he wasn't going to get the job. I had to call Art Howe and Matt Galante and tell them the same thing. Jim was the right guy."

That's easy to say now. Leyland became one of the game's best managers. But at the time, Thrift gave him just a one-year contract for $100,000. That's not exactly stepping way out on the limb.

"Hey, let me tell you something about that," Thrift said. "I only had a one-year contract. I think I made $125,000 that first year."

Thrift fairly giggled.

"Pittsburgh got its money's worth, wouldn't you say?"

Absolutely.