The Pittsburgh Pirates on Saturday announced their 2025 Hall of Fame honorees, all three of them World Series champions with the Bucs.
Outfielder Kiki Cuyler, pitcher Vernon Law, and outfielder/first baseman Al “Scoops” Oliver will be inducted prior to the August 22 game against Colorado.
Kiki Cuyler played 18 seasons of Major League Baseball, the first seven of them with the Pirates, from 1921 to 1927. He was on the World Series champion 1925 Bucs and the 1927 World Series team that lost to the Yankees. He hit .336 in his Pirates career with 680 hits and 415 runs scored in 525 games. he was elected into the national Baseball Hall of Fame in 1968.
Vernon Law pitched his entire 16-year career for the Pirates, missing the 1952 and ’53 seasons to serve in the Korean War. He and Doug Drabek are the only Pirates to ever win the Cy Young Award. He won his Cy Young in the World Series year of 1960, when he won twenty games, and led MLB with eighteen complete games. He was 2-0 with a 3.44 ERA in the Series win over the Yankees. Law was 162-147 in his career with a 3.77 ERA and 119 complete games despite playing for some of the worst teams in baseball history during the 1950s.
Al Oliver played the first ten of his eighteen seasons in MLB with the Pirates, making three All-Star teams (he was an All-Star seven times in his career). He was second in Rookie of the Year voting in 1969 and he hit 14 home runs with 64 RBIs for the Pirates’ World Series-winning team in 1971. In his ten seasons as a Buc, Oliver had a .296 batting average and 135 home runs.
In a prepared statement, Pirates chairman Bob Nutting said, “The 2025 class of inductees all have made significant historical contributions to the organization and are very deserving of this prestigious recognition. Kiki was the hero of the 1925 World Series championship for the Pirates. Vernon was the club’s first Cy Young Award winner and a member of our world champion 1960 team. Al was a key contributor on our 1971 World Series winning team and a part of Major League Baseball’s first all-minority starting lineup in September of that season.
“Their induction into the Pirates Hall of Fame will ensure that their legacy and contributions to the Pirates will live on for generations to come.”
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