If you talk the talk, you better walk the walk.

Former Pittsburgh Pirates announcer Jim Rooker learned that lesson the hard way.

On June 8, 1989, in the final game of an eight-game road trip, the Pirates -- winless in the first seven games -- roared to a 10-0 lead in the top of the first inning against the Phillies at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Even a team spiraling as severely as the Pirates couldn’t let this get away.

Rooker, a former Pirates pitcher and World Series hero, speculated on the radio broadcast that another loss, especially after being spotted 10 runs, could result in a miserable plane ride home.

“If we lose this game, I’ll walk back to Pittsburgh,” Rooker said on Pittsburgh’s KDKA Radio.

And then something happened.

Philadelphia’s Von Hayes hit a pair of two-run homers. Steve Jeltz, a switch-hitting shortstop who had just one home run in his first six Major League seasons, hit two home runs, one from each side of the plate. The Phillies scored five runs in the bottom of the eighth and took the lead.

Final score: Phillies 15, Pirates 11.

What did that guy say he was going to do if the Pirates lost this game?

Rooker was a popular broadcaster in Pittsburgh, but during his career as a pitcher with the Pirates (1973-80), he went 82-65. In 1979, with the Pirates trailing the Orioles three games to one in the World Series, Rooker started Game 5. His five innings of one-run ball set the tone in a 7-1 Pirates win that began their historic comeback. The “We Are Family” Pirates, led by Willie Stargell, went on to win the championship in seven games to complete one of the greatest comebacks in World Series history.

That winter, when play-by-play man Lanny Frattare was unavailable to host one of the Pirates' winter caravan stops, Rooker stepped in, and that was how his broadcasting career started. Rooker impressed enough people in the Pirates organization that he was offered a job on the radio after his playing career ended.

“It just kind of fell in my lap,” Rooker said. “I was very lucky.”

His tell-it-like-it-is style quickly endeared Pirates fans, but Rooker was careful not to be overly critical. Maybe that’s why listeners all perked up when a bold and shocking statement came flying out of his mouth. But how many people caught a throwaway comment during a 3-hour and 20-minute broadcast?

Well, by 1989 standards, Rooker had gone viral. As the Phillies' comeback began, people in the TV and radio crews began spreading the news.

Rooker was still shaking his head about the absurdity of this latest loss and had kind of forgotten about the first-inning comment when he walked out of the radio booth and into the Veterans Stadium press lounge. That’s where legendary Phillies announcer Harry Kalas greeted Rooker.

“Well, Rook,” Kalas called out in his Hall of Fame baritone. “It looks like you stuck your foot in your mouth on this one, huh?”

“We all got a big kick out of it,” Rooker said. “Everybody in the press room started laughing.”

Still, no one was going to take it literally, right? After all, it's over 300 miles from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

Nobody in the Pirates traveling party said anything to Rooker. They weren’t in the mood. Well, almost nobody.

As Rooker walked onto the team plane – no one would deny him a seat after all - he passed Jim Leyland. Rooker had known the Pirates manager since their days as Detroit Tigers Minor League teammates two decades earlier.

“Nice goin', Rook,” Leyland remarked as Rooker walked past.

“It was like I put the black cat on him or something like that,” Rooker recalled.

The team landed back in Pittsburgh, and Rooker got home and into bed around 3 a.m. He was awakened by a phone call at 10 a.m. It was Marvin "Goose" Goslin, a talk show host on the Pirates' flagship radio station. Goslin asked him to go on the air to talk about his comment the night before.

By now, everyone had heard. Telephone switchboards were lit up at the radio station and at the Pirates' offices, demanding that Rooker keep his word and walk the walk.

Were they serious? It was just a joke, and now it was taking on a life of its own. But Rooker didn’t run away from his comment. Instead, he decided to run – er, walk – with it.

“I’ll do it under one condition,” Rooker said. “We do it for charity.”

Two months later, Rooker and the Pirates held a press conference to announce “Rook’s Unintentional Walk,” a 300-plus mile trek mapped out from Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia to Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.

Rooker wasn’t doing this alone. His good friend Carl Dozzi volunteered to make the trip with him. While they were scheduled to set out on Oct. 5, just a few days after the season ended, they weren’t sure how long it would take to complete the journey.

Rooker and Dozzi trained with two-to three-mile walks in September. While the prep helped, it didn’t truly prepare them for the road ahead. These two men would basically be walking a marathon every day for two weeks.

“We would get up and start out at 8 in the morning, and it would be an 8-to-5 job doing this all day long,” Rooker said. “We had a podiatrist from Philly who went with us the first three days and showed us how to soak our feet and put Vaseline on them. We got three different shoe sizes because your feet swell so much from the blisters. It got to be torture.”

In between the torture, they managed to have some fun. Local and national TV crews spotlighted Rooker, but the news spread even further than he could have imagined.

“We were out in Amish country [Lancaster County, Penn.], and this one guy is coming toward us [in a horse and buggy],” Rooker said. “He sticks his head out as we go by and says, ‘Boo Pirates!’

“I looked at Carl and said, ‘They don’t have radios or TVs. How does he even know who we are?’”

Along the way, people stopped to talk, make donations, serve meals or just walk alongside them for a few miles.

“One day, we were out in the middle of nowhere. We were by a nine-hole golf course, and we stopped and played nine holes of golf just to do something,” Rooker laughed. “It’s so boring. We had to come up with all kinds of things.

“In another town, we stopped in, this kid was washing windows on the main street. We took his squeegee and his pail and told him to sit down for a while, and we started washing windows for him.”

The goal, though, was still to raise money for a cause. Along the route back home, they stopped by the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, for which they raised $81,000.

Another $10,000 was raised for the family of Al Ricciuti, an old teammate of Rooker’s who was battling Multiple Sclerosis and needed funds for a new van equipped with a lift.

“We went way back,” Rooker said. “Me, him and Leyland played together in the Minor Leagues.”

Rooker looked up along the home stretch near Pittsburgh on Route 30 and saw Ricciuti and his wife Audrey on the roadside cheering him on.

“I got a little emotional when I saw them,” he said.

On Oct. 17, 12 days after leaving Philadelphia, Rooker and Dozzi crossed the finish line as they walked into Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Rooker was met there by a crowd of family, fans and supporters. He had kept his word, covering about 25 miles per day and raising nearly $100,000 for charitable causes.

“I’d never do it again, but it was quite an experience,” Rooker said.

Rooker is now 82 years old and lives in Jacksonville, Fla. He was back in Pittsburgh last summer for the 1979 world champion Pirates' reunion, his most cherished memory from a 13-year career. Sometimes, when people ask him about his one famous walk, he likes to remind them he also had 103 Major League wins and a World Series ring.

One memory from the walk still comes back to Rooker and startles him when he thinks about it.

It happened near Sideling Hill on Route 30, about 120 miles from Pittsburgh. While walking uphill and against the traffic – they always walked against traffic so they could see the oncoming cars and trucks – Rooker suggested to Dozzi that they move off the road a bit. He had just spotted a car getting ready to make a turn in their direction.

Moments later, an 18-wheeler appeared from over the hill, veering entirely off the road to avoid hitting the turning vehicle Rooker had spied. The truck motored right over the path they had been walking and kept right on going, having just missed hitting the car and the roadside pedestrians. Rooker and Dozzi would have been steamrolled for certain if they hadn’t just moved off the shoulder a few moments earlier.

“What made me do that, I don’t know,” Rooker said. “Believe me, if we stayed on our normal path, and we did the whole two weeks like that, he would have gone right over the top of both of us, and we wouldn’t be here today.”

Mostly, though, Rooker and those around him went on to laugh about the whole adventure. In a game early the next season, when the Pirates had jumped out to a big lead, Frattare turned to Rooker in the radio booth and smiled.

“Got anything to say?” Frattare asked.

“No, not really,” Rooker replied with a laugh.

The funniest thing about the whole saga might be this piece of trivia. The starting pitcher for the Pirates on that infamous June night when they blew the 10-0 lead that started all this was also the guy who replaced Rooker in the KDKA radio booth five years later.

His name?

Bob Walk.