The Pirates lost their 82nd game this year. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be news, but in
doing so the Pirates have set two records.
The first is their well-known streak of now 20 consecutive losing
season, a North American professional sports record. The second is that they became the first team
ever to be 16 games above .500 after 108 games to not finish the season at .500
or better.
Nevertheless, you might still not be convinced that this is
news. And maybe you’re right, maybe it’s
not news. “Pirates Continue Losing,”
makes for a lousy headline. But as a
23-year-old Pirates fan and self-admitted sports fanatic, I now have a new
sporting emotional low, and I’m going to tell you about why it’s so
depressing.
You’d have to ask my mother, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been a
Pirates fan since the womb. My parents
are both Pirates’ fans and my dad’s parents were both Pirates fans as
well. It was never even going to be a
choice that I made; it was just going to be the case. I’m just old enough that, although I have no
memory of it, I did attend a couple of Pirates’ games during the playoff years
of 1990-1992.
When we moved to Columbus, Ohio, I remember travelling to
Cincinnati to see the Pirates on opening weekend one season. By
that point, I was old enough to read the newspaper, and I would check the
sports section every day to find out what the Pirates had done the night
before. When we moved back to
Pittsburgh, my family was so excited about being back that we even bought a
package of 20 home games for the 2003 season.
That was the team that included Jason Kendall, Brian Giles, Aramis
Ramirez, Reggie Sanders, Matt Stairs, and Kenny Lofton. It was a one of the better teams the Pirates
have had since 1992. They won 75 games
that year.
But Giles, Lofton, Sanders, Stairs, and Ramirez were all
gone after that season, and the team went downhill in a hurry. From 2005-2010 the Pirates averaged just under
65 wins per season. My family kept going
to Pirates games, though. I remember
being there when Freddy Sanchez won the batting title in 2006.
Of course, the Steelers won the Super Bowl following the
2006 season. And of course, as any
Pittsburgher does, I followed them through the playoffs that year. And a couple of years later the Steelers and
the Penguins both won titles in the same year.
But football was never the first sport (or the second or the third
really) in my family, and so although I could experience the excitement of being
a part of the celebrations, I never felt the same ownership of them that my
friends did.
Pittsburgh, of course, went absolutely bonkers on all three
occasions. During college, I found
myself in Spain and Switzerland, places in which people might have heard of
Pittsburgh but they didn’t know a lot about the city. My one sentence about Pittsburgh is usually
that it used to be one of the most important cities to American industry, and
now it’s one of the most important cities to American sports. And I am absolutely convinced that Pittsburgh’s
success past in present in the two distinct fields is derived from the pride
and commitment of its people.
There is also no city as crazy about its sports as
Pittsburgh is. When people ask me what
there is to do in Pittsburgh, I tell them that for the Pittsburgh experience, they
should come when one of the teams is in the playoffs, and go to bars and be
amongst the people of Pittsburgh. It’s a
unique experience. I remember during one
of the Steelers’ playoff games, I saw pictures of the biggest shopping center
in Pittsburgh. There weren’t any cars in
the middle of the day; it was completely empty.
There wasn't even anyone working. Can you imagine that happening in New York or
Los Angeles or Miami or Phoenix?
The thing that many people, even Pittsburghers, don’t realize is that the city cares just as deeply about the Pirates. For a couple of months this summer, the city had the festive atmosphere of a January weekend of playoff football. PNC Park was full to overflowing every weekend in June and July. People were talking about the Pirates downtown every day. And baseball even took precedence over football for the first time in my life.
I was at the Steelers’ preseason football game during the
Pirates’ epic 19-inning thriller in St. Louis.
During the 17th inning, in which both the Pirates and the
Cardinals scored, I was clustered around a tiny monitor in an apparel stall
without about 50 other people. And the
result of the game was announced on the loudspeaker after the Pirates won. At that moment, I was absolutely convinced
that the Pirates would win 82 games this year.
It was too perfect.
Last year, they were playing over .500 baseball when That Call happened,
and the Braves were gifted a (yes that’s right) 19-inning victory of the
Pirates. The Pirates win in 19 innings
this year against division rivals and fellow playoff contenders St. Louis, and
how could they not go on to at least break the streak? And as I mentioned at the top, what team had
ever been 16 games over .500 2/3rds of the way through the season and then not
finished at .500 or better? Oh right,
none.
What I’m building up to here is the idea that there couldn't be a more heartbreaking scenario for sports fans than what has happened to
Pirates fans this year. We live in a
city that is absolutely sports-crazy and has one of the best football and
hockey teams in the country. You've been
a Pirates fan all your life, and all you want is for them to play slightly
above average baseball for a season because, well, you've never seen it. And all of sudden, for two months in the
summer, the Pirates couldn't stop winning.
They were in first place at the All-Star break!
And then the team disintegrates. The bullpen goes from being one of the best
to one of the worst in the league. The
starting pitching can’t seem to get to the 5th inning. Your MVP-candidate All-Star loses 40 points
off his batting average in a month and stops hitting home runs. The defense can’t stop making errors. It wasn't just the wheels coming off. It was the wheels, the suspension, the
engine, the doors, the mirrors, the windows, the axels, and even the sunroof
all breaking at the same time.
Fortunately, I moved to Chicago in early September, so I
haven’t been subjected to the worst part of it.
I haven’t watched virtually every game, as I did through August. And I haven’t been subjected to the ridicule
of Steelers and Penguins fans who just know
the Pirates are a joke and always will be.
And it’s not like the Steelers and Penguins fans don’t want the Pirates to succeed; they do. It’s just that at the end of the season, they
can go back to the Steelers and the Penguins and forget about the Pirates. But for those of us who are Pirates fans, we
have no such luck.
If the Pirates are lucky, the Steelers will be dreadful this
year and the NHL lockout will result in the cancellation of a full season. The Pirates will be back next year with a
talented crop of young outfielders (Marte, McCutchen, Snider), and maybe they’ll
sign a pitcher or two over the offseason.
But if the Pirates are unlucky, the Steelers will make it to the Super Bowl, the Penguins will make a playoff run, and even if the
Pirates are playing good baseball into July next year, the question remain: "Will anyone care?" They might have broken our hearts just one time too many.
