Pirates 2011: It’s About The Owners STUPID

What do the Greeks at Thermopylae, Billy Conn vs. Joe Louis, and the 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates have in common? Of course, they all had/have very little chance of winning. Unlike the Greeks and Conn, however, the Pirates offer very little to root for.

Conn vs Louis 1941

This year’s Pirates are almost universally predicted to finish last in the National League Central. They have no offence, pitching, or defense (other than that they are great). Not even the Pirate shills at the PG, KDKA, WTAE, and WPXI, who try to pass themselves off as sports experts, are predicting anything more than last. I guess the 18-year losing streak finally dawned on them.

For years, the Pirate mantra has been, “Trust us; we are building for the future.” Meanwhile, we have slipped into the 21st century and it feels like we will be slipping into the 22nd before the corner gets turned. I once thought that the Pirate ownership and management just lacked the baseball expertise to build a winning team, but a couple of years ago (I am also a slow learner), I realized it was more than incompetence. As my poker-playing buddy, EastEndJohnny puts it, “it's not that they are losers; it’s that they like being losers.”

Mark Cuban

I have been going to Pirate games since 1954, but I started to feel so manipulated and cheated that I stopped buying tickets altogether. The city of Pittsburgh gave the Pirates one of the best and most beautiful baseball parks in the majors. This greatly increased the value of the team and so how are we repaid? I would much rather have the crazy antics of former Pittsburgher Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, than the complacency of the former and current owners.

Clint Hurdle

During the off-season, the Pirates replaced manager John Russell with former Colorado Rockies skipper Clint Hurdle. In eight years with the Rockies, Hurdle had one winning season and compiled a 534-625 W-L record. They also acquired firstbaseman Lyle Overbay ($5 million) who batted .243 with 20 HRs in 154 games last year. This is in addition to last year’s regular Pirate firstbaseman Garrett Jones ($425K) who batted .247 with 21 HRs in 158 games. I guess that they do not realize that you can only play one firstbaseman at a time. This is not exactly encouraging.

So it looks like I will not be buying any Pirate tickets again this year. Of course, if a couple of freebies happen to drop into my lap, I will not turn them down. To be honest, I am a little interested in how the youngsters (McCutchen, Walker, Alvarez, Cedeno, and Tabata) are going to do.