For the good of baseball, the Pirates must remain in Pittsburgh

Sporting News, The, Oct 16, 1995 by Steve Marantz

If you were a kid at Marland Heights Grade School in Weirton, W Va., on the afternoon of October 13, 1960, you remember two things. One, the overwrought voice of Pittsburgh announcer Bob Prince on a transistor radio calling Bill Mazeroski's Game 7 home run that won the World Series. Two, a keening primal sound shaking the bricks of the Depression-era building. Kids leaping upon desks, teachers embracing, all heaven breaking loose.

How sweet it was, Gunner. It still is.

All sports is personal. For this reason, I pause during baseball's playoffs to say something on behalf of Marland Heights kids who share a special moment in memory.

Save the Pirates for Pittsburgh.

For those whose current attention starts and stops with Greg Maddux and Albert Belle, the Pirates may be a trivial distraction. But long after Maddux and Belle depart the game, the drama currently playing out in Pittsburgh will be felt.

The latest white knight is in trouble. Kevin McClatchy is a Sacramento newspaper-publishing heir bidding for the Pirates. But McClatchy's effort has hit a financial snag.

If McClatchy, or somebody else, doesn't deliver, the Pirates are at risk of being bought and moved to northern Virginia. Yes, northern Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But he should not stuff your nouveau riche stocking with a proud cornerstone franchise. Reasonable parameters for late 20th-century cultural shock do not allow for a baseball team called the Northern Virginia Pirates. If not McClatchy, another buyer must step forward who understands what is at stake.

The Pirates aren't any old dime-store franchise. They were there almost at the beginning of the National League. When the senior circuit and the upstart American League got together in 1903 for a postseason showdown, the Pirates met (and were beaten by) the Boston nine in the first World Series. Baseball's all-time shortstop and trading card rarity, Honus Wagner, was a Pirate. The all-time best-felding second baseman and right fielder, Bill Mazeroski and Roberto Clemente, respectively, were Pirates. One of the five best-ever World Series, 1960, matched the Bucs and Yankees. Pie Traynor, Ralph Kiner, Willie Stargell -- Buccos to the core.

History is more important in baseball than other sports. Without history, baseball is lacking in context. Without context, the game is as dull and empty as a strike. Sadly, those in baseball willing to abandon Pittsburgh are the same people who caused the strike.

The dump-Pittsburgh crowd is comprised of "free-market" acolytes in and around the players' union. Their view is that Pittsburgh has proved itself incapable of supporting a club and that another city with larger resources should be given a chance. They say the city's declining and aging population base is too small, and its baseball ardor too cool, to generate adequate revenue.

Nothing more symbolizes the misplaced priorities and wounded soul of baseball. Zeal for free markets, i.e. free labor spending, ignores the distortion and cruelty wrought by unregulated economic behavior. Free markets demand instant gratification; baseball requires patience and nurturing.

Short-term conclusions of a free market can be myopic and wrong. Pittsburgh is a good baseball city fed up with 1) a bland, inaccessible stadium, and 2) undercapitalized ownership hung out to dry in a rapacious labor market.

Anybody who was around Forbes Field in 1960, and witnessed the championship seasons of 1971 and 1979, knows Pittsburgh is a good baseball city. For crying out loud, it's only been four years since the Bucs drew more than 2 million fans while winning the N.L. East. There are 2.8 million people within a 120-mile radius of Pittsburgh. How can a team capable of drawing 2 million out of a possible 2.8 million -- to a grim concrete mausoleum more closely identified with the football Steelers -- be said to inhabit a bad baseball city?

The Dump Crowd argues that a few thousand empty seats in the '92 National League Championship Series proved its point. But what about the 44,000 seats that were filled? A few thousand empty seats, at the peak of a recession, when fans may have been hanging back to buy a long-awaited World Series ticket, doesn't make Pittsburgh a bad baseball city.

Some families have been fans for five generations. My grandfather, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, took my father to see Traynor and the Waner brothers. At 7 years old, I made my first visit to Forbes Field. "Watch the right fielder," my father said. "He's going to be a great one."

Pirates Manager Jim Leyland shed a few tears after the last home game September 20, not because he believes the club is moving. Leyland was touched by fans who came out on a cold, rainy night.

"Let me put it this way," Leyland told Chicago Tribune columnist Jerome Holtzman. "I could be working on the grounds crew. I could be working at Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Or downtown in City Hall. I have a lot of great neighbors; that's the way they see me. They've accepted me as another guy who goes to work every day, just like they do. My job happens to be managing the Pirates. And that's why I was crying -- because of the unbelievable loyalty of these people."