By Ron Cook, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
It's not true that there were only Chicago baseball fans left at the end of another depressing day at PNC Park yesterday, although the "Let's Go Cubs!" chant that fairly rocked the yard in the ninth inning surely made it seem that way.
At least one man who knew his Pirates inside and out remained until the bitter end of the 4-2 loss that officially secured the Pittsburgh Baseball Club's rightful and deserved place in infamy as, at least in one significant respect, the losingest franchise in North American sports history.
He was the guy with the I WISH I WAS A DETROIT LIONS FAN sign.
PNC Park could have been filled with people with bags over their heads, and it wouldn't have said nearly as much as that clever sign about the national joke that the Pirates are and have been for as long as many of us can remember.
Doesn't seem like 17 years we've been watching this garbage.
Seems like 17 lifetimes.
Pittsburgh Pirates fans Ben Samson, left, and Iliya Udler, of Pittsburgh, hold signs at the end of another Pirates loss, 4-2 to the Chicago Cubs in a baseball game in Pittsburgh on Monday, Sept. 7, 2009. By losing their 10th in 11 games, the Pirates will finish below .500, just as they have every season since 1993. The string of 17 losing seasons is a record in the majors. (AP)Sadly, this loss was like so many of the others before it. The Pirates didn't make any laughable blunders like they did in a rare win Sunday when catcher Jason Jaramillo caught a pitch and tossed the ball back over pitcher Paul Maholm's head to allow a St. Louis run to score. They just didn't pitch or hit well enough to win.
They do that with amazing, mind-numbing regularity.
That's why the Pirates thoroughly earned this consecutive losing seasons record, every bit as much as Joe DiMaggio earned his hitting streak and Cal Ripken Jr. earned his iron-man streak.
Epic, almost unthinkable, records that might never be broken don't just happen by accident. The Pirates used a lethal mix of bad ownership, bad management, bad drafts and bad players to get theirs done.
Mostly, bad ownership.
The losing streak started in 1993 under a conglomerate of Pittsburgh businessmen, continued under a group led by Kevin McClatchy and rolls on with no end in sight under Bob Nutting. With the first two ownerships, there was no real money to compete. That's the only reason promising young star Aramis Ramirez was traded to the Cubs for next-to-nothing in 2003. With Nutting, there's no real willingness to spend no matter how much he boasts about signing Pedro Alvarez, beefing up the minor league system and making progress in Latin America. Those are just a few of the costs of doing basic business in baseball, aren't they?
This is America.
You get what you pay for.
The Pirates are getting exactly what they have paid for.
Or as actor Michael Keaton, a Pittsburgh native, said before he threw out the ceremonial first pitch opening day in '06, "At some point, you have to write the check."
Speaking of low points for the franchise during the losing streak ...
Only the Pirates could honor someone and have him rip the organization.
On those few occasions when the team did spend, it made colossal mistakes. It gave contracts to players who quit on the team (Derek Bell, Raul Mondesi). It gave big money to players who were injured when they signed (Pat Meares, Kevin Young). It brought in retreads (Joe Randa, Jeromy Burnitz, Pokey Reese). It gave a six-year, $60 million contract to a singles-hitter (Jason Kendall). It took on other team's horrendous mistakes (Matt Morris). And, all the while, it drafted poorly, notably taking mediocre pitcher Daniel Moskos No. 1 in '07 instead of highly touted catcher Matt Wieters even though management said it had the money to sign Wieters, who already is in the big leagues with the Baltimore Orioles.
The Pirates couldn't have done worse if they had tried to fail.
A lot of people will tell you the Ramirez salary dump or the Kendall signing is the move that best defines the organization's ineptitude. I say it's the franchise's inability to take advantage of beautiful PNC Park and all it has to offer.
Not once, but twice.
McClatchy promised the new palace would mean a winning team when it opened in 2001. Yeah, right. It was bad enough the Pirates lost 100 games that season, which is really hard to do. But management further alienated the fan base by temporarily banning bottled water in the park and not allowing the high school kids to play their championship games on the pristine grass. Then, it had the brass to raise ticket prices after the season.
No wonder the ball club lost $30 million in its first three seasons in PNC Park.
Still, Major League Baseball gave McClatchy another chance to save himself from his mismanagement. I'm still convinced commissioner Bud Selig felt sorry for him when baseball awarded Pittsburgh the '06 All-Star Game, even though we didn't deserve it after hosting one just 12 years earlier. It should have given the Pirates a major boost, but, ah, no.
How humiliated McClatchy and Nutting must have felt when their team rolled into that All-Star break with a 30-60 record on its way to a 95-loss season. There would be 94 more losses in '07 and 95 last season. The current bunch of Pirates has a 54-82 record and an outside chance of getting to 100 defeats again.
So much for the promise of PNC Park and that All-Star Game lift.
Nutting has a relatively new management team in president Frank Coonelly and general manager Neal Huntington, who can't possibly be as bad as McClatchy and Dave Littlefield and McClatchy and Cam Bonifay before them. Still, an 18th consecutive losing season next year seems like a given because of all the young, inexperienced players Huntington has brought in.
Maybe by '11 or '12, if everything goes right, the Pirates will win more than they lose and end the streak. Or maybe not.
When does everything go right?
The losing could go on and on and on without a ownership change. This record might not be broken.
Here's one final depressing way to blow the Pirates' ignominious march to history into perspective: Kids who graduated from college this spring aren't old enough to remember when they had a winning team.
I'd like to predict it will happen at some point in their lifetime, maybe even before their kids graduate from college.
But I can't.
That would be irresponsible journalism.
Ron Cook can be reached at rcook@post-gazette.com. More articles by this author
First published on September 8, 2009 at 12:00 am
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