http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/
Thursday, April 7, 2011
On the unseasonably warm afternoon of April 9, 2001, after the balloons and doves and a long, teary ovation for a departed Pirates legend, Cincinnati’s Sean Casey came up with one on and two out in the top of the first inning, took ball one and then golfed Todd Ritchie’s low, inside fastball into the right-center field seats.
PNC Park's christening was official. The first hit and the first home run in the first game in the Pirates' new place was struck by a lifelong Pirates fan from Upper St. Clair who often sat with his dad or his buddies in the old place, Three Rivers Stadium.
“A single would have been fine,” said Casey, who knocked in five runs during the Reds' 8-2 victory and three days earlier got the first hit at Milwaukee’s Miller Park. “It was the coolest Opening Day for me. I felt like a little kid.”
Everyone there, including Casey and the sellout crowd of 36,954 that included his family, marveled at the ballpark and its two-tiered design and cozy feel — inspired by the old, old place, Forbes Field — the sandstone and blue steel; and the sweeping vista of Downtown and the Roberto Clemente Bridge. Along Federal Street outside the stadium towered bronze statues of Clemente and Willie Stargell, likely the two most popular Pirates ever.
Clemente died in a plane crash on the last day of 1972. He got his 3,000th hit in his final regular-season at-bat the previous September. Now, again, more cruel irony. On the very morning of PNC Park’s grand opening, a stroke claimed "Pops" Stargell at the age of 61, spiking the sweetness of the occasion with a bitter dose of grief. A pre-game tribute celebrated his life.
“Unbelievable,” Casey recalled. “Everyone was very somber, but I think Willie’s spirit was there that day.”
Ten years later, the tidy little park hugging the Allegheny River built for a relatively modest $270 million still draws rave reviews. A destination of ballpark aficionados, it consistently earns high rankings among major league stadiums. ESPN.com, among others, have called it the best.
“It’s held up well,” said Craig Dunham, who was the PNC Park project manager.
Little has changed for the Pirates, too. During that 2001 season, with the highest payroll in franchise history, the team promptly trashed its new home with the worst record, 62-100, since 1985. It was the Pirates' ninth straight losing season.
Now the streak has doubled to 18, the longest such skid in North American professional sports history. Despite turnover among ownership, front office, staff, coaches, managers and 231 players, the club remained inept. PNC Park was no match for subpar talent, poor judgment, limited resources and bad luck.
"That’s kind of the shame of the whole thing,” said Casey, still a Pirates fan, now an MLB Network analyst who recently retired with a .302 career batting average after 12 years. “A whole generation of Pirates fans have been born and now they’re in college and they've never seen a winning season."
It was hoped, if not expected, that a new park would help improve the Pirates. It had happened elsewhere. “We believed the new revenues would help make us competitive,” said Steve Greenberg, who worked for the Pirates for 26 years — including as a vice president — and was closely involved in the construction and management of PNC Park.
But not the Pirates, whose venture into a higher-spending bracket proved disastrous.
"A ballpark can only do so much,”Greenberg said.
In 2001, season ticket sales exceeded 17,000, a franchise record. Attendance increased about 700,000 from the last season in Three Rivers to almost 2.5 million. The payroll nearly doubled to almost $58 million.
“It was exhilarating,” Greenberg said. “We created a sizzle. People wanted to go there.”
Then they didn’t. Attendance fell back almost the same amount in 2002. One reason was the Pirates’ play. Another was a rise in ticket prices, the second in two years. “It was a nominal increase but it rubbed people the wrong way,” said Greenberg, the chairman of marketing and sports marketing at Duquesne University.
Also in 2002, the payroll shrunk by more than $15 million. It rose $12 million the next year but receded more than $22 million in 2004. It has not reached $50 million since 2003.
By 2004, fewer than 1.6 million fans were coming to the park. It spiked a bit since, but attendance never again cracked the two million barrier and has declined about 200,000 since 2006. The Pirates last year drew fewer than 20,000 a game, 26th of the 30 major league teams. Since 2002, they have never ranked higher than that.
"What's critically important is that we are in a position to allocate every year the dollars needed to have a competitive team on the field," Pirates owner Bob Nutting said recently.
The Milwaukee Brewers, who broke in their own new stadium in 2001, Miller Park, drew more than three million fans in two of the past three years competing in a smaller market than Pittsburgh. With a payroll about $30 million more than the Pirates but still in MLB’s bottom half, the Brewers, who made the playoffs in 2008, are expected to contend in the N.L. Central, the Pirates’ division.
“Maybe they developed a strategy the Pirates are just implementing now,” Greenberg said. “They went out and developed young talent and built around that nucleus.”
The Pirates are trying to do exactly that. Meanwhile, the club is coming off 105 losses, the most since 1952.
“I don’t know how you market that,” Fox broadcaster Joe Buck said. “I don’t know how the front office drums up another way to sell tickets. Eventually, the young kids have to fulfill their promise.
Besides trailing the Steelers and Penguins in local esteem and attention, the Pirates are mostly irrelevant beyond Western Pennsylvania. Since PNC Park opened, they have appeared once on ESPN’s "Sunday Night Baseball," a road game in 2002.
They also managed just one Fox national telecast, a 2003 home game. There also was the 2006 All-Star Game, meaning that PNC Park has been shown off to a mass audience twice in a decade.
The problem is not the ballpark.
“You look at what they’ve tried to put together, and it never all fit,” Buck said. “Maybe it will now, with some of the younger guys that I’ve read about and have not seen in person.”
Former mayor Tom Murphy helped lead the contentious and complex effort to finance PNC Park, largely with public money. The ballpark likely kept the Pirates from moving, but Murphy said the lack of exposure costs Pittsburgh the type of favorable attention it receives from the city's other teams.
“I think the Pirates would be up there (with the Steelers and Penguins) if they had a competitive team,” Murphy said. “It would project a very positive image of the city.”
Casey, who still lives in Upper St. Clair, played for his hometown team during the 2006 season before escaping to Detroit at the trade deadline. He didn’t hit very much but ended up in the World Series. The next year, he hit .296 with the Tigers. Meanwhile, the player the Pirates got in return, pitcher Brian Rogers, appeared in 13 games over two seasons with a 9.28 ERA. Then he disappeared. It was the type of move that has come to symbolize the first decade at PNC.
“I took a lot of pride putting on the Pirates’ uniform,” Casey said. “But it was tough getting beat around every night. It’s definitely a culture that needs to change. But I like (new manager) Clint Hurdle. He brings a ton of positive energy. I think it’s a step in the right direction.
“The city deserves to have a winner. They deserve a bigger (team) payroll. There’s too much history in this organization not to appreciate what the Pirates mean to the city."
At the All-Star Game five years after it opened, PNC Park was the big star. Many fans nationwide got their first (and only) glimpse, and the collective baseball world on-hand was blown away. “The Pirates’ home could not have been more perfectly conceived and executed,” a veteran Washington Post columnist wrote, typical of the accolades.
Visitors today still feel the same way. The only thing missing is an occupant worthy of such praise.
Read more: PNC Park turns 10 years old - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/pirates/s_731075.html#ixzz1IqI0WeYl
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