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Health & Fitness

It's Time to Get Excited About Pirates Baseball

It's almost surreal to think about what a playoff baseball game at PNC Park will be like, and it feels almost sacrilegious to type the words "World Series" yet. But we should be embracing this team and cherishing every minute of the experience.

Last week, during my annual ritual of cleaning out my garage, I found a photo of myself taken when I was three or four years old. Sporting a big cheesy smile, I’m proudly wearing my yellow Pittsburgh Pirates cap, complete with “Stargell Stars”. Sadly, there haven’t been too many moments since then where the Pirates have made me smile like I did in that photo.

If only I had known then what I know now, I could have saved myself decades of torture associated with being a Pirates fan. Aside from those three disappointing Octobers in the early 1990’s, there hasn’t been much to cheer about. Francisco Cabrerra driving home Sid Bream in the 1992 NLCS is one of my earliest sports-related heartaches, and in some ways, probably the most gut wrenching because two decades of losing have been salt poured into the wound.

As a diehard Penguins fan, I’ve seen my team win three Stanley Cups and lots of great hockey with amazing players like Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby. The entire city gets behind the Steelers, and I’ve seen them win two Super Bowls. In that regard, I’ve been spoiled; we all have.

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But I was one year old for the “We Are Family” Pirates championship back in 1979. When you add in the two straight decades of losing seasons during my formative sports years, I had come to terms with the fact that the Pirates were simply never going to be a winner. It became inconceivable to think the Buccos would ever be really relevant to baseball; the combination of a small market payroll and the perception that ownership was content to make a profit with a beautiful ballpark were just too much to overcome. 

In 2011 and 2012, the Pirates began to show signs of life, actually competing for a playoff spot before returning to form and collapsing when it counted. I allowed myself to get invested. I listened to the nineteen-inning game in Atlanta that ended on umpire Jerry Meals’ horrible call at home plate. But after the 2012 collapse, I decided to take a step back and rethink my strategy.

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Instead of openly embracing the 2013 Pirates only to be disappointed yet again, I decided to play hard to get. I watched the games and kept up on the team, but I refused to get invested in any meaningful way, which included not going to any games.

But something happened as this season progressed. Not only did the Pirates play well and contend for a playoff spot like they did the past two seasons, but it just felt different somehow. Their success doesn’t feel like a fluke, and it’s suddenly socially acceptable to be a Pirates fan again. To be clear, there’s no such thing as jumping on the bandwagon after twenty straight losing seasons; it’s a miracle anyone was even left on the wagon at this point at all.

Right around the All-Star Break, I decided the team had earned my sports/entertainment dollars. I took my wife to a game (and have gone back to about six more) and bought an Andrew McCutchen jersey. My wife has grown accustomed to me sarcastically talking back to Pirates announcer Steve Blass on the radio, the result of a severe disdain stemming from a beef my friends and I had with him at PirateFest thirteen years ago. I’m looking for Greg Brown home run calls for ringtones for my phone (which sadly don’t exist). In short, I have decided to sit back and enjoy the hell out of this pennant race.

And the Pirates haven’t disappointed, hovering near the division lead and almost certainly breaking the streak of twenty straight losing seasons, the longest such streak in all of professional sports. Pirates ownership, usually the object of unabashed bashing, has actually stepped up and acquired players like Marlon Byrd and Justin Morneau to help the team down the stretch.

It’s almost surreal to think about what a playoff baseball game at PNC Park will be like, and it feels almost sacrilegious to type the words “World Series” yet. But we should be embracing this team and cherishing every minute of the experience. Because as the precocious boy in the Pirates hat from the photo can attest to, another opportunity like this one may not come around for a long, long time.

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