The Sorry State of Our Pirates

For those expecting an article about our Penguins, I decided to shift gears (and sports) and write about something that’s weighed heavily on my heart for quite some time. The sorry state of our Pirates.

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As a young boy growing up in suburban Bethel Park in the 1960s, when it came to sports, baseball was my first love (with basketball a close second).

My dad, Jim Buker, was a City League All-Star at Oliver High School. Attempting to follow in his cleat tracks, I played Little League Baseball, although not particularly well. (Picture a banjo-hitting first baseman.)

It was a wonderful time to be a kid. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but the sky seemed a little bluer back then, the grass a little greener. In my neighborhood and community, there was a palpable sense of optimism and the promise of even better days to come.

Of course, I rooted for the Pirates. I first began to follow the Buccos in earnest in 1965 when I was eight years old. I can still rattle off the names of our starting lineup without looking: catcher Jim Pagliaroni, first baseman Donn Clendenon, second baseman Bill Mazeroski, shortstop Gene Alley, third baseman Bob Bailey, left fielder Willie Stargell (my hero), center fielder Bill Virdon and in right field, the incomparable Roberto Clemente. Blazin’ Bob Veale was the staff ace.

I still have my Topps baseball card collection from that season, the colorful ones with the team names printed inside pennant flags. I pull them out on occasion and the memories of simpler days come flooding back, warm and pleasant like a midsummer ocean tide.

Baseball has a way of transcending time.

I tell the young folks at Wright’s Gym the Pirates were a proud franchise back then. They look at me like a have three heads, but it’s true. We were a powerhouse back in the ‘60s and especially the ‘70s, winning three World Series (in ’60, ’71 and ’79) and six East Division titles.

Thanks largely to the work of super scout Howie Haak, one of the first to mine talent-rich Latin America and the Caribbean, our farm system was the envy of all of baseball.

How deep was it?

Buried on our depth chart behind Clendenon, strong man slugger Bob Robertson and Al Oliver (whose career numbers are remarkably similar to Clemente’s), first baseman Bob “Big Cat” Oliver landed in the American League and twice belted 20 homers, including a career-best 27 for the Royals in 1970.

Likewise, outfielder Tony Armas couldn’t crack the Pirates’ stacked Lumber Company lineup. He’d go on to win two AL home run titles and bang 251 dingers. Traded to Oakland along with Armas, Mitchell Page promptly cracked 21 homers and finished second in the AL Rookie of the Year voting.

Don Money, Freddie Patek, Willie Randolph, Craig Reynolds…the list of Pirates castoffs who went on to enjoy productive and even All-Star careers elsewhere was as impressive as it was endless. Yet the Pirates didn’t miss a beat.

Somewhere along the line, the baseball landscape changed. Perhaps it was the advent of free agency in 1976, which inexorably skewed the economics away from family-owned teams like our Bucs. Maybe other clubs finally caught up to our scouting practices. Whatever the reasons, the Pirates’ internal flow of prospects slowed from a torrent to a trickle.

Instead of developing from within, then-GM Harding “Pete” Peterson began the ultimately ruinous practice signing free agents who’d seen better days, including Joggin’ George Hendrick, broken-down slugger Steve Kemp and Sixto Lezcano, once touted as the next Clemente but in reality far less.

The team collapsed.

With the exception of two all-too-brief returns to glory in the early ‘90s and mid-2010s, little has changed in the past 40 years. The Pirates still struggle to draft and develop viable players, the lifeblood of small-market teams. And they still sign fading free-agents like Tommy Pham who nobody else wants.

When it comes to poorly run organizations, the woebegone Cleveland Browns have nothing on our Buccos.

Or should I say Nutting, as in owner Bob Nutting.

This off-season, frankly, was an atrocity. There is a smattering of young talent on this team, flamethrower Paul Skenes and a stable of promising young arms front and center, but they need help. Sign a couple of solid veteran bats and a quality reliever or two, and this group at least has a chance to become competitive, for a few seasons anyway.

Instead, Nutting tightened the financial screws, not to mention his stranglehold on the team’s withering fortunes, and did N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

It’s an absolute disgrace, a disservice to the loyal fans and community at large who support the team season after season, not to mention the staff and the players themselves.

No one wants to be doomed to lose, especially by their owner. It’s like having a parent who undermines your every attempt to get ahead.

And now?

Sadly, the Pirates are a AAA team masquerading as a Major League ball club, and not doing a very good job of it. I expect us to be bad this season, epically so. It wouldn’t shock me if we sank below the limbo bar set by another once-proud franchise gone to pot, the White Sox, who won all of 41 games last season.

The Bad News Buccos.

How low can they go?

According to Forbes, the Pirates have a franchise value of $1.32 billion. That should be more than enough for Nutting to retire on.

Message to our owner. Do what the countless billboards, not to mention yesterday’s flyover at PNC Park are imploring you to do.

Sell the team before it’s too late.