Pittsburgh Pirates have a date with infamy

The Pittsburgh Pirates are one loss away from setting the ultimate mark of futility not only in major league baseball but for all sports. When the Pirates lose their next game, they will have completed their 17th consecutive losing season. The Pirates have not had a winning season since 1992. Following the success of that season the Pirates held a fire sale and jettisoned all of their star talent, and they have never recovered. In all reality the pirates are little more than a Triple A farm club for the rest of the league each and every summer.

With their 17th losing season in a row the Pirates are about to break the record of the Philadelphia Phillies who had 16 losing seasons from 1933-1948. How the MLB, Pirates fans, and sports fans in general allow this to continue is the real embarrassment. Let us not forget that the City of Pittsburgh built this team a new stadium that cost 237 million dollars, and thanks to MLB profit sharing the Pirates turn a fat profit even when their attendance is abysmal.

Over much of the past 20 years the Pirates have been known as notorious cheap skates. While this team will always play second fiddle to the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL in this football crazed town there is no excuse for how bad this team has been for so long.

Pirates’ fans hope that is starting to change since Kevin McClatchy, who has run the Pirates for much of the past 16 years, has sold off his stake in the team and resigned his seat on the board. Hopefully owner Robert Nutting will start to spend a little on the payroll and this team can start to improve. Nutting recently pumped two million bucks to upgrade the team’s Spring Training facility and another five million to build a baseball clinic in the Dominican Republic.