[Defector] Why Are There Still Pirates Fans?
Because people generally don’t abandon teams due to being run poorly?
If people do that en mass the Browns would have zero fans
I’m making an exception for myself
Hang in there bud. Its never going to get better.
im having fun just rooting for ohtani and on a per-player basis
We are all here for you! No judgement and in most ways you are the truest of As supporters
All across the league, regardless of who you are a fan of, we all know that Pirates, Athletics, White Sox, Angels, and Twins fans deserve better than what leadership gives them.
We are also all silently rooting for the Mariners and Brewers to get their World Series victories sooner rather than later too, so long as it doesn’t affect our own teams ability to compete.
I mean the team literally abandoned you first.
The A’s abandoned Oakland, you can abandon them
There’s a strong argument to be made that loyal fans are worse for a franchise than fairweather fans. Loyal fans are going to spend money on watching and supporting no matter what. Fairweather fans are going to make you earn their dollar, and put a product on the field worth watching.
It’s why sports are such a great business.
Whether it makes sense or not, the Pirates, like just about every big 4 sports franchise, is an American institution. Fans have their regional pride and identity and family traditions wrapped up in it. They will buy jerseys and tickets and $13 beers whether they’re good or bad.
No other business has this luxury. Even brands as strong as Disney can’t double ticket prices while cutting all investment to their parks and still expect attendance to not go down long term. The pirates can though. People will even take pride in remaining loyal to the team despite the bad product.
People will even take pride in remaining loyal to the team despite the bad product.
Maybe the tide should turn and we should start criticizing these people like we’ve started criticizing people that work too hard and don’t get enough sleep and brag about it.
Giving money to an organization who doesn’t give that money back in any meaningful way is bonkers. We should be calling those people suckers, because that’s what we’d call them in any other situation.
The only team that sucks that people should feel okay giving money to is the Mets, tbh.
Or maybe we let people who love baseball enjoy what is for many of them the only chance they’ll get to watch major league play in person? The fuck are we even doing here blaming Pirates fans for what Nutting has done.
My team sucks, but I still enjoy a day at the ballpark. It’s not any deeper than that. Expecting people to boycott the games when the team’s bad and buy season tickets when the team’s good is unreasonable.
Maybe that makes me a sucker in your eyes, but I value the day at the ballpark more than the $10 cost for the ticket, so I’m still willing to buy tickets, attend games, and watch the Nats lose a lot of games.
Yeah, I’m the same. Like, the only MLB games I’ve ever been to (because I live many hours from Miami) I had a lot of fun just watching the game, even though both games were with teams I didn’t care for (Some team @ Reds in 2022 and Tigers @ White Sox in 2023). I just liked watching baseball for the couple hours it was happening.
That applies to any sporting event I go that my team I support is playing. Like, it’s cool if they win, but if they lose, it’s whatever as long as the baseline experience was fun.
First place to criticize is Toronto maple leafs fans
I mean, I’ve never gotten the sense that Leafs ownership/management isn’t trying to put a good product on the ice, it just never works out.
There have absolutely been times in history where this was true of the Leafs (If I knew where Harold Ballard was buried I’d piss on his grave) but a willingness to spend on players, coaching, management or facilities has not been their issue for at least the last 10 years, and arguably more like 35
Nah, the Leafs try to compete so not applicable.
Players and agents say the Leafs are one of the best organizations when it comes to investing in player comfort and practice facilities, they’ve just been comically unlucky
This is why we need promotion/relegation. Or needed to implement it in 1920
I actually think there was a fascinating fork in the road moment with this when the National League and American League first combined to start the World Series. In England, you had a similar situation in the 1890s where you had the older more established Football League face an upstart challenger in the Football Alliance that eventually ended in a merger, but instead of merging as two co-equal leagues, the Football League was designated as the first division and the Football Alliance became the second division with pro/rel between the two. If the powers that be had decided in 1903 to go with that arrangement instead of the World Series I honestly think the entire American sports landscape would be drastically different right now.
This is my “what would you do with a time machine” answer.
Would you see integration earlier? What farm teams become powerhouses? What does it do to the culture and American exceptionalism? Do football / basketball take over baseball in popularity if every one has a local team? What crazy mascot races do we get?
Second biggest what-if: what if the Pacific Coast League was elevated to co-equal status with the AL and NL?
That one’s my Roman Empire.
This is an issue with bar locals, fans of certain types of music, collectors of any sort, etc. Have you ever been to a local dive bar and the regulars there all act like total dicks for no reason? Won’t talk to you, complain about the touchtunes, the bartender doesn’t really look your way so he can serve his buds, they drive business sure but they are really hurting the health of the establishment in the long run by being so unwelcoming to new clientele. Die hard fans will support the team no matter how awful they are and it hurts the brand in the long run. Must be torture for Pirates fans just waiting for the day that Paul Skenes signs an insane deal with a more serious team.
There’s a difference between being run poorly and not even trying.
Make no mistake, the only thing the Browns are trying to do is steal public tax dollars to build a new stadium and monopolize the surrounding businesses and parking for the dogshit owner
I get hate everytime I post this take on this sub but I will die on the hill:
Baseball is not being ruined by the Dodgers or the Yankees or the Mets. Those teams are doing what every team should be doing: using their funds from a multiple billion dollar enterprise to acquire players in an effort to win.
Baseball is being ruined by the Pirates, Marlins, and Athletics of the league. Teams that are not even attempting to field a competitive team and instead consistently pockets revenue sharing money that should be boosting their payroll. Teams that don’t build teams around windows and star players but instead trade them away for scraps after 2-3 years because the alternative is spending money to make the team better.
Fans of various teams have this misconception that if it were not for the Dodgers and Yankees and Mets then their teams could be competitive. Your owners are happily helping that narrative as they continue to pocket money that should be used to improve your summer entertainment and get you mad at someone else instead of them. Then they get you to publicly fund their new stadium every 15-20 years while they laugh at you more.
Look at the payrolls this year and scroll to the bottom. It’s embarrassing. Put pressure on teams to spend money with a salary floor.
You’re spot on. I’m surprised you’d get any hate for this.
The Browns fans shouldn’t abandon their team for being bad.
They should abandon their team for being the type of franchise that throws hundreds of millions of dollars at a QB that was known to assault women.
The Browns don’t have success, but they also don’t have integrity. The people of Cleveland deserve way better than that.
They should abandon their team for being the type of franchise to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a QB known to assault women
That’s every team if the quarterback is good enough. See: Big Ben in Pittsburgh, Brett Favre in Minnesota after the reporter thing broke when he was a Jet and Jameis Winston still hanging around the league. These teams don’t have morals
The Jameis Winston one specifically is so weird to me, it feels like nobody even mentions it anymore. Like, at least with Ben you’ll get people calling it out whenever he’s brought up. With Jameis it’s like everybody’s completely forgotten about it (and i’d even go so far as to say that the majority of people like him) because he‘s a little goofy.
I’ll never understand it
I think its because he’s a bust and a 2nd string qb so ppl don’t bring it up or know about it as much.
The NFL will let you get away with murder if you’re winning
After that Watson signing there should be no Browns fans
I was a diehard fan, I watched every game during the 0-16 and 1-15 years. I loved those guys, even though they were trash they would lose in wild and unexpected ways all the time, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Every bar in town would be packed to the gills with people hanging out and cheering for that sad sap of a team, at least until the game was probably out of reach (frequently at half time lol). Baker gave us hope for the future like I’ve never seen in years.
The Watson trade just made it all so hollow. People in town really stopped caring like they did before. I was at a dive bar that is in the industrial part of town, a block away from some steel mills, during a browns game last year (not even for the game but for brunch). The browns got a touchdown and not a single person cheered or whooped, most people didn’t even notice. The team still has its fans these days, but for the most part this city is apathetic about the Browns in ways ive never seen before.
I will saying having Sundays free in the fall is great now though. Its a good time to get outside, enjoy some hiking or fall festivities. I’ll still watch some of the game if I got nothing else going on, but its more of a side show then a main event anymore.
every team has skeletons
Most of teams aren’t taking them out of the closet and paying them $230m though.
I’m a Jets fan and i stopped watching last year
I was a Jets fan. the last game I watched was the butt fumble, & I can honestly say my life is signficiantly better now.
I was in college in Missouri when the Royals broke through in 2014. I remember reading an article in the Kansas City Star, written late in that season, with the author asking why the Royals were only getting 8,000 fans for a weeknight game or whatever when they were in the thick of a division race.
I thought to myself, the Royals had been fucking abysmal for decades. They traded off almost every promising player they’d promote (except for Mike Sweeney) for scraps. They were notoriously cheap. They were hard to find on TV until like 2010. The Royals had spent two generations conditioning Kansas City locals to pay attention to baseball for one day a year, opening day.
Once the Royals actually established they were a playoff level team by hosting a playoff game, fan support erupted. Kansas Citians and people in the region really wanted to see it, but they were extremely skeptical, and for good reason.
That would also be entirely understandable.
Exactly, I was born into my fandom of shitty teams (Mets/Dolphins/Rangers/Nets) and you don’t just chose a new favorite team, you’re stuck with them for life
Dolphins and Mets? That’s new combo
But seriously, for better or worse, its seems to be me and Frank the Tank 😬
My friends have been asking me to pick a Premier League for years and I just can’t do it. I don’t even know how to become a fan without being born into it.
On a visceral level I just cannot understand simply choosing a team and that’s it. Intellectually I know that a lot of people don’t have a choice (i.e., it makes sense to me that people growing up in LA in the 90s ended up supporting a random NFL team), but I just don’t quite get it.
Mets/Jets/Nets/Islanders fan here. I also have some friends who wanted me to pick a Premier League club. Wanting some kind of emotional attachment, and being a huge Elton John fan, I went with Watford. They were immediately relegated.
i loved playing with steven gerrard in fifa when i was in high school and am a huge beatles fan so i became a liverpool fan. but that was really my decision to start following them, i became a fan after watching them break my heart a few times.
Problem is, even if you say “hey, I won’t support this until you get your shit together”, shitty owners (and some shitty fans) decide your city no longer deserves a team and should be moved away.
Born here and I think if you’re from a city with a major league team that you were born in and you support other teams, you’re weird.
If those Yankees, Lakers, Cowboy fans could read, they’d be very upset with you
You don’t think LeBron can read?
Nothing past the first page
They’re not Yankees fans anymore, they’re Dodgers fans
As someone who grew up in Boston and went to school with a bunch of Yankees fans who had no ties to NYC I couldn’t agree more. I hated those guys.
Yup I always give my head a shake when I meet someone who isn’t a fan of any of the Toronto sports teams, like two of those teams are the only ones in their leagues from our country why support another team. I do get why some people are Montreal Canadiens fans since most of them chose them because of family ties. NFL is a different story since we don’t have our own but even then I went with the most local team and that’s why I’m a Bills fan.
I’m not from Toronto, and I hate how our media acts like their Canada’s baseball and basketball team just because they exist.
Being from somewhere doesn’t mean you have to be a fan of that team.
I’m a Bulls fan, which is extremely painful.
Seeing videos of fans celebrating the Jays winning game 7 at a Flames game in Calgary or the players in the Habs dressing room celebrating Springers home run while interviewing a player just shows that the media is right in saying that they are Canadas team. Sounds like you just don’t like Toronto
You’re still Canadian and most of Canada gets behind the Raptors and Jays because that’s all we’ve got. We’re never on American national TV. We even have our own broadcast for the World Series.
Cheering for the Yankees as a Canadian is gross respectfully. Can’t imagine not being part of what’s going on across the country right now!
You have Yankees flair so you were already broken.
Yankees and Bulls fan is exactly the type of fan that these people are talking about lol absolutely gross
I can get someone in Vancouver being a Ms fan or someone in Windsor being a tigers fan tbh. I’m in Ottawa so I basically just support my “local” teams (sens, Jays, and raps), but I don’t discount non-GTA folks cheering for other teams.
I grew up in NY but I’m a Red Sox fan. All my friends were Yankees / Mets fans. Sorry?
Hey I’ll let that one slide
How gracious of you!
Shoutout to Ben Rice
I think family ties is a good excuse. I don’t live where I grew up, but lord knows my kid better support my goddamn teams.
There are 2 pretty clear reasons to support a team:
Lived there for a while an acceptable third, but you should yield to 1 if safe
I only am fine with that if it’s not a sport you previously cared about, or your hometown didn’t have a team. Like there’s no MLS team in Detroit (yes, I support DCFC but no MLS team), so if I moved to Seattle I could become a sounders fan. But I could never become a mariners or kraken or Seahawks fan even if I moved to Seattle right now and lived there for the rest of my life
1 more exception: if your team moves. If they abandon your city of origin, you are no longer bound to them, even if they move to the city you currently live in.
100% agree. In fact I think billionaire owners deserve to lose their entire fanbase when moving a team. If I was an As fan it would break my heart into a million pieces but I wouldn’t be able to move my support to a Vegas Athletics team.
I don’t think it’d ever happen but if a Detroit team moves I literally don’t know what I’ll do
Yup, I grew up in metro Detroit, and they will always be my teams even though I moved out of Michigan 20 years ago. I now live in Philly, and while I’ll cheer for them if I go to a Phillies or Flyers game and they aren’t playing Detroit, they’ll never be my teams. Hell, I lived in Kansas for over a decade and even had an in-law involved with the Chief’s organization and could never bring myself to cheer for them.
Yep. I have said thousands of times “I literally hate the wings/tigers/lions, why do I continue to watch every game and attend a dozen per season” and yet the thought of wanting any other team to beat them makes me sick! It’s an abusive relationship!
Gotta add a third, kid goes to school there.
True, parents get all cheering privileges for wherever their kids attend. But for pro sports, just these 2
Yeah I’m from Mississippi so no home team. My grandad liked the Yankees so I also like the Yankees lol
Maybe that’s why I feel fine about my support for multiple teams. I wasn’t born/grew up in a city (let alone one with an MLB team) and I never had a father or any family ties to any franchise in particular.
If you’re not actively breaking one of the rules above then they don’t apply. Like in your case, no team where you’re from, no family ties to a team, fuck it, support whoever
I grew up in an area with no MLB team within 400 miles and played for a Little League team named “Pirates.” They chose me so I chose them.
I know a guy who grew up on the north side of Toronto who was born in the 80s and is a Yankees fan to this day. Wears a hat and everything. Says he was pissed when the Jays won as a kid, cares less now. Goes back to his grandad liking the Yankees in fucking 1890 while he lived in some cabin on a lake. Dad was a Yankees fan but they never really followed baseball closely so when people ask he says he’s a Yankees fan because people pretty much stop talking to him about baseball when he says that because we live in Ontario. Asked if he’s watching the world series and he says he still doesn’t watch much baseball. Told him the Jays made it in after they beat the Yankees he says he didn’t see it and he hates the Jays. I told him he’s been indoctrinated by psychopaths.
That boy ain’t right
I think sometimes a kid just falls in love with a particular player and fandom for the player’s team develops over time.
How many Cubs fans or Braves fans just got WGN/TBS Superstation on TV as a kid, or saw a baseball movie with those teams featured prominently?
There are lots of reasons to like teams. It’s so weird that everybody on here is trying to boil it down to one of three “acceptable” reasons.
Yep, that happened to me with football. Never went to Bengals games as a kid and they were awful, and I always liked Kurt Warner so I kinda rooted for whichever team he was on alongside the Bengals. Then in 2008 like 8 bengals got arrested in the offseason and I decided to jump ship to the Cardinals fully, who then proceeded to reach the Super Bowl and that sealed it. Was even funnier when Carson Palmer followed me there a few years later.
Of course now I kinda wish I stayed lol, I recently ran the numbers and noticed that the Cardinals have basically the exact same combined results as the Bengals since I switched, but alas, I still find myself more emotionally attached to the dumpster fire on the other side of the country than the one in my backyard
As a kid born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, this isn’t just for cities with MLB teams either.
I can thank Manny Ramirez & David Ortiz for the above flair myself.
I’m from Pittsburgh, and my favorite sports teams are the Washington Nationals and the Winnipeg Jets. I’m an adult and I can root for any team I choose.
Happy for you. Still weird
If you’re jealous of my Neal Pionk DHgate jersey, you can just say so.
Why?
Yeah, congrats on growing up and overcome peer pressure lol.
People talking about team loyalty, home town, etc…is why bad owners will always remain bad owners, no real incentives to change if the bottom lines look good.
It’s entertainment and a business, if you’re no longer entertained and find joy, it’s okay to move on to other products on the market.
It’s weird to act all proud and loyal to an inferior product…
What’s worse is that people gatekeep fandom to only rooting for local teams and getting upset about others choosing differently, while simultaneously rooting for a random college football team in a completely different area
I think they get together and give each other trophy or something lol. Bragging about it IS WEIRD.
So the people that owns and runs thing continue to fuck up and you go “here, take my money!”
“I stick through the bad times.”
“And we love you for it!” - Fisher and Arte.
Root for whatever team you want to spend your hard earned money (maybe you didn’t idk), but please don’t act like you’re so much better than the “bandwagons”…because you’re really aren’t that much special in the eyes’ of the people that run and own the team.
When you’re all grown up and your tastes change, it is okay not to let the neighborhood kids and old people dictate how to live your life lol.
It’s not weird to like something else. Really.
Well if your parent/guardian takes you to games as a kid to support a different team, buys you merchandise for Christmas for a different team, etc. it’s pretty natural to become a fan of that team even if a different team is closer
I have known many people with that situation.
Counterpoint: gatekeeping who can be fans of certain teams is weird
Hot take: You can be a fan of whatever you want to be.
Sure, it’s not against the law.
Sports are so tied up in city’s culture though that there is just something a little special about being in that overlap of a member of a city+a fan of that city’s sports team. Not everybody has that opportunity in professional sports, but almost everyone has some type of local sports team to root for. It just means a little bit more, and that’s ok if you aren’t a part of that, but it’s why I’ll always advocate for it if you have the chance.
Yeah. In my opinion the best parts about watching sports is the ability to go to games frequently and the community around you that all share the same team and come together to root for them
Nutting doesn’t deserve Pirates fans
Fully agree. Heck, I think it even applies to where you live even if it’s not your hometown. I live where there’s a Cardinals minor league team and I go support them. I curse each player once they make it to the actual MLB team but I’m always going to support my local teams.
Maybe take an Etsy witch with you so that they’re less likely to become big leaguers. Your fellow cubs fans would appreciate your proactive sabotage. Thanks.
Born and raised and currently living in Pittsburgh. I’ll never be rooting for the Pirates to lose but I like watching baseball and I don’t like watching bad baseball, so don’t really consider myself a fan.
I’m fully with you. I’d love to be into the NHL as a diehard Brewers and somewhat casual Packers/Badgers/Bucks fan, but how would I cheer for the Blackhawks or Wild? Absurd.
As a very casual hockey fan, it’s always been weird to me that there is no NHL team in Milwaukee and it never seems to come up as an expansion/relocation option.
They were vying for a team in the late 80s and early 90s. The Bradley Center, which is where the Bucks and Marquette Basketball used to play, was built as a dual-purpose center to draw in a hockey team. However, the expansion fee ended up being more expensive than the prospective owners had planned for, so the expansion teams went to Ottawa and Tampa. Now, there is no stadium to house a team (Fiserv Forum replaced the Bradley Center and isn’t set up to host both basketball and hockey on the regular), so I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
It’s primarily because the Blackhawks have been able to block it. But I’m also not sure how well NHL hockey would do. Milwaukee isn’t that big (only ~1.5 million in the metro) and they’d be competing with the Packers and Bucks in the winter and Brewers in the spring. All have big followings for how large the market is, but I’m not sure if they could split the pie anymore than it already has been and have hockey be successful. I say this as a big hockey fan too.
As someone who doesn’t follow hockey at all, TIL Milwaukee doesn’t have an NHL team
Milwaukee Admirals are fuckin sick tho, we’re HUGE fans in my household. Went to 4 playoff games last year and opening night this year. Tickets are always under $30 and they have amazing food selection. It’s not the NHL, but it’s really easy to root for the Ads.
As a Nationals fan from South Jersey, what if the local team’s fans are insufferable and you want to actively root against them?
Do you have a toilet in the middle of your basement?
Its a loyalty thing I get it although what has been going on with the Pirates is criminal. Real fans need to boycott going to games and find a way to get him out. Nothing will change if he continues to see no reason to sell. He adheres the gravy train concept.
As we saw in Oakland, boycotting a baseball team does absolutely nothing lol.
I have a nephew who loves going to baseball games and I’m not going to take that away from him because of my dislike towards the direction of the franchise, and I’m sure a lot of parents with their actual kids feel the same way. Pirates have been bottom 5 in attendance for years and it simply does not matter
He has no reason to sell because the owners above him as well as the commissioner do not give a fuck as long as he keeps paying his bills
And regarding boycotting going to games, I’d rather have a team that sucks than to have them move away and never have a hometown baseball team again.
100%.
I would say pittsburgh people tend to be very loyal to the city and its teams. And the penguins and steelers are consistently good enough to get people to buy into pittsburgh as a whole.
Because baseball fans live in western PA?
And West Virginia and Eastern Ohio.
Far West MD is also in their market
Finding out that going due west from Pittsburgh had you hit West Virginia at the border rather than Ohio felt like cursed knowledge when I learned it.
That’s what the Washington Wild Things are for, duh
Been there, done that.
Nice to see their warning track ain’t basically some cow path.
I remember going to a Wild Things game years back on my way back from Ohio, and I told some of the people around me “yeah, I brought a glove, but if anything bounces on that track, I’m ducking”.
Did you read the article
Comment posted 6 min after the link was posted. He wasn’t able to read it because he needed to grace us with his razor sharp intellect as soon as possible.
This whole article is about how badly run the team is but fans still love them because fans are loyal. Every comment I see in here so far hasn’t even skimmed the article (like I did, hehe, its long af).
It’s a lovely long-form article about what it is like to devote your baseball fandom to a team that has barely been relevant in decades, but of course all the comments are just knee-jerk responses to the six word title hahaha
I saw a comment once along the lines of “If you put a question in the headline Redditors will think you’re asking them the question” and it’s always so true
Doesn’t help that a likely majority of reddit accounts are bots or children
back when Reddit was just a website and not an app, the coolest discussion ever would’ve happened about this article. Now people comment on the headlines without realizing there’s more to it.
What are you talking about, people have never read the article for as long as I’ve been on here
How fucking long has you been in Reddit
I am this years old: I moved from digg to reddit.
Started on digg because reddit was blocked by the school filter, but digg wasn’t.
Do your knees also hurt?
and my axe
To shreds, you say?
What time does the narwhal bacon?
I’ve been here since before the narwhal baconed at midnight and before the great Digg exodus
This sub, specifically, was awesome until about the time we hit a million people. Tons of long-form, deep dives into players and stats, well-researched histories of obscure players, and explanations of individual aspects of the game … and all of that came from users!
NPR did an April Fools post and no one read the article and just reacted to the headline on why people don’t read anymore
Ppl like to get on other people for reacting to titles of articles but like… its not fair to judge the public for reacting to inflammatory content. Of course with the Defector its an actually reasonable article but its not crazy at all that everyone came to the comments to shit on the title. Thats what they chose to lead off with. Its their own question, of course ppl are gonna snarkily and dismissively answer
Their titles are always edgy shockbait to get engagement
“Why is he being dumb”
“WHY WOULD ANYONE BE A PIRATES FAN”
“THIS DC SPORTS DEAL IS THE WORST DEAL EVER.”
Obligatory
@MrSugarPenis READ THE COLUMN
I’m guessing any fan would have general understanding on why you would follow your team even if they suck. Is there a market that has had all their major teams not suck forever?
I think we need to differentiate between “my team sucks right now but has [a plan/hope/some prayer] of getting better” — something every team’s fans go through at some point — as opposed to what Pirates fans have: a team that perpetually sucks, with ownership that doesn’t give even a fraction of a shit about how much they suck and doesn’t have any interest at all in even making the team competitive much less a contender.
“Every comment I see in here so far hasn’t even skimmed the article”
Even the news subs are like this. Stats say 60% of people in general don’t read past headlines, but the number has to be even higher than that imo.
Pirates fans are the best fans. They love their team and universally hate their owner. I look up to them
“i hate this team. I was born into this and I…I’m not going to ever..I’m always a Jets Pirates fan but like..I just hate this team.”
That kid is wise beyond his years
“I’m proud to be a Pirates fan. It ruined my life, literally, but I’m proud.”
The visceral pain in that reaction is up there with the guy yelling “OHHHHH NO” when Pete Rozelle announced the Jets were taking a fullback in the first round.
I sort of remember the one Tagliabue announced. Lot of pointless tight ends.
Imagine you guys ever read an article instead of commenting solely based on the headline:
“It’s awful how it’s gone downhill,” said Jack Fayak Sr., who was at a late-June Friday night game against the Mets celebrating his 90th birthday. “We’re on the sixth year of a five-year plan and we’re in last place.”
Jack Sr. has a bit of history with the team, having been signed to a contract by the Pirates in the early 1950s. But when he attended his first spring training, an old high school football knee injury flared up. The X-ray found a torn ACL, for which there wasn’t a reliable surgery in those days. He returned to Western Pennsylvania and started a family and a career in coaching youth sports, but has always remained passionate about the Pirates, although even he admits it’s not a mutually beneficial relationship.
“I don’t even record the games anymore, because I know what is going to happen,” he said.
So why keep doing it? Fayak’s son, Jack Jr., feels trapped.
“We’ll never give up on the Pirates,” Jack Jr. said. “We are going to be here rain or shine. We just wish that it would shine a little bit more.”
Likely not. We live in an era of social media and short (and ever-shortening) attention spans. But we’re also reluctant to read anything that disagrees with our stance on something.
Welcome to Reddit
It’s funny how Pirates fans are just like Browns fans and Steelers fans are like Guardians fans.
Pirates/Browns fans: we suck. Why do we always suck.
Steelers/Guardians fans: we’re good, but not THAT good.
The difference here being that the Steelers have actually won a championship since the Korean War ended
Technically not true as North Korea and South Korea have never officially signed a peace agreement.
So we still have a chance.
Harsh.
The original Browns did win championships (1954, 1955, 1964), prior to the Super Bowl era. The current iteration has not.
Fans tend to follow their teams through thick and thin. I wouldn’t be a Bears or Leafs fan if we just jumped ship during times of poor management.
They have a gorgeous stadium and great branding too.
Bears/Leafs… jesus
Yeah man, it’s hereditary unfortunately
As a Yankees fan that went to game 6 of the ALCS, you jays fans have a nice stadium as well!! I was pleasantly surprised how nice and clean it was! I was wearing a Yankees shirt because al east laws wouldn’t allow me to support the jays but it was a great experience! Was hoping to see the mariners make history but it was an infectious environment!
Redditors really hate reading articles don’t they?
Then there was the removal of the Roberto Clemente “21” logo which had adorned the namesake right field “Clemente Wall,” a 21-foot wall in honor of the Hall of Famer. The logo, which also had been a part of the ballpark since it opened, was replaced with an advertisement for Surfside hard iced teas.
This isn’t even true. The logo was added in 2022, it was not there since the ballpark opened. Fans made a big deal about nothing, and the organizations response to this situation was reasonable.
Out of all things to shit on the Pirates for, this isn’t one of them.
I wouldn’t say it was “about nothing”. Someone at some level in the organization OK’ed the removal of the Clemente logo in favor of an ad. Fans were right to be upset about it, but, to their credit, the team also owned it and fixed it when it became public.
completely agree. The wall is 21 feet high and named after him that is the tribute to him not a stupid sign that was put up in 2022
Just because they’ve sucked my whole life doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop rooting for them
Something about fandom that I think a lot of people don’t realize - we are 100% of the revenue in this league and the reason things don’t change. We can complain / criticize ownership and the way our favorite teams are run - but the owner doesn’t give a single shit about losing if he’s still making $$, and a bunch of whiny nerds talking crap about him and the team isn’t going to get him to run the team better. The only thing most owners respond to is money. If fans truly want to see change in their org then they need to stop lining some billionaire’s pockets by supporting his crappy management. That means stop doing the things that make him richer - stop watching games on TV, stop attending games, stop buying merch, etc. That would actually affect the owner’s bottom line and maybe light a fire under his ass. But if someone continues to financially support a poorly run product, they shouldn’t be surprised if it continues to be poorly run.
The New York Jets are a perfect example. Woody Johnson clearly doesn’t give a single shit about winning because he makes money hand over fist every year. He’s in such a huge market and Jets fans are essentially masochists that would rather be miserable than abandon their team - so why would Woody work harder to get a good product on the field? I’m sure he is perfectly happy with the insane amount of money the team makes him.
I grew up a Pirates fan, and I forgot exactly which moment it was that made me throw in the towel, but it was either the Gerritt Cole trade or the Chris Archer trade. Both were just completely inexcusable.
I hadn’t lived in Pittsburgh in years at that point, so it was a lot easier to just stop paying attention.
I married into a diehard White Sox family, so now I’m a Sox fan, which is a similar form of misery. I don’t think I’m destined to root for good baseball teams.
”Every fan that I know is frustrated and feels like Bob is not the steward he thinks he is,” Means said. “He seems like he really thinks he’s a good guy and doing a good thing for the city and the team, and he’s so clearly not.”
The fans hate the owner, just like Angels fans except Moreno has actually won stuff with the Angels decades ago so it’s less painful, the Pirates haven’t won anything in any of our lifetimes
Moreno at least tries to spend money on the major league team. Very poorly and it ends up hampering the team, but at least he tries. Nutting just spends the base minimum on the team and doesn’t really care about performance.
Him “trying” has hurt the team more than him just standing back and letting his baseball ops people work
Dude the Angels don’t even have AC in their weight room.
Would you rather be a fan of a team like the Rays, Guardians, or Mariners, who pour all their money into developing talent and always being in the playoff race instead of payroll?
Or would you rather be a fan of the Angels, who have no farm system, terrible talent development, ridiculous contracts, and no desire from the owner to run the team in the 21st century?
I know who I’d rather pick
The article goes on and on about little stuff.
If they really delved into that the owner won’t spend the money on player salaries it takes to compete, I must have lost interest before I got to that part.
That’s the biggest issue to me in these types of situations- owners who won’t spend on player salary in a league where others spend prolifically.
There is a systematic issue in baseball for small market teams when there is no salary cap and only limited revenue sharing, but people could think before buying a team about whether it’s something they are willing to competitively finance year to year or not. If they don’t want to spend that kind of money annually out of pocket, don’t buy the team.
These penny pinching owners practically nuke their markets for baseball and make their remaining fans miserable. Sometimes they even move the teams.
It shouldn’t be allowed to be this way.
At least with the NFL, the salary cap, payroll floor, and revenue sharing means a cheap owner can only cheap out so much relative to his peers. Having a cheap owner in football still handicaps you, but there are limits and guardrails baseball just doesn’t have.
If I lived in Pittsburgh I’d buy cheap tickets to a ton of games simply to sit in that stadium and look at that amazing backdrop. Best stadium in baseball alongside Oracle Park.
There’s some selection bias here. Speaking as a Jets fan, if your view of the fanbase was the folks still showing up to tailgate, you’re not getting a representative view. Most of us are checked out and those of us who’ve moved elsewhere are largely onto passively supporting other teams until the Johnson family sells. I live in Orange County and it very much feels that way with Angels fans as well (doesn’t help that the Dodgers are right down the road and are so good, either).
I love baseball, but I don’t attend Pirates games. I went to see Skenes’ debut because he won’t be a Pirate for long. That’s the only game I’ve been to in the last 6 or 7 years
Buddy you think I chose this life?
They have a seemingly generational young pitcher (Skenes), a lot of other very solid-good young pitchers (Jones, Keller, Ashcraft, Chandler), one of the most electric players in baseball (Cruz) - though he hasn’t realized his potential yet, the top prospect in Baseball (Griffin), and as a fun bonus a guy who’s hit 8 HRs in his last 9 AFL games (Valdez)
Is it wrong I detest fans who are undyingly loyal to a team with toxic/dysfunctional ownership?
Like if this was a marriage, I’d be telling you to get a divorce. Why is fandom any different?
I think it’s kind of ironic because there are Tigers fans who would say the same thing to you about being a Tigers fan
Gotta admire the passion of Pittsburgh fans and how it stretches to all of their teams. I particularly enjoyed them calling out Pirates ownership at a Steelers game.
I grew up in the dismal 90s of Brewers baseball. I know how bad it can get when you have an owner that won’t do anything but cry “poor”. I can remember thinking I’d never see the Brewers in the playoffs (I was 18 at the time). I never saw Brewers gear at school or in public.
What the Pirates need is for their owner to sell and for someone to come in and at least invest in the OPERATIONS of a major league baseball club.
The Brewers still don’t spend the money on payroll that they could or should but they’ve invested in many other areas that can improve the team on the field including two performance centers, one at their Spring Training facility and the other in the Dominican. You have to have someone willing to try something to win. Few teams can spend on payroll like the big markets but you can damn well invest enough or more than they do in other areas
Hot take . You can be a fan of a team and they suck but you can still support them and not make it your personality. Ima marlins fan . I angry every year? Yes but I’ll still support them.
why are there still pirate fans
Honestly the pirates have a super rich history. It’s hard not to root for them based on that alone.
The fans and players deserve a better owner. Someone that wants to win and is willing to go all in. Bob Nutting isn’t that guy.
Because and this may be surprising to some people
But not everyone is a bandwagoner hopping from winning team to winning team
Because Marge Schott set the bar for ownership.
Pretty good read. I can’t say I knew about the whole bricks incident. Holy shit the ownership situation there is bad.
I think if you’re born somewhere that has a baseball team, that’s your team. If there’s more than one, like the Mets and Yankees or the Cubs and White Sox, you go with whoever your family roots for. If you move later in life, you still stick with your hometown team, but it’s fine to support your new city as a second favorite. And if your team ever relocates, then all bets are off and you can choose a new one.
Why are there still MLB fans if they have a commissioner who allows horrible owners to continue suckling at the luxury tax teat instead of trying to build competitive teams?
Defector sucks ass
I don’t understand the idolization of this blog. Most of their articles come across as snarky, negative, or just flat out misinformation. One of the recent articles whined about the “terrible” deal for the new DC Commanders stadium despite it being the biggest private purchase in DC history. What’s there to complain about? You seen the current stadium the Commanders play in?
“But ze billionaires are getting a break so I’mma rant and cry about it online”
Wait, did my reddit comment become a Defector article? Just gotta add 4 more paragraphs…
r/buccos r/pittsburgh
man i’m so sick of opening a thread about a well-written longform article and it’s just a bunch of people writing shithead replies to the headline
“Loyalty is supporting your country all the time, but supporting its government only when it deserves it.” -Mark Twain, paraphrased.
Pirates fans shouldn’t and in many cases don’t support the people running it, but they still support their club.
Because I’m not a bandwagon hopping loser
I feel attacked