Jul 18, 2005 5 min read

It may be hard to believe for anyone under the age of 40, but there was a time when the Pittsburgh Steelers were a distant second to the Pirates in terms of fan interest. Growing up in the late 50s and early 60s, everyone was a Pirate fan, or so it seemed. Everywhere you went in the summer, you could hear the Pirates on the radio with their colorful broadcaster Bob Prince chattering in the background.

Players like Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazeroski, Bob Friend, Vernon Law, Dick Groat and Bill Virdon were fixtures back then, much better known and liked than anyone on the Steelers, who were perennial losers at the time. Overall, pro football wasn’t nearly as big as it is now. Remember, those were the days when only road games were shown on TV.

Pittsburgh didn’t have a NHL team until 1967 and several attempts to start professional basketball teams in the city faltered, so it was left to the Pirates to entertain the residents of Southwestern Pennsylvania. And entertain they did. After enduring a spell of futility in the early 50s, the Pirates gathered the nucleus of a good team later in the decade and ended up winning the World Series in 1960, thanks, of course, to Mazeroski’s dramatic homer.

That was followed by mostly mediocre play for the rest of the decade, but that changed swiftly in the 1970s. During that decade, the Pirates won the World Series twice, captured six division championships and finished second three times.

Unfortunately, all the winning failed to translate in much box office success as Three Rivers Stadium proved inhospitable to baseball.

The Steelers also upstaged the Pirates, winning four Super Bowls and a host of division championships.

The Pirates faltered in the mid-1980s before winning three division titles in the early 1990s under Jim Leyland, one of the most popular managers in the team’s long history. The Pirates were also able to re-establish Pittsburgh as a solid baseball town, drawing more than 2 million fans in both 1990 and 1991.

But whoever thought the heart-breaking loss to the Braves in the 1992 National League playoffs would signal the beginning of 13 consecutive losing seasons? If someone had said back then that the Bucs wouldn’t have had a winning team over that span, they would have been laughed out of town.

Sad to say, that’s exactly what happened. The landscape of baseball changed as teams in bigger markets than Pittsburgh had much more money to spend on payrolls, putting the Bucs at a severe competitive disadvantage.

The problem was compounded as Pirates management not only failed to develop players, but also made a series of horrible trades and free agent signings, dooming the team to futility.

So, is there any hope? Well, they have a potential franchise player in Jason Bay and a few players who could develop into stars such as Jack Wilson, Jose Castillo and Rob Mackowiak. They also have a stable of young pitchers led by Zach Duke, who could spur a turnaround.

There’s no doubt that the Pirates are still at a financial disadvantage compared to many other teams, but there are signs that the field is being leveled somewhat. Revenue sharing is kicking in and Pirate fans have to look only to Washington where the Nationals are leading the National League’s Eastern Division, despite having a much lower payroll than teams such as the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies.

So, it can be done. But the owners of the Pirates are going to have to step it up and spend more money for players. They currently have the third lowest payroll in the majors, and there’s simply no way they can compete for anything under those circumstances. The Pirate owners need to hike their payroll by at least $15 million to insure, so they can realistically have a shot at being a .500 team. From there, who knows? But they have to get to .500 for starters.

Will such a payroll increase pay off at the box office? Well, there’s no doubt that PNC Park is one of the finest stadiums in the majors and a beautiful place to watch baseball. Attendance this year is up 150,000 over last year and could hit 1.8 million, the most since the Pirates drew 2.4 million fans in their first year at PNC. That’s pretty amazing, considering the Pirates only drew 1.4 million and 1.5 million fans respectively in their World Series years of 1971 and 1979.

Given the support for such a below mediocre team, you have to figure that if the Pirates fielded a competitive team, the fans would come out in droves. Who knows, they might even draw enough fans to lure some free agents and keep their best players. Maybe then we’d get back to the days when everyone was a Pirate fan.

Mark O’Keefe is the executive editor of the Herald-Standard. O’Keefe can be reached by e-mail at mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com or by phone at 724-439-7569.