May 21, 2007 By Commentary John Mehno 3 min read

PITTSBURGH – The Florida Marlins were in town for four games against the Pirates, a Monday-through-Thursday series that sold 50,395 tickets. It was the smallest attendance for a four-game series at PNC Park in four years.

Congratulations. It’s about time fans sent the message that the same old stuff is tired and they’re not going to buy it.

The weather wasn’t good, and the quality of baseball between the two sub-.500 teams was predictably mediocre. The Marlins walked seven batters and made five errors in the series finale.

The apathy at the turnstiles was important because the Pirates have been coasting on the appeal of the ballpark, augmented by promotions.

The Pirates have been consistently bad, so the baseball has been an afterthought. If you get a bobblehead and enjoyed the view and all the ancillary distractions, has it been a good time?

Apparently a lot of people think so. But maybe they’re wising up, too.

Congratulations.

The Alan Faneca contract story took a bizarre turn last week when KDKA-TV’s Ken Rice landed an interview with Steelers chairman Dan Rooney.

Rooney said he saw the tapes of Faneca’s interview and worried that Faneca might “fall over” after getting so stressed.

So it’s OK to butt heads with some 315-pound monster for three hours, but offering an opinion about his contract status may be a health hazard?

The non-playoff season diminished the number of Steelers-related stories the local TV stations did for the May ratings sweeps period.

WPXI had an exclusive with former linebacker Joey Porter. The promo promised the story would tell why Porter left.

That shouldn’t have been a mystery: The Steelers released him.

The “(John) Fedko Phone Zone” on PCNC has always had a train wreck quality, but now the 11:35 p.m. show is out of control.

It’s been overrun by prank callers, whose sport is to work the name “Gary Roberts” into every conversation. By week’s end, the producers were dumping the calls before the silliness got on the air. It was embarrassing, even by Fedko standards.

Al McBean was a pretty good pitcher for the Pirates in the 1960s. He was 65-43 with a 3.08 ERA and 63 saves in 376 games from 1961-68 and was the Fireman of the Year in 1964 for his work out of the bullpen.

He was also a colorful character who had one of the coolest baseball names: Alvin O’Neal McBean.

McBean was in town over the weekend for an autograph show and visited PNC Park for Friday night’s Pirates game against Arizona.

A scoreboard message welcomed “Alvin Bean” to the park.

“Kevin Clatchy” should apologize for the error.

John Mehno can be reached at johnmehno@lycos.com