Category Archives: Pirates

How Pittsburgh Gets Ready for the Pirates Postseason

buctoberIf you are new to Pittsburgh, or are just a casual Pirates fan – you may be wondering why everyone is walking around in an extra layer of black and gold.  It is a BIG day in Pittsburgh.  The Pirates play a postseason game tonight at PNC Park.

Here are few of the ways that Pittsburgh is getting ready for the game tonight.  We want to see how you are preparing for the Pirates postseason game – share your tweets and photos with the #PGHfanatics

The Independent Brewing Company Break Out The Television

I wanted to share the email that the Independent Brewing Company just sent out, which does an excelled job of explaining why the game tonight is a big deal.  If you haven’t been to the Independent Brewing Company yet – GO THERE NOW! A great bar, located in the heart of Sq. Hill that only server local brew.  If you can’t make it to the Independent Brewing Company RIGHT NOW, then take a moment to  follow @IndependentPGH on Twitter.

No.  We’re not putting the TVs back in and renewing Fanattics’ cable subscription.  Yes.  We are going to play tonight’s Pirates playoff game, which we will stream to a flat screen television through my espn.com account.

We stand by our position that televisions, for the most part, ruin good tavern experiences.  And after tonight’s game, we will return to our televisionless tavern lifestyle.  However, at the end of the day, if a newly-minted 21 year-old walked into the Indie tonight for her first legal beer, she would have witnessed exactly one season of Pirates playoff baseball in her life.  These things don’t come around often.  I’d like to think we’d televise another moon landing.  Pirates playoff appearances are just as rare.

Click here to read the entire email from the Independent Brewing Company Management.

Pirates Post-Season Hashtags to Follow

Here are the hashtags we’re following today:

Pirates Provisions and Fan Fashions

Here are a few of our favorite tweets and instagrams from Pirates fans getting ready for the game

Read more about how Pirates fans are gearing up for the postseason game…

Raising the Jolly Roger

I’ll make this one quick. I don’t have much time to mourn, because it’s midterm week in the Bronx, and I have to get prepared.

It’s been 21 years since the Pittsburgh Pirates have had a winning season, let alone a playoff appearance. I won’t spend much time listing all the things that have happened since then and now, but suffice it to say that it’s been a long time coming.

I wrote for IHeartPGH this summer, hoping to give a die-hard fan’s perspective on the Pirates. I’ll boil down my perspective to this: I want 82. Man, I’ve wanted 82 more than I’ve ever wanted the Steelers to win the Super Bowl, the Penguins to win the Stanley Cup, or just about anything else that I could ever want. In 2013, the Pittsburgh Pirates won their 82nd game on September 9th. I didn’t yell all that loud about it, (except on Twitter) and then, for the first time in my entire life, I started to seriously think about the Pittsburgh Pirates as playoff contenders. And they kept winning games. Between September 9th and September 23rd, the Pirates had won 12 more games. They had guaranteed that Pittsburgh—and, more importantly, that PNC Park—would at last see a playoff game. On October 1st, 2013, they clinched at least two more playoff games in the Steel City, and I only wished that I could have been there. I’ve put everything on hold to watch the Bucs as closely as I could in the past week, and I’ve never been more proud of my team or of my city.

As I’m writing this, Pedro Alvarez has been retired as the last out of the 2013 season, and I’m sad that it couldn’t go on longer, but I can’t deny that I’m at least somewhat pleased with the result. The Pirates have staged an amazing baseball renaissance in the city of Pittsburgh. Frankly, it sucks that the city can’t get more reacquainted with fall baseball, but we don’t have much time to mourn. Baseball’s back in Pittsburgh, and we have to get prepared for 2014.

 

The 4 P’s of October (Pittsburgh, Pirates, Playoffs, Phil)

philIt seems as if from a time immemorial my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates have been marginalized to somewhere between the Kansas City Royals and the Rockford Peaches.  And, maybe there is no crying in baseball.  I think “in” is probably the most important word in our previous sentence, because 20 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, and give or take a few minutes their were tears in a young mans eyes in North Hills of Pittsburgh. And, once again Monday night for completely different reasons those tears creeped back out of those ducts.  As I watched the replay of the on the field, post win celebration in Chicago, followed by the champagne showers after Adam LaRoche popped up to short for the Washington Nationals, assuring the Pittsburgh Pirates of their first post season appearance in 21 years, a few little tears of joy, relief, and fear rolled down my cheek.

phil2

Entering my house after a long day at work Monday, just an hour or so before the game between the Cubs and Pirates began, I noticed a very long awaited FedEx Express envelope.  Inside were my playoff tickets…lots of them…so many of them.  4 seats, 12 tickets per each seat, including the possible tiebreaker game, the Wild Card game, 3 NLDS tickets, 4 NLCS tickets, and 3 World Series tickets.  I also purchased 4 extra tickets for the Wildcard game and 2 extra seats for each of the NLDS.  58 tickets in all.  This was math, expensive, expensive math.

I have been a season ticket holder since the All Star year and since 2006 have seen some true and fantastical things.  For the last 5 years I have called section 26 my home.  This section is also home to a true Pittsburgh Pirates legend, Phil Coyne.  My 95 year old usher is one of my favorite things about PNC Park, baseball, the Pirates Baseball Club, and just being a human.  Here’s a little human interest piece that WTAE did about Phil in July.  As a note, he usually wears a Pittsburgh Pirates cap.

So, while I am very happy for the Pirates, their management, owners, the fans that have latched on to this incredibly fun team, all of us long time suffering folks. I’m incredibly happy to have all of those seats and to do the math involved.  I’ll be the happiest when I get to shake Phil’s hand as he shows us to our seats during that first playoff game that we have waited for for so long.

The Dog Days: Predicting the Pirates in July and August

On July 19th, 2011, the Pittsburgh Pirates stood at a formidable 51-44, with a one-half game lead in the National League Central division. It was the latest into the season that the Pirates had been in first place since July 17th, 1997, so naturally there was some excitement to be had. In spite of the buzz, Pirates’ manager, Clint Hurdle remained grounded. “They don’t break a trophy in half and give it to you on July 19th,” he told some enthusiastic reporters in an interview. What happened next was disheartening. The Pirates would go on to win 21 of their remaining 67 games, leaving them with a 72-90 record. On July 19th, 2012, there was a similar song and dance. This time, the Pirates sat one-half game back of the division-leading St. Louis Cardinals, with a record of 51-40. Yet again, talking heads began to talk, and yet again, Hurdle encouraged them to settle down. Then came a collapse of legendary proportions. In 2012, the Pirates saw their high water mark rise to 16 games over .500 (63-47 on August 8th, 2012), only to win 16 of their remaining 52 games.

As I write this, it is, once again, July 19th. The Pirates have found a new high water mark (21 games over .500 on July 3rd, and 19 at the time of this writing), and are looking to improve tonight on the road against the Cincinnati Reds. Coming off of an exciting All Star Break, where we saw five Pirates represent the National League—the most since 1972—Clint Hurdle is still preaching patience. He continues to emphasize his team’s commitment to finishing the season, while dissuading reporters from getting overly excited about the team’s success.

Frankly, I admire Hurdle’s hesitance to get too cocky (add it to the list of similarities between the Pirates’ skipper and Han Solo). Recently, it seems that baseball writers tend to get somewhat reckless with their predictions of certain outcomes, especially with regard to the Pirates’ recent history. While I acknowledge that a lot of writers practically make their living on prognostication, it can be kind of a bother at times. Writers will sometimes tab the Pirates for a winning season at the beginning of the year, and then backtrack as the year progresses. It’s not fun.

I see myself as more of a fan and less of a professional journalist, (yesterday, Lindsay bought me ice cream, but I don’t think that counts as a paycheck) so I’m not really in the business of making predictions. I’m rooting (as fans are known to do) for a winning season, but I’m not interested in talking playoffs yet, as others seem to be. There’s a lot of baseball left to play, and I’ve been burned before.

Having said that, the Bucs are playing some pretty good baseball. Their record sits at a balmy 56-37, just one win shy of their entire 2012 total (and it’s not even August yet!). They have the best team earned run average in the league, (3.07) and share the lead for lowest WHIP (Walks + Hits per Innings Pitched) at 1.18. Anyone who’s willing to talk about it will admit that pitching is crucial if a team expects to win consistently. However, their hitting could use some help. They’re 25th in the league in batting average, 22nd in on base percentage, and 21st in slugging percentage. A closer look at their numbers reveals that they’re not scoring runs at a substantial enough clip in order to sustain a 56-37 record, and in fact, based solely on run differential alone (Runs Scored vs. Runs Allowed), the Pirates are projected to have only won 52 games (not a hugely significant drop-off, but still worth noting), suggesting that some luck was involved in their successful first half.*

None of this is to say anything with any certainty about the Pirates’ production in the second half of the season. They had a decently impressive first half, putting up some exciting numbers, and playing some exciting baseball in the Steel City. I speak for a lot of people when I say that it’s nice to have something fun to do during the summer months, and chasing .500 with the Pirates definitely counts as fun. I’m practically hopping out of my seat waiting for the first pitch tonight; I can’t wait to see what the Pirates will do with the second half, and I’m really hoping, as always, that it ends with (at least) an 82-win season.

* — Anyone struggling with the numbers aspect of baseball is going to have to trust me here. There’ll be another post dedicated completely to discussing some of baseball’s more baffling statistics. Hooray for numbers!

One of the Pirates’ biggest fans– Herb Soltman

As he walks in I ask “Are you Herb Soltman?” “That’s what my license says,” Herb replies.

Herb is a lifelong Pittsburgher, born in Squirrel Hill in 1935, and has been a lifelong Pirates fan.

Herb grew up, like many in his generation, playing baseball with his friends in their spare time. This was before the Steelers were good and the Penguins came into existence. “All there was to watch were baseball and college football,” Herb said.

Herb used to play baseball down at the grade school field or in the street after dark when the streetlights would turn on. Herb said that in his youth he and his friends would “mark a stone for each base or just scrape out a square” and make a game out of what they had. Herb said that if they didn’t have enough players for two teams, they’d rotate positions and make sure everyone had a chance to field and bat.

Pick-up baseball was how Herb and most of his friends spent their youth. Later into his teenage years, Herb and his friends switched from baseball to softball, because a “softball does less damage to cars and windows than a baseball.”

Herb has been a Pirates fan all his life, which hasn’t always been easy. The 1950s were especially difficult. “In 1952 they might have been a minor league team” Herb said. In the 1960s, everything changed for Herb and the Pirates.

Herb was working in a family paper business downtown and he managed to get tickets to game two, six, and seven of the 1960s World Series. He was sitting behind the Pirates’ dugout on the first baseline when Bill Mazeroski famously hit a walk-off home run to win the series for the Pirates. This is the only time a World Series has been won by a walk-off home run.

While the Steelers, Pirates, and Pitt Panthers victories in the 1970s were a special time for anyone cheering on Pittsburgh’s sports, the 1960s World Series had a special place in Herb’s life and in the life of many dedicated Pirates fans. On October 13, 1985, Saul Finkelstein (a devout Pirates fan as well) was having a bad day and decided to go to the location of the old Forbes Field (now the Pitt Law Library) and listen to a recording of the 1960s World Series game.

Saul did this with just a few friends until 1992 when Jim O’Brien (Pittsburgh sports author and author of “The Chief”) was looking for a story about the iconic 1960 World Series and found Saul. When Herb heard an advertisement for the rebroadcast of the 1960s World Series, he said he “slammed on [his] brakes and headed right over there.”

Around 2007, the Game Seven Gang was born. Before this everyone just showed up every year on October 13, but now there was some formal organization behind it. Every year since then, about 200 loyal fans get together on October 13 and listen to the same rebroadcast of the game. Herb was elected president of the Game Seven Gang and continues to organize the event every year. The attendance of the October 13 event began to grow, and in 2010 (the 50th anniversary of the game) there were about 1,600 people in attendance, including Bill Mazeroski and all the living Pittsburgh Pirates who played in that game.

The rebroadcast has never been rained out and is scheduled to happen again this year, on October 13. Though Herb is head of the gang, he insists that the gang won’t protect any turf, save for the Forbes Field wall.