Tag 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…

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.

Bucs Blog Round-Up

Last week, I made my introduction to the blogging world by posting a bite-sized rant about Pittsburgh Pirates fandom. I regret nothing.

Now, though, it’s time to get down to business. In the grand tradition of Myron Cope, Pittsburgh sportswriters remain some of the most intelligent and opinionated in their field and, with the exponential growth of Internet, so too have Pittsburgh sports bloggers grown, both in number and in opinion. Since Pirates bloggers are perhaps the most opinionated of the bunch, and since good journalism is essential to any good fan’s understanding of their team, I feel obligated to deliver to you at least a sampling of the finest the Internet has to offer, in terms of Pittsburgh baseball.

 

General Knowledge

Baseball without statistics is like peanut butter without jelly, or a shopping cart without a broken wheel. If you head down to PNC Park and don’t hear about Pedro Alvarez’s slugging percentage in the last 20 day games at home, ask for your money back. What’s that? You don’t know what a slugging percentage is, you say? Perfect. Check out these websites and be enlightened.

 

Baseball Reference

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Baseball Reference covers all the bases (no pun intended), providing information from a player’s batting average to his place of burial (if applicable). What’s more, the site provides formulas for the more complicated statistics, which can be found by simply hovering at the top of a column. Regardless of what you’re looking for, though, Baseball Reference is the place to start.

 

FanGraphs

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FanGraphs reads more like a blog than Baseball Reference does, and tends to cover a lot of straightforward baseball stuff (Here’s an article about The Pleasures of Team Allegiance, which probably does more convincing than I could ever hope to). Still, there’s a twist. FanGraphs is representative of the growing camp in baseball journalism that supports a larger integration of advanced statistics, called sabermetrics in analyzing how the game works, (see Moneyball for more information, or the book for even more information) which has ruffled the feathers of baseball “traditionalists” the world over. Stay tuned for news of a new world order, but in the meantime, let’s transition to the main attraction…

 

Pirates Blogs

This is where we get specific. Any knowledge that you might acquire in the above websites can be used to better understand the blogs that follow, and likewise, you can use stats and facts to keep certain bloggers honest. Not that you’ll need to use your new superpowers on Pirates bloggers—those guys are on your side. Instead, cross-examine scheming Reds and Cubs bloggers, who might be trying to show you up.

 

Bucs Dugout

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A member of the SBNation network of blogs, Bucs Dugout is managed by Charlie Wilmoth, and covers late breaking news from the Pirates’ front office, (trades, free agent signings, etc.) as well as provides gamethreads for fans to comment on games in progress, and recaps past games. Additionally, the writers at Bucs Dugout often open the floor to fan submitted posts, photos and links.

 

Pirates Prospects

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Formerly B.U.C.C.O. Fans.com, (where B.U.C.C.O. stands for Bring Us a Championship Caliber Organization), Pirates Prospects is managed by Tim Williams, and is mostly concerned with the MLB draft and Pirates’ minor league system. Williams and company emphasize that the children, and not the current big leaguers, are the future of the organization.

 

Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?

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W.H.Y.G.A.V.S.? derives its title from Pat Lackey’s understandable frustration with the team following its collapse in 1992, and the veritable disappearance of superstar players like Van Slyke. Recently, Lackey has had slightly less to be upset about, as the light at the end of the tunnel draws ever nearer, but he, like many other Pirates bloggers remain cautious about getting too excited for the team.

 

Raise the Jolly Roger

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Brian McElhinny has a phenomenal Twitter presence, and, in addition to writing daily posts about the Buccos, can be seen to tweet the popular hashtag, “#RaiseIt,” whenever the Pirates get a win. Though the call to raise the Jolly Roger has become strongly associated with Pirates’ broadcaster Greg Brown,  McElhinny deserves some praise for personifying the enthusiasm that Pirates fans can have for their team.

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All of the bloggers discussed above, plus many other writers, can be found on Twitter, and have been compiled in a Twitter list for your convenience.

 

City of Champions, or: Why You Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Pirates

If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance that you know a thing or two about the city of Pittsburgh.  You know that we’re the Steel City, and that we pride ourselves on hard work, especially in times of adversity. You know the skyline—the one that rivals even the tallest of skyscrapers in the biggest of cities—and, if pressed, I’m sure that you even know how to spell “Monongahela.” You know that we’re the City of Champions. You know about the Super Steelers, and “One For the Thumb,” and when we won that fifth Super Bowl, you know that fans and players alike were instantly hungry for a sixth. You know about the Penguins, Le Magnifique, and Sid the Kid. You know that there are people who are willing to lug couches up Centre Avenue so they can sit in the spot where “The Igloo” once stood, and watch the Pens on an enormous TV screen with tens of thousands of other fans who would prefer watching the game in the dark, on a vacant gravel lot, to watching it in the comfort of their own homes.

No doubt, you know about the Pirates, too. You know about Clemente, “We Are Fam-A-Lee,” and you know about Sid Bream’s slide into home in 1992 that sent the Pirates wandering in the desert for the next 20 seasons. Since then, you probably know that the Pirates have become a punch line. You know that we prefer winners to losers, and an inconsistent team equals an inconsistent fan base. A consistently bad team probably deserves a worse one

Roberto Clemente at PNC Park

WWRD: What Would Roberto Do? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Naturally, I’ve had my doubts. In 2010, the Pirates recorded a paltry 57-105 record, and I was laughing right along with the rest of them. There didn’t even seem to be anyone within the Pirates’ organization who really cared all that much; why should I?

Clint Hurdle changed my mind. He took over managing the Pirates in 2011, after their dismal eighteenth consecutive losing season, and saw an opportunity within the crisis. Improbably, Hurdle seemed eager to join the organization who owns the record for futility, not only in baseball, but also in all of North American sports. In fact, he called it “the greatest opportunity in the world… [to rebond] a city with a ball club.” With such enthusiasm in Pirates’ leadership, it was hard for me not to follow suit, and now, I would encourage you to do the same. The iron will that was alive in Franco Harris, Mario Lemieux, and Roberto Clemente is alive in the Pirates today, even if they may not have demonstrated it in the win-loss column quite yet. They want to win, and more than anything, they want you to want them to win.

So here’s what I’m proposing. Don’t give up on the Pirates. If, after 20 long seasons, by some miracle, you haven’t given up on them yet, don’t give up on them now.

I always say that one of the reasons that I love the Pirates the way that I do is because the other teams give me high blood pressure. I love the Penguins and the Steelers too, but for different reasons. I get excitement from hockey and football, but I also expect success. When our teams fail, it stresses me out. With the Pirates, it’s different. Excitement isn’t always expected, but it’s always welcome, and losing one game is only a small setback. Baseball is a marathon. There’s room to brush off some of the losses. Especially with twenty years of losing, it’s nice to remember that there’s really nowhere to go but up.

The twenty-year monkey on our backs reminds me of another good reason to embrace the Battlin’ Bucs. When I dove headlong into fanaticism, I did so, in part, because I wanted to be able to say, “I told you so.” Slowly, but surely, it’s occurred to me that hundreds of thousands of voices crying “We told you so,” would be a lot more satisfying (Especially when “you” becomes, I don’t know, Cleveland or something).

I’m not going to talk to you about how PNC Park deserves to have a winner, and I’m not going to spew nostalgia about the good old days, sitting on the porch, listening to the Pirates on KDKA. You know that PNC Park is beautiful, and you know that the Pirates were a pretty good baseball team in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Right now, I’m asking you to make a leap of faith. I’m asking you to commit to a loser right now, which seems counterproductive, but I’m convinced that that commitment will pay off when the Pirates win their eighty-second game. I hope that you are too.

Use ScoreBig to Save Big on Steelers and Pirates Tickets & Win $100 ScoreBig Gift Card

[note] ScoreBig has put together another promo for IheartPGH readers for 2013 use coupon code IHEARTPGH20 and save $20 on your first purchase of $50 or more.  Click here to check out ScoreBig and save on Pirates tickets [/note]

This promotion was so successful last summer, that the folks at ScoreBig asked if we would be willing to do another giveaway.  We are all for helping to get Pittsburghers into the seats at local sporting events and that includes Steelers games… keep reading for the details on how to save on Steelers tickets.

What is ScoreBig?

Think of it like priceline for tickets.  ScoreBig sells off extra ticket inventory at a big discount.  You make an offer – if your offer is accepted – the tickets are yours with no additional fees to pay.

How much can you save?

I used ScoreBig to purchase tickets for the Pirates game on July 4th – I was able to get 6 tickets in the reserved bleachers for $9 a ticket, that was half off the price at Pirates.com.

New for 2012 – Steelers Preseason Tickets

Yep, you read that correctly – you can now buy tickets for the Steelers Preseason games on ScoreBig.  As of today they have tickers for Sunday, August 19 & Thursday, August 30 available.

You have to create an account to see what games are available, so I’m including a screenshot.

Win $100 ScoreBig Credit

You can use that $100 for Steelers tickets, Pirates ticket or anyone of the 500,00+ deals available on ScoreBig.

To enter – use this link and sign up for ScoreBig by August 6, 2012.  

We will randomly select a winner who will receive $100 voucher to ScoreBig by email.

Additional, by signing up through the IheartPGH ScoreBig Link – you are supporting this blog and Pittsburgh projects – we receive a commission for purchases made through this link.

Click here to sign up for ScoreBig & to enter to win $100 ScoreBig Credit

The important sounding fine print/disclosure – this giveaway is sponsored by ScoreBig.

Last year, I spent a good amount of time on the phone talking with the super nice and helpful ScoreBig rep – (Phil even offered to help me get tickets for a baseball game when I was in CA last week).  I have used ScoreBig to purchase tickets for Pirates games.  I am a huge fan of priceline, and I thought this would be a great way to save on tickets for baseball and football.  I have been 100% impressed with ScoreBig and the people that work there.  If you would like to register for ScoreBig with out using the IheartPGH link just go to ScoreBig.com and sign up.