– Lanny Frattare, Pittsburgh Pirates play-by-play announcer
The best way to introduce you to this blog today is to have you watch the video first. This video is from Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Atlanta Braves. The Pirates are in their 3rd consecutive NLCS in 1992, and they've battled back from being down 3 games to 1 in the best-of-7 series in 1992 to even it at 3-3. They have a 2-0 lead going to the bottom of the 9th inning, with their ace Doug Drabek on the mound. So go ahead and fast forward to the 1:25:00 mark of the video – the Braves coming to bat in the bottom of the 9th – to see what unfolds:
I remember watching this game at the time and not believing what I saw. There are shock defeats in sports – 9th inning home runs, last-second shots, etc. But this game plays out like a sort of water torture in which victory drip, drip, drips away. Every confounding play leads then to another confounding play, culminating with a 3rd string catcher with 10 at bats all year driving in the winning run from 2nd base – Sid Bream, a former Pirate and, quite possibly, the slowest player in MLB at the time:
"(Andy) Van Slyke told MLB Network that on the Francisco Cabrera game-winning hit, he motioned to Barry Bonds to move in. Bonds responded by giving him the finger, and the ball ended up landing exactly where Van Slyke said to play."
– Sports Illustrated
It could be argued that this game was the single most traumatic loss a North American professional sports franchise has ever suffered. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did a terrific story about this game 20 years later, as the 2012 season was about to begin – to this day, some of the former Pirates still won't watch the game. They have nightmares about it. The Pirates franchise sank into a deep depression after this game was over, one which took two decades to dig themselves out of.
The Pirates were a homegrown collection of talent who ran up against the economics of the game at the time. After the 1991 season, when the Mets
Or so the narrative goes.
It's easy to look at the 1990s at the rise of so-called "big money" in baseball, since the New York Yankees won three consecutive World Series. This is, in fact, a bit of a fallacy – many of the greatest of the Yankees' players were, in fact, homegrown talents: Jeter, Rivera, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettite, etc. But having big money at their backs allowed the Yankees far more margin for error, and always at least gave the impression that the Yankees could simply go out and sign a free agent or acquire someone's soon-to-be free agent at the trade deadline. It was easy to make the argument that all it took to be successful was to have deep pockets, and that the franchises such as the Pittsburgh Pirates were doomed to be screwed over forever.
And you can thank the Oakland A's for doing a fine job of blowing that notion up. The impact of the so-called Moneyball ethos of the A's is something that cannot be overstated. Over the course of 15 years, the A's have proven that you can, in fact, do more with less. Billy Beane et. al have taken creative approaches to the acquisition and development of talent. They've done things differently, simply because they had to, not possessing the sorts of financial resources in their midst to spend their way to pennants.
As I say, the notion that big money = big success is really sort of a fallacy. Since the millennium turned, the big money Yankees and Red Sox have won World Series – but the economy model St. Louis Cardinals have also won two, as have the San Francisco Giants, who learned from their big-spending mistakes and adopted more creative approaches to roster building which served them extremely well. And there are plenty of big spenders who spend very badly and waste their resources: the Mets and the Cubs come to mind, as do the Dodgers and the
And the Pirates have been incompetent and inept. After the 1992 loss, and the ensuing departures of Bonds and Drabek, the proud and storied franchise went off a cliff. 21 consecutive losing seasons. 21! I thought enduring 14 straight sub-.500 Mariner seasons in the Pacific Northwest was bad, but 21? And they've not really been close to being good, either – save for a 2nd place finish in their division in 1997, the Pirates have been anchoring the bottom of the standings for most of the past two decades. And the opening of PNC Park in 2001, a jewel of a facility and a centerpiece for the revitalized city, eliminated the excuse of not having any money to spend. The last two decades' worth of losing could be chalked up to needlessly stingy ownership, poor scouting and development, misused draft selections, and sloppy play on the field. Incompetence, plain and simple.
But now the Pirates are back in the playoffs, possessing some outstanding pitching and one of the game's bright young stars in Andrew McCutchen. After a late season collapse led to a 79-83 season in 2012, the Pirates have broken through this year with 94 wins. They finished 2nd in the NL Central and hosted the Wild Card playoff game against Cincinnati. The atmosphere in Pittsburgh was insane and jubilant – going 21 straight losing seasons will do that to you – and now the Pirates have a 2-1 lead in their NLDS series with the St. Louis Cardinals.
And you should root for the Pittsburgh Pirates, because they are enthusiastic and likable and have endured a generation of absolute misery. And maybe finding some joy in the game again in Pittsburgh will make some of those ghosts from 1992 start to finally fade away.
