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I have to get on here and throw this partly at Neal Huntington and Bob Nutting for still showing that they have no clue as to what they are doing. But also to the Fans, like me, who still like the Pirates regardless of what has been done in the past 18 years to a once proud franchise....
It seems that baseball fans, like all sports fans have a short memory and want to WIN WIN WIN all the time everytime.
Nothing worng with Winning. It is what we all want. I want the Pirates to Win.
But realistically we cannot win ALL The Time.
So we instead have to once again, for another year, relegate ourselves to another year of "rebuilding" ......
rebuilding a franchise that has throughout MLB history been a solid rock of baseball lore.
Names Like Honus Wagner, Willie Stargell, Manny Sanguillen, Roberto Clemente.....Not to mention the Legions of fans, the World Series and League Championship wins, the fact that the team is one of the NL "Classic 8" and has arguably, the best ball park in baseball today. This is what we have, and sadly, this , right now, is ALL we have.
So the fans have a great tradition on which to build. We have memories. And we have something that other fans may not have, Patience. We will wait patiently for the passing of Neal Huntington and Bob Nutting and the arrival of ownership and front office who know how to build a team.
We will still support our team without supporting the puppeteers who have no idea what they are doing. We will support the players, we will cheer for them, and the coaches, we will not disrespect them in public or anywhere else.
As for ownership, we hope you would decide to sell the team to someone who knows how to run a team, or that you would at least hire a VP or GM who could do so.
As for Neal Huntington, the GM, your bold talk in front of the fans will not win games. you clearly have shown that you too have no long term plan for winning, and you should step down and allow someone else to have a shot. You are not "rebuilding" and you are not on a path to rebuild. Hire scouts who can find the talent, a GM who can build the type and style of team that will win for years to come.
And don't make excuses about money. Teams like Tampa and Minnesota have a smaller market share and yet they win consistantly. And don;t whine about high priced players. High Priced players sometimes bring in high priced wins, adding excitement and championship level play, which means increased revenues from ticket sales, merchandising and endorsements. That may be something with which current management may not be aware, but it does work for the other 29 teams, which have for the most part, done better than yours for the past 18 years
As a Cardinals fan of 60+ years, I can understand how Pittsburgh fans fee, but for us it is a different phenomenon.
Simply put, the present day St. Louis Cardinals are not THE St. Louis Cardinals, they are just a bunch of come-and-go high-priced players who manage to have collective credibility in most years lately.
The REAL St. Louis Cardinals were of the nature of the Gas Houses Gang and Whitey Ball. We're now nearly last in the league in stolen bases, and our lead-footed catcher is near the top as a stolen base thread, because opposing pitchers don't even bother to hold us on anymore. A T-ball player can hit a ball through our middle infield, and we have a first baseman's arm in right field.
We've traded away all-stars, in order to get the likes of Rick Wise and Sixto Lezcano and Ton Brunansky and Neil Allen. The Steve Carlton trade more than negated the Lou Brock trade. There is no sense of a home-grown player growing up to be a Cardinal. We don't even have a pitcher who was born in Oklahoma, anymore.
Now here comes the worst part. There are so many huge holes in the team right now, even if Pujols and Holliday and Berkman all hit .400, we can't win with our indecent defense, no speed, and our present Double-A bullpen. And we can't build on them, without offering nearly a billion dollars to Pujols, Molina and Carpernter to re-sign when they become free agents at the end of this year. And even our present contracts have pushed our ticket prices out of the reach of most true fans. Which means a rebuliding year in 2012, pujtting us smack in the middle of a Pittsburgh dilemma.
Here's where they went wrong. Power hitters cost a lot more on the free agency market than a speedy defense. But the Cards moved in the fences, went after Big Mac, and decided to compete in that very expensive game. Having my druthers, I'd rather see them play in a ballpark with unreachably distant fences, put deer in the outfield for half the salary, and challenge the visiting hulks to try to hit balls over their heads. In the tradition of the St. Louis Cardinals, who died after Whitey.
Speaking of tradition, the 1927 Pirates have become one of the most overlooked and underrated teams in history. They won 94 games (or the equivalent of 99 wins with today's longer schedule) and led the league in hitting (.305) and OBP (.361). Paul "Big Poison" Waner hit .380, scored 114 runs and drove in 131. His brother, Lloyd "Little Poison," hit .355 and scored 133 runs. Pie Traynor (.342) and Glenn Wright drove in 106 and 105 runs respectively. Top pitchers were Carmen Hill (22-11, 3.24), Lee Meadows (19-10, 3.40) and Ray Kremer (19-8, 2.47). Johnny Miljus (8-3, 1.90) anchored the bullpen. The roster included 5 future Hall of Famers: the Waners, Traynor, Kiki Cuyler and Joe Cronin.
I just wanted to add this sidebar to my comment about Cardinal Tradition.
The 1946 Cardinals won the World Series, without one single player in uniform who had ever played for any other MLB team. All 25 of them came up the big leagues from Cardinal farm teams, and not one was acquired in a trade with major league experience elsewhere. Even the manager had played his entire career with the Cardinals.
All but two (Brazle and Walker) were originally scouted and signed by the Cardinals, and those two had been under contract to the Cardinals at least since 1940. Most were born and raised in "Cardinal Territory", 15 of them true southerners.
As a lifelong Mets fan (only because the Dodgers moved out of Brooklyn when I was an infant), I can't hope to compete with traditions as established as those of the Pirates and Cardinals. The Amazin's are relative newcomers by comparison.
Besides, the original Met tradition was that of the Lovable Losers. They probably could've parlayed that into an uninterrupted half century of bad baseball...if only they hadn't messed things up and won the World Series in 1969. After that, people didn't like the idea of the team losing anywhere between 90 and 110 games each season, however lovable they might have been.
I just wanted to add this sidebar to my comment about Cardinal Tradition.
The 1946 Cardinals won the World Series, without one single player in uniform who had ever played for any other MLB team. All 25 of them came up the big leagues from Cardinal farm teams, and not one was acquired in a trade with major league experience elsewhere. Even the manager had played his entire career with the Cardinals.
All but two (Brazle and Walker) were originally scouted and signed by the Cardinals, and those two had been under contract to the Cardinals at least since 1940. Most were born and raised in "Cardinal Territory", 15 of them true southerners.
This would be the Cardinals' last World Series appearance until 1964. Meanwhile, at least 4 team members went on to play in the Series for other clubs: Red Schoendienst and Del Rice with the Braves, Dick Sisler with the Phillies, and Enos Slaughter with the Yankees.
This would be the Cardinals' last World Series appearance until 1964. Meanwhile, at least 4 team members went on to play in the Series for other clubs: Red Schoendienst and Del Rice with the Braves, Dick Sisler with the Phillies, and Enos Slaughter with the Yankees.
Nippy Jones did, too, with the same Braves. The famous shoe-polish HBP. Those two World Series were virtually the bookends of Jones' career. He'd had only 14 plate appearances before his pinch-hit strikeout in the '46 series. Then, 11 years later, the shoe-polish game was his last appearance in a MLB uniform.
Last edited by jtur88; 05-03-2011 at 10:07 AM..
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