Beaver County (PA) Times

 

Don't blame Pirates' woes on Yankees

John Perrotto, Times Sports

03/15/2005

 

 

TAMPA, Fla. - We are in the middle of two of three stretches of the 2005 baseball schedule that figure to throw many Pittsburgh Pirates fans into a frenzy.

 

The Pittsburgh Pirates visited the New York Yankees for an exhibition game Monday night at Legends Field. After the Pirates enjoy their only off day of spring training today, they host the Yankees in a return engagement Wednesday afternoon in Bradenton.

 

The Pirates and Yankees faced each other twice to start Grapefruit League play. They played to a 2-2 tie on March 2 in Tampa and the Pirates rallied for a 9-6 win over the Yankees the next in Bradenton, overcoming a 6-1 deficit in the seventh inning.

 

Somehow, I guess I didn't understand the magnitude of what are supposed to be meaningless games - it is why they call them exhibitions - until I saw a Pirates fan smiling from ear to ear as he left McKechnie Field on March 3.

 

The guy, likely in his mid-20s and dressed fully in Pirates gear, had obviously enjoyed a few cold beverages on a sunny Gulf Coast afternoon. Still, what he blurted out to anyone within earshot was instructive.

 

"That's one of the greatest baseball games I've ever seen in my life," he said. "That might be the greatest Pirates win I've ever seen."

 

Of course, anyone in his mid-20s hasn't seen many big victories by the Pirates, who haven't been very good over the last dozen years.

 

However, this fan's unbridled joy over seeing the Pirates win a game that basically turned into an International League contest between Indianapolis and Columbus by the sixth inning tells us something else.

 

And that is that the Boston Red Sox and their fans aren't the only ones who consider the Yankees to be, in the words of Red Sox President/Chief Executive Officer and Pittsburgh native Admin Lucchino, "The Evil Empire."

 

I can't begin to tell you how many e-mails I have received from fans who have pinned the blame for the Pirates' woes squarely on the shoulders of the Yankees.

 

Those e-mails usually read something like this: "As long as the Yankees are allowed to spend $200 million on payroll, the Pirates are never going to have a chance. The Pirates will never win until somebody gets George Steinbrenner and the Yankees under control."

 

I was also recently a guest on a radio talk show when a caller said, "The only way Pirates will ever win is if George Steinbrenner ever dies."

 

Granted, Steinbrenner is "The Boss" and one of the most powerful figures in professional sports as the Yankees' owner.

 

However, I don't think there is an "if" attached to the question of him eventually dying. He's not that powerful.

 

It is easy to understand Pirates' fans frustration. New York will begin the season with a payroll just under $200 million while the Pirates will pay their players a combined total of less than $40 million.

 

Simple math shows the Yankees are spending five times more money on payroll than the Pirates. In fact, Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina and third baseman Alex Rodriguez will have combined salaries in 2005 higher than the 25 players who will comprise the Pirates' opening-day roster.

 

The easiest conclusion to draw is that baseball's system is flawed, and that is certainly the case. However, it is not as flawed as those who draw the Yankees-Pirates parallels might think.

 

The disparity between the haves and have-nots is not as wide as it appears to Pirates fans. The National League has had seven different championship over the last seven seasons and baseball has had four different World Series champions in the last four years.

 

The New England Patriots, conversely, have won three of the last four Super Bowls in the NFL, an organization synonymous with parity.

 

Regardless of what the hard-line labor hawks say, the Pirates are one of only a handful of major-league teams that has no chance of contending this season. Even Cincinnati and Milwaukee, two clubs who finished behind the Pirates in the NL Central last season, hope to be surprise contenders after significantly increasingly their payrolls.

 

To blame the Pirates' problems on the Yankees is far too simplistic.

 

George Steinbrenner never told Kevin McClatchy and the Nutting family to blow the financial advantage of a new stadium or not spend their revenue-sharing money on major-league payroll. GM Brian Cashman never told the Pirates to sign Kevin Young, Pat Meares and Derek Bell to bad contracts or trade Jason Schmidt for nothing.

 

So, quit blaming the Yankees and start blaming the Pirates' ownership and management.

 

A ton of bad decisions have left many Pirates' fans with only three days to truly look forward to in the regular-season schedule. That would be June 14-16 when Pittsburgh visits Yankee Stadium for a three-game interleague series.

 

If the Pirates win any of those games, perhaps our favorite fan from McKechnie Field will climb to the top of the Empire State Building.

 

Bravo!

Good article. Teams like Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay should be pointing the finger of blame squarely at their owners.

Although it escaped under most of the sports journalism's radar, the Pirates' owner is in some trouble for using his revenue sharing money (many of it coming from the Yankees) towards debts payments. A big no-no under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. See the other thread (started by QuickGold):

 

http://www.marlinbaseball.com/forums/index...showtopic=39625