More Squalls Ahead
Can one of baseball’s great franchises turn things around?
Obviously, it’s not just politics where image is everything.
After a succession of PR disasters in this season’s opening few weeks, the Pittsburgh Pirates have had some work to do to restore their reputation as one of the most storied franchises in the game and demonstrate they occasionally think about their long-suffering fans.
Have those fans ever been angrier?
It’s never good when the TV broadcast of a game cuts away from chants of “Sell The Team” on Paul Skenes Bobblehead Day.
After a backlash over the removal of his father’s sign from the right field wall forced a climbdown, this tweet from Roberto Clemente Jr encouraged Pirates fans to join a celebration of Clemente’s life in September at the Heinz History Center in the city.
According to Jason Mackey at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, beleagured Pirates owner Bob Nutting may be trying to turn around how the fans think about him and the organisation, but now is the time to focus on what’s happening on the field.
With disappointing offensive production the team is maybe as John Perrotto says, at a point – even this early – where their season is at a crossroads. Yet, just tonight prospect Matt Gorski, just promoted from Triple-A Indianapolis, hit a home run in his first major league at-bat.
But the big question remains whether the team is wasting a talent like Skenes, the clear favorite for this year’s NL Cy Young.
RJ Anderson wrote for CBS Sports:
“How far Pirates owner Bob Nutting is willing to stretch financially to keep Skenes around is to be determined. The Pirates haven't spent so much as $90 million on Opening Day payroll since 2017, however, and it's only a matter of time before more and more of Pittsburgh's already limited financial resources are earmarked for the staff ace.”
Perhaps an aside which, like many things, might have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for Sarah Langs, was Henry Davis’s entry as replacement catcher to Skenes’ outing against the Nationals last week – marking the first time there had been a battery comprised of two overall #1 draft picks (and sandwiched between them was 2023’s #2 pick Dylan Crews, but maybe that’s excessively geeky.)
Joe Starkey at the PPG wrote that if [Oneil] Cruz and Davis could “power the Pirates more often, everything would change.”
Alex Kirshner writes at The Ringer that the disconnect between fans and ownership has been a long time coming.
“Maybe it’s not the single most toxic owner-fan relationship in sports, if only because there are so many strong contenders. Nutting is not the first team owner to have totally lost the locals. But rarely has a team done as much as the Pirates to blend two traits of terrible ownership. The first is never winning. The second is not just taking their remaining fans for granted, but treating them like pea-brained children. The club and its infantilized fan base may have passed a point of no return.”
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I was at PNC Park a couple of years back to see Davis’s much-hyped MLB debut, in Right Field against the Cubs. Here’s what I wrote at the time – I wanted to include it here because it helps highlight the proud history of the team, something no franchise wants to squander.
I’ll be back again this June for a game, so it will be interesting to see what might have happened by then. (Although maybe the most disturbing thing for visiting fans is that the park no longer has a Quaker Steak and Lube? Surely this can’t be true…)
Monday June 19 2023: Pittsburgh Pirates vs Chicago Cubs, PNC Park, Pittsburgh, PA.
On Juneteenth, the Pirates marked the day with a superb national anthem from Zuly Inirio. Pennsylvania’s first Black Lieutenant Governor – and the youngest in the country – Austin Davis threw out the ceremonial first pitch, while tonight’s designated non-profit partner was the August Wilson African-American Cultural Center.
A wonderful Roberto Clemente display graces the newly-extended team store near the Left Field gate, joining his statue out front.
PNC Park is still, without doubt, among the most beautiful places to watch baseball.
When it opened in 2001, I travelled down from New York to see the Cubs series, but the last time I was here was the 4th of July game in 2019 when Joe Maddon was hilariously ejected. The Cubs went on to win that game by eight runs, and they did the same last night; the home team’s collapse a disappointing way for 2021 top draft pick Henry Davis to make his long-awaited debut.
With the Bucs already down by three, at least the locals had something to cheer when Davis – whose walk-up music is ‘Free Bird’ – doubled off Cubs pitcher Drew Smyly his first time at bat. Sadly there would be no fairytale this time, as a flyout ended the inning after Smyly had issued two more walks to load the bases.
With the crowd already clearly embracing him, Davis has an opportunity to make a name for himself in a great sports town. It will be fun to watch his progress.
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This Week’s Game Notes:
Sunday 20 April – Baltimore Orioles vs Cincinnati Reds, Camden Yards, Baltimore, MD.
Charlie Morton came into his fifth start of the season with a relatively simple target. He left, like most of the folks in Camden Yards on Sunday, aghast.
The mojo-less O’s suffered a near-historic loss, 24-2 to a Reds team that seemed to be playing in a higher gear, but even then probably couldn’t believe their luck.
As usual, the O’s pitching woes continue to drag them down. Mark Brown suggests that “something is rotten and it’s not clear what the Orioles can even do about it.”
It’s probably best not to say much, rather just admire the “Superman impression” by Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz.
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Wednesday 23 April – Washington Nationals vs Baltimore Orioles, Nationals Park, Washington DC.
Maryland Governor and O’s fan Wes Moore was just on an economic investment trip in South Korea and Japan where he got an assist from Tomoyuki Sugano – or at least his signed shirt – as an icebreaker.
Sugano pitched a decent game for seven innings on Wednesday night but the O’s dropped their second straight in the DC instalment of the Beltway Series, as a comeback fell short with them stranding a total of 12 runners to fall 4-3 to the Nationals.
James Wood, on the second of his two bobblehead nights, perhaps inevitably fired a lead-off blast into the second deck in center-right field. It was his hardest-hit ball, ever, and tied Bryce Harper for the hardest-hit home run by a Nationals player in the Statcast era (since 2015).
I mentioned Wood’s teammate Dylan Crews in the Pirates item up-top – and with April being Autism Awareness Month there’s a nice piece by Anthony Castrovince here about the Nationals’ rookie star and his relationship with a young fan.
“Imagine being a parent to a 7-year-old child who has never spoken. Never said, “Mommy!” Never said, “Daddy!” Never said, “I love you!”
“And then one day, completely out of the blue, she says, “Dylan Crews!”
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Last week’s midweek baseball post was about how important it is right now to mark Jackie Robinson Day.
The Impact On Other Lives, April 16.
And you can read last week’s Game Note here.
The previous week’s was about the controversy surrounding the Dodgers’ visit to the White House in light of the Trump administration’s attempt to erase the story of Robinson’s military service – you can read that here:
Dodging The Elephant, April 10.
I’ll be back at the weekend with a wrap up of the week’s political stuff, then more baseball next midweek. As always, thanks for reading.
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