Bucs Are Champs?

(Originally posted January 30, 2010)

1.
The Pirates announced today that they’re building a statue for former second baseman Bill Mazeroski, already the namesake of a street adjacent to PNC Park, to honor him for his chief contribution to Bucs history: the top-of-the-ninth, game-seven home run off New York Yankee pitcher Ralph Terry that clinched the 1960 World Series. It’s a fine, bronze statue that captures the celebrating Mazeroski, cap in hand, hand way above his head, in the pose he gleefully struck midway between second- and third-bases en route to home (where he was mobbed by players, members of the media, and seemingly everyone else present at Forbes Field that day). Like inducting the Ronettes into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame (or for that matter, Mazeroski into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, as finally happened in 2001), it’s the kind of honor that’s as obvious as it is necessary: Mazeroski is, in his own way, every bit as important to the intertwined histories of the Pirates and Pittsburgh as Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente, and Willie Stargell, the three Pirates already given the statue treatment.

Those unfamiliar with the play need only watch this thirty-one second video to get a sense of why it matters so much. The Pirates hadn’t won a World Series in thirty-five years and, in their three losses to the Yankees, had been clobbered by a combined score of 38-3. Pittsburgh, then as now, is fiercely proud and suffers from something of an inferiority complex, especially when matched against bigger, more self-consciously cosmopolitan cities like New York. Thus, it would be pretty much impossible to overstate the importance of that one swing of the bat to the Bucs’ return to respectability and Pittsburgh’s collective psyche and self-image. Smaller didn’t necessarily mean weaker or less great, and Maz’s home run was proof.

2.
I was negative eighteen years old, give or take, when Mazeroski hit his homer. Though the Bucs won two World Series in the 1970s, and tough they won the N.L. East three years in a row from 1990 to 1992, when I was in middle school and a die-hard fan, they haven’t mounted a winning season since 1992. What’s happened in the time between Maz’s home run and the announcement of his statue--and, in particular, between 1992 and now--is that baseball and Pirates in particular have both stopped mattering in Pittsburgh. While it’s hard to qualify how much or little Pittsburgh cares about the Bucs, it’s illustrative that I can list, off the top of my head, more players on the 1992 team than the 2010 team, and I’m someone who cares about this stuff (or, anyway, did).

For me, Mazeroski’s homer is bittersweet. Sweet because it was a moment of glory for my home city; when I listen to the broadcast of the home run (I have it on record), or watch the video on YouTube, my feelings of pride and joy swell and I never fail to tear up. Bitter because, well, the Pirates haven’t tasted any glory in my lifetime; because they haven’t been close since I was fourteen years old; because I haven’t watched a Pirates game with something like a real interest and investment in the outcome since 1997--when the Bucs, with a $9 million payroll, somehow managed to go 79-83 and almost, but not quite, win the weak N.L. Central. Bitter, moreover, because I want baseball and the Pirates to matter and it pains me that they don’t in Pittsburgh.

3.
Maz’s home run is proof that the Bucs can be champs again: smaller doesn’t have to mean weaker or less great. Pittsburgh’s other two major league teams, the Steelers and Penguins, each a year removed from a championship, have borne this out. I don’t have the energy to list possible reasons for the Pirates’ status as perennial exception; when you hold the current record for the longest streak of consecutive losing seasons in the history of the four major sports leagues in the U.S., it’s fair to assume a number of things have gone badly wrong. It’s pathetic, it’s sad, and I want so desperately for it to change. The place to start, clearly, is to field a competitive team again. I’m not talking about a championship-winning team, or even a division-winning team, I’m just talking about a respectable, competitive team that has as much of a chance of winning each night as losing. Whatever it takes to do it, do it. Give us hope. Help us care. Make baseball matter in Pittsburgh again.