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Any Buccos fans out there? If so, there is a Pirates anniversary this year!
My article was in now way related to the current day PiratesAny Buccos fans out there? If so, there is a Pirates anniversary this year!
The pathetic broken Pirates of today have nothing to do with the Clemente of yesteryear.
We came close in 1979! Pirates and Steelers both winning championships! Penguins made the playoffs. Pitt Panthers finished 11-1 and won the Fiesta Bowl.Loved him and Chicken on the hill Will. Since I was a little girl, I hoped for a Pitts. hat trick. The Pennant, the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup....
Those were the good old days when small market teams had just as much a chance to go to the World Series year after year as anybody.I loved those uniforms,never should have changed them.We came close in 1979! Pirates and Steelers both winning championships! Penguins made the playoffs. Pitt Panthers finished 11-1 and won the Fiesta Bowl.Loved him and Chicken on the hill Will. Since I was a little girl, I hoped for a Pitts. hat trick. The Pennant, the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup....
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Free agency was the death knell for small-market teams, and everybody knew it. Had Clemente been a Pirate rookie during free agency he would have been GONE five minutes after he became eligible. You could fill a mini-HOF with the list of great players who left the Pirates because the Pirates simply couldn't afford to pay them market rates.
As strange as it seems, I have an encyclopedic memory for the rosters and major stats of the Pirates from 60 through 71. I became interested again for the late 70's teams, but since then, not so much.
What does it say about a team when the main reasons to go out to the ballpark are (a) the ballpark itself, and (b) to see the opposing team?
I used to love the smell of the old Forbes Field...cigar smoke, stale tobacco spit, and beer. Pirate knothole kids, 50 cent tickets in the left field bleachers. Remember the voice of the Pirates...Bob Prince?
Sad world we live in when that’s the only reason to go to games now.free agency indeed was the death kneel for baseball.we will never see the pirates in another World Series in our lifetimes. When our evil politiciansbanned smoking,I knew someday the world would be as it is today,I mean smoking hard been a constitutional right of ours sense the constitution.Free agency ends loyalty. And frankly the price of the product is to high for the value given back. I would demand a performance that is excellent like going to a theatre. There are a lot of games that are not that good. Real fans though still appreciate them if there is a win. Forbes Field had a long center field area I believe. The cookie cutter stadiums did not have the charm of the older ones. But they were more stream lined, modern for the time and most in safe areas of the cities.Free agency was the death knell for small-market teams, and everybody knew it. Had Clemente been a Pirate rookie during free agency he would have been GONE five minutes after he became eligible. You could fill a mini-HOF with the list of great players who left the Pirates because the Pirates simply couldn't afford to pay them market rates.
As strange as it seems, I have an encyclopedic memory for the rosters and major stats of the Pirates from 60 through 71. I became interested again for the late 70's teams, but since then, not so much.
What does it say about a team when the main reasons to go out to the ballpark are (a) the ballpark itself, and (b) to see the opposing team?
I used to love the smell of the old Forbes Field...cigar smoke, stale tobacco spit, and beer. Pirate knothole kids, 50 cent tickets in the left field bleachers. Remember the voice of the Pirates...Bob Prince?
Damn your really an old fart that you been around that long to have gone to Forbes field.lol exactly,you totally nailed it,that’s what I been saying for the past 20 years or as well that pretty much the only reason now to go to games is because of the ballpark itself.
I have a funny Forbes Field story...Free agency was the death knell for small-market teams, and everybody knew it. Had Clemente been a Pirate rookie during free agency he would have been GONE five minutes after he became eligible. You could fill a mini-HOF with the list of great players who left the Pirates because the Pirates simply couldn't afford to pay them market rates.
As strange as it seems, I have an encyclopedic memory for the rosters and major stats of the Pirates from 60 through 71. I became interested again for the late 70's teams, but since then, not so much.
What does it say about a team when the main reasons to go out to the ballpark are (a) the ballpark itself, and (b) to see the opposing team?
I used to love the smell of the old Forbes Field...cigar smoke, stale tobacco spit, and beer. Pirate knothole kids, 50 cent tickets in the left field bleachers. Remember the voice of the Pirates...Bob Prince?
When you watched "The Sandlot" you must have thought of this memory!One day in 1961 my dad was invited by a client to a game at Forbes field...box seats behind third base. Somehow he ended up with a foul ball of the bat of BILL MAZEROSKI(!). You know, they guy who hit the game-winning home run in 1960?
By the time my dad came home I had been asleep for a while. He woke me up to give me the baseball, more excited than I was.
A few days later, my posse was playing pick-up games at Mellon Park and the ball we had been using finally bit the dust. It had gone from good, to missing a few stitches, to the cover's falling off, to covered with black tape, to a ball of string with a little red ball in the middle.
So out came the "Maz" ball, which went through the same deterioration over the following days and was quickly forgotten.
My dad asked me a few weeks later where i was keeping the Maz ball. "Keeping it? It's long gone."
One of many times during my Yoot that my father just walked away, shaking his head.
Baseball was the number one sport. Then they ruined it.Much of my childhood from ages 9-13 was spent playing pickup baseball games. We could put a game together with as few as four players, total. A pitcher, an outfielder, double-or-nothing, no right field hitting. Among other oddities, it created the possibility of a force at home plate when the hitter's hit was not sufficient to score the runner...there was no one left to bat.
Yes, Sandlot brought back a lot of memories.
