Be Like Tike

Sunday, July 1st, 2007 by Adam Wagner

Failing to Walk It Out

Tonight was the long-anticipated walkout night. I headed down to the stadium, dressed in my green shirt and met up with a few friends down there. In looking around, I noticed that about a third of the stadium was wearing green shirts. Perceiving this to be a very good sign, I promptly hopped out of my seat after the third inning and headed to the left field rotunda, where I could view the rest of the stadium as people slowly filtered up the aisles, representing hope for baseball in Pittsburgh. The only problem was that a lot of the people in green didn’t leave. Honestly, what is the point of wearing green or an Irate Fans shirt if you don’t leave? Somebody, anybody, please explain this to me.

I’m not sure if it was the 6-run second inning or the hype of Tom Gorzelanny on the mound or just a beaten-dog mentality, but many of the 26,000 people were afraid to stand up for themselves and their rights as baseball fans. This post, therefore, will be an open letter to the fans about your rights and responsibilities as Pirate fans. I apologize if it is too harsh. This open letter is not necessarily directed at any of the people reading this, however, as you are obviously showing that you care by even looking at this (as WHYGAVS stated). This letter is to everyone else, the people who are afraid to stand up for their rights as fans, the people who will accept a bobblehead over a winning team, the people who will keep cheering on the “hometown team” just because it’s the hometown team. In other words, there are too many people like the fat old guy in the seat in front of me who, wearing his sleeveless Roberto Clemente jersey, kept calling the walkout “bullshit,” people who are still living off of the glory days of Maz and Pops, people unwilling to accept potential positive change if it even potentially affects rooting for the hometown team.

Dear Fellow Pirate Fans,

Apparently many of you don’t get the point. You don’t get that this team is on its way to fifteen consecutive losing seasons. You don’t get that there are teams in similar markets succeeding. You don’t get that this ownership cares about your wallet more than it cares about you. You, not ownership, are the problem, and that was highlighted more than ever tonight.

The fans who booed the people walking out are despicable excuses for baseball fans. I can understand not walking out for various reasons, but to attack someone exercising their first amendment in terms of a sporting event makes no sense to me. These people were doing nothing to offend your “Pittsburgh pride.” If anything, they were defending it, which the fans who stayed in the seats were unwilling to do. Fifteen consecutive losing seasons is not a mark to be proud of, people. Pittsburgh is too good of a sports town for this. We are better than this. We are better than booing our compatriots as they display frustration and anger at regimes that don’t care about them. We are better than attending baseball games because of a bobblehead. We are better than buying tickets to see a certain player beat the Pirates. We are better than this and we have a right to demand and receive change.

It was our tax money that went to building that stadium. All fans of the Pirates and residents of Allegheny county, therefore, have a right to demand and receive results on the field. When PNC Park was built, it was done so under the pretense that it would help the Pirates become a winning team. We all know how that turned out. More frustrating, however, is the willingness of both fans and ownership to sit and wait while futility just keeps on rearing its now familiar Parrot-head, year after year.

As fans, we do have the right to not buy tickets. I can understand going to a few games every year, especially if you have kids. A love for baseball is one of the best gifts that can be bestowed upon a child. A love for the Pirates is a difficult gift for that child to accept. I do not understand buying season ticket packages simply because of a love of baseball. This team is just too hard to swallow right now and is simply not performing to its abilities or hype whatsoever.

I do appreciate the effort some of these guys are putting out and I do legitimately like watching most of these guys play the game. It is when Jim Colborn messes with Zach Duke’s windup in order to somehow improve him from a pitcher with a 1.81 ERA that I become annoyed. It is when Dave Littlefield chooses to draft a relief pitcher with the fourth overall pick in the draft when there are at least four better options on the board for the team that I become furious. It is when the Nuttings receive more than $20 million in revenue sharing and simply pocket most of it (not proven, but how dramatically has payroll been raised the past six years? not very much . . .) that I feel as if I’m being taken advantage of by ownership. It is when a group of fans tries to do something about all of these feelings and make changes occur that I simply feel defeat.

Defeat is not an emotion that any fan should be feeling after a 7-2 victory, but, folks, Pittsburgh deserves a winning team. Look at Cleveland, for instance. Mark Shapiro (the most underrated GM in baseball) took a veteran team, allowed it to rapidly self-destruct, and then took the smoldering ashes and rapidly built a powerhouse out of the ground. It is through gutsy moves such as trading Cy Young winner Bartolo Colon for essentially one guy who people had heard of and three that they hadn’t, taking the heat for it, and allowing Grady Sizemore to become living proof that small-market teams can improve. These teams must, no matter how many times I type it, build through the farm system. Last year, the Pirates spent $17 million on three useless players instead of reinvesting that ginormous amount of money in scouting and player development. Management just doesn’t get the baseball side of things.

Management does, however, understand their market very well. They understand that as long as they keep offering bobbleheads, fireworks, beach towels, concerts by aging bands, and hats that people will keep streaming through the turnstiles. These people will continue to beat your wallet like a rented mule (sorry to mix random sports terms) as long as you let them. It is the people that realize this and are willing to leave the stadium that are the ones who deserve props, not the ones who sat in their seats and. idiotically, booed the people leaving.

You, my dear friends, must seriously reconsider your stance on the Pirates. The evidence is all there for you. It is up to you to make your own decision, but if you simply follow management’s line of thinking, you will never see a winning team. If you are willing to stand up from your rather comfortable seat, put down the trinkets, and make it clear just how disappointing this team truly is for this market, a market that deserves nothing less than a championship every ten years, success will be attained faster than any of us can imagine. I’m just afraid that we as fans have become robotic in our reactions to this losing and have come to take it for granted, just as we are foolishly optimistic every spring that this will be the year that the losing finally ends, that the young players will turn it around, that the random aging free agent signings will be reminiscent of 2003 (in some ways, meaning like Reggie Sanders), that winning baseball will be seen in Pittsburgh again, only to be crushed by an extremely disappointing but very expected streak in May/June. If that is the case, all hope is lost. And that would, somehow, be even more of a crying shame than tonight’s dismal failure.

If you walked out, even to the concourse, congratulations. If you stayed in your seat, shame on you. If you booed people walking, you deserve whatever crap ownership tries to throw at you next.

I just have to steal this line. It is the only line that reflects the hopelessness and anger that I feel right now, so . . .

Good Night and Good Luck.

~Adam Wagner

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