The 2023 season for the Pittsburgh Pirates started out as if a barrage of “cluster bombs” had been unleashed on Major League Baseball. If they could be compared to an Indy 500 race car, then you could describe them as “running on all cylinders.” If they were surfers, they would be “hanging ten.” Just two months ago on May 17, their W-L record was 23-20. As of July 17, 2023, I swear to all of you that this is not a misprint. The W-L record for the Pirates was 41-52 and they are a whopping 10.5 games out of the top spot in the NL Central Division. They have won 18 and lost 32 games since mid-May. I know and you know, injuries and subpar performances can come and go, but one thing that doesn’t disappear is the reckless, frugal, self-destructive, and greedy practices of ownership. There should be no rumors, true, false, or otherwise of the Pirates buying, selling, or trading any of their homegrown and developed players. They should be stockpiling, even hoarding their best and average talented players for next year and beyond because if their opponents’ players were that good, they wouldn’t be on the trading block.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a column honoring Andrew McCutchen for amassing 2,000 hits. I wrote, “If McCutchen had not been traded and passed around like a journeyman and had remained on the Pirates roster for his entire career it is a distinct possibility that he could be approaching 2,700 to 3,000 hits as opposed to just now accomplishing the feat of 2,000 hits. The Pirates didn’t sacrifice him to sign multiple players to strengthen their roster, he was simply sacrificed to increase their bottom line. Yet he remained steadfast, while fat cats sat in smoke-filled back rooms, chomping on fat cigars, chillin’ in leather-covered easy chairs, making ill-advised deals, infected with the pathogen of narcissism.”
Owners can only sell what the public buys. Please allow me to offer a brief explanation as to why. Johan Arndt, Norwegian School of Business Administration and Economics once said this: “Demographic segments are forced to depend upon the dominant culture for economic and social direction, but many studies suggest that cities dependence happens only because of market manipulation by the dominant economic population.”
In other words, whether it’s good for them or not, the seller is going to spin it and spin it again and again until the lower-class buyer is convinced that a “mud-shake” tastes even better than a milkshake. If the Pirates faithful continues to buy tickets, why would the Pirates ownership change their modus operandi?
There was an article posted by Bonnie Johnson on theguardian.com on September 7, 2020. Ms. Johnson points out the unique and almost corrupt free ownership structure of the Green Bay Packers, she wrote the following: “The Green Bay Packers are the only publicly owned team in U.S. professional sports. From its early years a century ago, the team has belonged not to a tycoon but to the people of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and their descendants as a nonprofit corporation. Like my brother, sister, father, aunt, uncles and cousins, I inherited shares in the Green Bay Packers from my great-grandfather, Packers Hall of Famer Jerry Atkinson. Our family called him Poppy.
“Unlike other stocks, Packers shares are not available to trade on Wall Street, do not pay dividends, and do not fluctuate in value based on performance. There have been only five public offerings of team shares over the past century, and outside of direct purchase during these periods, buying or selling of shares is forbidden. The only way to pass shares from one owner to another is within an immediate family. No one may amass more than 4 percent of team shares. This structure has kept the team in the town of Green Bay, the smallest market in all of North American sports. The Packers will never have to contend with an Art Modell or Dean Spanos, who moved beloved teams from their homes to cities.”
There are two very simple and dark reasons that cities and communities are prohibited from owning specific professional sports franchises: 1. Control, and 2. Greed. Many times, sports franchises have held cities hostage, by holding the threat of relocation over their heads if they didn’t give in to demands for a new football or baseball stadium, hockey, or basketball arena. Cities were forced to pay hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to stop the moving vans from coming in at the crack of dusk with moving vans moving their team to another more “lucrative” location. There is an uneasy feeling that if the fans stop supporting the team, they might become the Charlotte, N.C. Pirates or the New Orleans, L.A. Pirates so the fans suck it up and keep on coming. There should be a law that states if a city provides funding for a stadium or arena for an ownership group and that group fails to field a competitive team within 10 years, there should be a public purchasing option available for that city or municipality, with the owner being compensated no more than 150 percent of the original purchase price. At this point in time, the Pittsburgh Pirates ownership again appears to be returning those smoke-filled back rooms, chomping on fat cigars making ill-advised deals, still infected with the pathogen of narcissism. They are again in the process of throwing the Phoenix of the Pirates back into the furnace of losing.
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