Don’t Blame Us

Don’t Blame Us

 

Do you feel responsible for the Pirates not being in first place? According to General Manager Neil Huntington, it’s our fault. He was quoted this week saying the money the team can spend is based on revenue from attendance. That means, since attendance is down, they can’t do anything to put a winning team on the field.

Seriously? You’re going to try and lay a guilt trip on us? I can hear my mother when we were kids and broke something.

“I guess we can’t have nice things in this house.”

“We’d like to have a good team, but if nobody is going to show up, why should we bother?”

Yes, attendance is down this year. It’s down big time. Monday night was the smallest crowd in June in the history of PNC Park.

“Good!”

The people of Pittsburgh are finally sending a message to tight-fisted owner, Bob Nutting. A recent poll showed that Nutting is the most despised sports figure in the city. He is hated more than Vontaze Burfict and Tom Wilson…Ok, I asked six people…three said Nutting, one didn’t speak English, one said

“Leave me alone.”

And the other one gave me the finger. Still I think the numbers speak for themselves.

Let’s take a look back a few years to 2015. The team won 98 games and set an all-time attendance record. The fans were expecting ownership to add a few missing pieces and give it their best shot to get to the World Series in 2016.

So what did Nutting do? Dumped some salaries. Then they didn’t make an offer to JA Happ, who left and won twenty games for Toronto. Instead they tried to put together a pitching staff from guys they found on the trash heap. This way Bob “Ka-Ching” Nutting could put more money into his pockets.

The Pirates had a losing season in 2016 and another one last year. You finally had fans excited after 20 years of hell and this is what you do? Attendance dropped in each of those seasons and is way down this year.

Of course in the off-season the Pirates traded away their most popular player, Andrew McCutchen and best pitcher Gerrit Cole. They explained to us that being a small market team, they couldn’t afford to keep good players.

The next week, the Milwaukee Brewers went out and spent a lot of money to make a run for it this year. That’s what the Pirate fans were expecting Nutting to do after 2015. It turns out, Milwaukee is a smaller market than Pittsburgh…Could this mean Pirate ownership has been lying to us all along? No, not Bob Nutting. He would never lie to us just to make a bigger profit.

Now, we’re supposed to pack the ballpark so the team has money to spend and become better. Sorry, we tried that and look what we got for our effort. The luster of the new stadium has faded and we can see fireworks for free all over the city in the summer.

You can try to lure us in with promotions like, “Ugly Hawaiian Shirt Night,” but, we won’t be fooled this time. It’s time for ownership to “Put Up” or “Shut Up.” Does Nutting think he can beat us? Maybe he should go look at some video of empty, cavernous Three Rivers Stadium during losing seasons.

Back then promotions were,

“Everyone gets a foul ball Night.” And

“Everyone has their own Vendor Night.”

Do you really think a guilt trip is going to work on us?

“I guess we can’t have nice teams.”

Please…