Pittsburgh rises up for a 2nd year of Pirates magic
Perhaps the Pirates' renewed popularity is best measured in ink.
“Definitely more Pirates-related stuff now,” said tattoo artist Seth Aaron Moritz, who works at In the Blood Tattoo in the South Side. “Five years ago, I was doing a bunch of Steelers (tattoos). Not now. Now it's more Pirates.”
The Pittsburgh Pirates, back in the playoffs for a second consecutive year, face off against the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday night at PNC Park in a Wild Card elimination game.
The stadium will be loud — as it was last year when fans unleashed 20 years of frustration to create an environment so unnerving that Cincinnati Reds' pitcher Johnny Cueto dropped a baseball while standing on the mound, then served up a pitch that Russell Martin hit for a home run into left-center field.
This year also will be different, fans and team officials said Tuesday.
Last year was new and exciting, but many fans — scarred by collapses in 2011 and 2012 — didn't fully buy in until late in the season.
This year, fans showed support from day one, helping the team set a club attendance record of 2.44 million.
Where Pirates gear once was an afterthought, it now flies off the racks of local shops.
Where fans just five years ago would get mad if someone turned on the Pirates game in their local sports bar, they watch the screens eagerly — even on Sundays when the Steelers play.
In short, baseball is cool again. In 2014, Pittsburgh reemerged as a legitimate baseball town.
“Historically, before the 1970s, baseball reigned supreme,” said Anne Madarasz, director of Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum. “That feeling, that rekindling happened last year, and it's coming again. Yeah, baseball is back. Now it's not that deep, dark secret we had to keep inside.”
Signs of the resurrection abound.
A city fire truck on Monday raced to a car crash on Route 28 with a Jolly Roger waving from the back.
A tanning salon on East Carson Street — not a sports bar, but a tanning salon — proudly displayed a Pirates flag on its storefront.
And in Market Square, hundreds of fans spent the lunch hour on Tuesday cheering as team president Frank Coonelly urged them to help “put (the Giants) back on their couches in San Francisco.”
“This is not a joke: Pittsburgh is a real baseball town again,” said Chris “Captain” Miller, 27, of Natrona Heights, who dressed as a Pirate for the rally, down to the hook hand and gold tooth. “There won't be another 20-year drought.”
Greg Brown saw this coming.
“I've said it for years: What we needed was a ballpark and a good team,” the team's excitable play-by-play announcer told the Trib after the rally. “We were playing in a football stadium for 30 years. All people needed was a good team and ballpark.”
They got both, Brown said, and now, “There's no question about it, this is one of the best baseball towns in the country. We got a winning team with the best ballpark in the country and, without a doubt, it's a tremendous baseball area.”
More than that, fans got a team that is distinctly Pittsburgh, said former pitcher Steve Blass.
“They are a perfect fit for this city: It's a blue-collar, Major League team in a blue-collar city,” Blass said. “They have been challenged like people in Pittsburgh have been challenged, and they've responded because Pittsburgh responds.”
Much has changed in the city since the last consecutive playoff appearances, ending in heartbreak against Sid Bream and the Atlanta Braves in 1992.
But the emotions of finally being able to root for the home team ring familiar, said Angelo Lamatrice.
“It was madness — CBS was doing remote shots here in the bar,” said Lamatrice, who opened the Clark Bar near the old Three Rivers Stadium in 1989. “Then they started losing all those years and the Steelers started overwhelming things. Things got away from them. Twenty years is a long time. But now it's getting back to where it used to be.”
Charles Conko never left the team.
Known by Pirates fans as “Chuck from Uniontown” — the moniker he uses during his daily phone calls to sports radio shows to discuss the Pirates — Conko learned the game of baseball 57 years ago, when the Pirates were the only game in town worth watching.
“They were the first team to bring a world championship to the city,” Conko, 62, said. “People forget about this.”
Conko, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, said he has “one hand to work with.” Yet he has attended several games over the years and never misses a broadcast, even during the lean years.
“The Pirates are like my family or my kids: You get mad at them, but you love them and never turn your back on them,” he said. “And here we are.”
He finds hope through his favorite manager in baseball.
“When Clint Hurdle chose the Pirates over the Mets, he said he wanted to re-bond the city with the team,” Conko said. “I don't think there's any question that he's done it. Look at the attendance, the all-time record. ... As far as I'm concerned, Clint Hurdle can manage for life.”
Chris Togneri is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach him at 412-380-5632 or ctogneri@tribweb.com.
