What It Means To Root for the Pittsburgh Pirates

What does it mean to be a Pittsburgh Pirates fan?

Well if you're a long-time fan, say decades long, you can remember the last time they won, or even went to a World Series. But for many of us all we've ever known, except for maybe those decent years from 90-92, is losing, losing, and losing.

We must never lose hope. Here's what I think it means to be a fan of the team that has been nothing short of a train wreck in the last generation.

• To me being a fan of the Pirates is being a fan of something that will never win.
• It's having the best ballpark in baseball, and the worst team to put in it.
• It's about being stuck in the middle of a cold, dark cave and the light, if there even is any, is up the slippery cave wall, and inevitably far away.
• It's about seeing decent baseball players come in only to be traded away, because of incompetent ownership.
• It's about watching a team blow multiple run leads late in games.
• It's about strikeouts, flyouts, and groundouts...oh my!
• It's about having an owner, whom it would seem cares little at all about the proud heritage of a city, and its baseball team.
• It's about having nothing to hang your hat on.

But in these dark times I try to remember what good can come out of it, and what else it means to be a fan of a team like this.

• It means being the toughest fans in baseball. How is it that we can endure suffering like this and keep our chins up.
• It's about living up to our cities reputation as being tough as steel, and sticking with our hometown team.
• It's about the ultimate show of loyalty by standing alongside a wounded, almost lost team, while not selling out and rooting for somebody else
• It's about cheering and going to the games.
• It's about remembering the famous walk-off home run in the 1960 World Series.
• It's about losing, but at least doing it without steroids.
• It's about driving across Clemente bridge.
• It's about sitting in the seats no more than eighty feet from the field and having a clear view of the grand PNC Building in the distance.
• It's about hoping, just hoping, and praying that one day a miracle will happen and this will all end.

For now it doesn't look like that's going to happen, but just remember that the worst thing to do now would be to quit on them.

Stick by them, even to the end. I'll end it with one of my all-favorite quotes. This is from the man that coached the Bills to four consecutive Super Bowl losses. (He knows a thing or two about tough losses)

"'Fight on my men,' Sir Andrew said, 'a little I'm hurt, but not yet slain. I'll just lie down and bleed a while and tomorrow I'll rise to fight again.'" -- Marv Levy. After losing Super Bowl XXV

Well enough of this. I'm gonna get ready for another season, losing it may be, but what the hell. What do we have to lose? Thanks for reading guys.

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