Joe Gordon is a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, a “huge fan,” he said. He has been a season-ticket holder since the Pirates moved into PNC Park in 2001. Before that, when the Pirates played at Three Rivers Stadium, Gordon had access to seats in his employer’s suite there. His employer was the Pittsburgh Steelers.
As the Steelers’ public relations director from 1969 to 1998 and a lifetime Pirates fan, Gordon has had a close-up look at the two teams and has seen how one soared from the dregs of the National Football League to its super stratosphere while the other plummeted from the upper regions of Major League Baseball to its dregs.
The resulting status is on display this week. The Steelers are in the Super Bowl for the eighth time, having won it a record six times; the Pirates are licking their wounds once again, having suffered their record 18th successive losing season in 2010.
The teams have experienced a reversal of their histories. The Pirates played in the playoffs five times in the first six years of the 1970s, winning the World Series in 1971; won another World Series in 1979 and returned to the post-season the first three years of the ‘90s.
That 23-year period was their feast. Their famine began in 1993 and has continued unchecked.
The Steelers experienced their own famine and feast, dividing their 78-year history neatly into two 39-year periods.
In their first 39 years, from 1933 through 1971, they had 8 seasons with winning records, 26 with losing seasons and 5 with .500 records. In their last 39 years, beginning in 1972, they have had 30 winnings seasons, 7 losing seasons and 2 with a .500 record. Since the Pirates began their 18-year losing streak in 1993, the Steelers have had 14 winning seasons.
In the most remarkable sign of stability under the Rooney family, which has owned the team since its beginning in 1933, the Steelers have had only three head coaches in last 42 years. The Pirates, in the same period, have had 11 managers and this off-season hired Clint Hurdle as their 12th.
“The Steelers have always operated very efficiently, making the right decisions in spending money,” Gordon said. “That’s the key. When they make a move they generally make the right decision.”
Gordon pointed to linebacker James Farrior as a prime example of the “right decision.” The Steelers signed free-agent Farrior away from the Jets in 2002, and he has been a regular starter since.
“They have made the right decisions in when to bring in new players and when to let other players go,” Gordon said. “They’re not afraid to make a tough decision. Contrary to what some people believe they don’t make economic decisions. It may look like economics, but it isn’t. It’s based on football.”
Some might debate that view, but it’s difficult to debate the wisdom of Steelers moves. The Pirates, on the other hand, have made many moves in recent years that can be questioned. A succession of general managers made questionable moves, putting the current general manager, Neal Huntington, in position to be second guessed every time he makes a move.
A key member of a new regime, Huntington was named general manager 12 days after Frank Coonelly was named president in September 2007. Both moves were questioned because Coonelly had been a labor lawyer in the commissioner’s office but had never worked in a front office and Huntington had basically worked outside scouting and evaluating players and had not worked in a front office.
Deciding that the systems that preceded them hadn’t worked, Huntington and Coonelly set out to rid the Pirates of what for them passed as big contracts in favor of starting over with inexpensive young talent. It was sort of a rebuilding plan when nothing had been built before it.
Huntington initiated the strategy with a six-player trade July 26, 2008, 10 months after getting his job. The Pirates traded Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte to the Yankees for pitchers Ross Ohlendorf, Jeff Karstens and Daniel McCutchen and outfielder Jose Tabata.
Before much more than a year (369 days) had passed Huntington also had traded outfielders Nate McLouth, Nyjer Morgan and Eric Hinske, infielders Adam LaRoche, Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez and pitchers Tom Gorzelanny, John Grabow and Sean Burnett.
The Pirates received 18 players for the 11 they traded. Ten of the 18 played in the majors last season. Outfielder Jose Tabata (.299 in 102 games but a mediocre .346 on-base percentage) and reliever Joel Hanrahan (4-1, 6 saves, 3.62 e.r.a. in 72 games) were the most impressive.
On the other hand, pitchers Ross Ohlendorf (1-11, 4.07), Charlie Morton (2-12, 7.57) and Jeff Karstens (3-10, 4.92) combined for 33 losses, nearly a third of the Pirates’ 105 losses.
Outfielder Lastings Milledge, a disappointment wherever he has been the past five seasons, is no longer a member of the Pirates. After Milledge hit .277 with a .332 on-base percentage the Pirates did not tender him a contract, making him a free agent. The White Sox recently signed him to a minor league contract.
I asked Huntington to assess the progress the Pirates have made under the 3-year-old regime headed by Coonelly, who did not return telephone calls seeking an assessment. The Pirates’ 57-105 record last season produced the franchise’s lowest winning percentage since 1954.
“I think the obvious answer is 57 wins is not indicative of a good team,” Huntington said by telephone from Pittsburgh. “That said, we graduated some quality players to the major leagues and saw the maturing of some other players.
“We feel we had some guys step forward in August and September, McDonald and Ohlendorf, who despite his 1-11 record, shows signs he can be a quality major league pitcher. And the scouts felt that Correia’s stuff is the same or better than in ’09.”
The Pirates acquired James McDonald from the Dodgers for reliever Octavio Dotel last July 31, and he produced a 4-5 and 3.52 e.r.a. in 11 starts. They signed Kevin Correia as a free agent this winter.
Huntington also mentioned Scott Olsen, Brad Lincoln and Morton, saying one of them “needs to step up; no question we need to pitch better but we feel we have some good arms coming. We need to have guys capitalize on their opportunities.”
The Pirates definitely need to improve their pitching. Last season their 5.00 e.r.a. and .282 opponents’ batting average were the majors’ highest.
Among position players, the Pirates actually showed some promise with third baseman Pedro Alvarez, second baseman Neil Walker, and the outfield of Tabata, Andrew McCutchen and Garrett Jones.
“As we went into this off-season,” Huntington said, “we wanted to supplement that group with some players like Lyle Overbay” for first base.
These Pirates are running a different operation from their predecessors, spending more money to sign draft choices and to find Latin talent with the construction of a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic.
The tipoff on their intentions, however, will come when it is time to retain their good young players. Will they spend the money to keep them or will they trade them, as they did with the recent crop, or let them leave as free agents, as they did with Bobby Bonilla and Barry Bonds in moves that triggered their demise?
“As time goes on,” Huntington said, “we’re hoping to try to retain as many as we can, but it’s going to be a compromise.”
Gordon, speaking as a fan with no inside knowledge, said, “I think they will. If they don’t they will be the dregs forever.” Then, referring to Bob Nutting, chairman of the Pirates’ board, he added, “I think Nutting knows that. He has invested money in player development. They have a camp that is state of the art in the Dominican. In the past they didn’t spend a lot of money.”
When prior operators spent money, they usually spent it poorly. The names Derek Bell, Pat Meares and Matt Morris come quickly to mind, the first two highly questionable, expensive free-agent signings, the third an incomprehensible, expensive trade acquisition.
“They have made bad decisions,” Gordon said of the Pirates generally, then specifically mentioned former general managers Cam Bonifay and Dave Littlefield and said, “Some of their decisions were horrific.”
The many trades of the Coonelly-Huntington administration remain to be judged; so does its plan. “In some cases,” Huntington said, “we’re pleased with the process; in others we could’ve done better.”
But Gordon said, “You have to give the current ownership a chance. I think Nutting will spend money when it’s time to spend money. I think they have a pretty good nucleus of position players. They need pitching.”
The Pirates do not begrudge the Steelers their Super Bowl success.
“We’re thrilled for them,” Huntington said. “We’re thrilled for the Penguins and hope they bring home another Stanley Cup. The Penguins are a great role model. Not too long ago they were a downtrodden team. The Penguins are a great model of what can happen through good drafting and development and management decisions.”
The Steelers, meanwhile, have been a model of consistency and stability. “They haven’t missed a beat,” Gordon said, “since Dan Rooney’s son Art took over.”
GROWING UP CLOSE BUT NOT TOGETHER
Much has been made the last couple of weeks about how the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Super Bowl opponent, the Green Bay Packers, is coached by a guy who was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Mike McCarthy. Now I’ll tell my part of that story.
Mike McCarthy grew up a few blocks from where I grew up, 3/10ths of a mile, according to one of those Internet map sites. We grew up on parallel streets, he on Greenfield Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Greenfield section, I on Murray Avenue in the city’s Squirrel Hill section. The elementary school I attended, Roosevelt, sat between the two streets. The main entrance was on Greenfield.
I was no longer living on Murray Avenue when McCarthy was born in 1963, but my parents still lived in the house. My older sister lived less than half a mile from the McCarthys.
Mike and I played baseball at Magee Field. I hurt my arm trying to impress the coaches with throws from the outfield during Babe Ruth tryouts at that field, and it was never the same. My arm, not the field. The field was the same when Mike played there.
My nephew recalls playing baseball with McCarthy, who is the same age as one of my sons. Another nephew played baseball with Mike’s younger brother.
I recently talked to Mike’s father, Joe, who is my age, and learned that we might have attended some of the same Pirates games and sat near each other. He told me he used to sit in the left field bleachers at Forbes Field, and that’s where I always sat.
I loved the bleachers, and that’s why they appear at the top of this page. Joe McCarthy said he walked to Forbes Field across Panther Hollow, a wide open area that I saw only from the bridge above it; I rode the street car that stopped practically in front of my house.
The Packers’ coach grew up as a Steelers fan, which makes his Super Bowl task even more intriguing than it would have been. His father recalled that he and his wife, Ellen, bought Mike a Jack Lambert shirt when he was 17.
Mike, who his father said was a good football player, hoped to play in the National Football League, Joe said, but a knee injury and major surgery curtailed his playing career.
Instead he turned to coaching, and there he is playing his boyhood team in the Super Bowl.
“We’re always Steeler fans,” Joe said, “but not when they play a Mike McCarthy team. When Mike McCarthy is the coach we’re rooting for his team.”
REMEMBERING AN OWNERS’ CELEBRATION
As long as I have allowed football to creep into this baseball Web site in its annual Super Bowl-related column, I will mention a comment that caught my attention last week.
Bob Batterman, the National Football League’s outside labor lawyer, was talking to reporters about the possibility of a lockout of the players by the league and referred to a previous lockout experience with the National Hockey League.
He said the “only other time I have seen owners as unified as they are here is in 2004 and ’05 in hockey.”
His remark reminded me of my own labor experience in 1994. When the baseball players went on strike, the owners reacted as if they had won the Super Bowl.
In previous negotiations a handful of owners had often undermined the management position with less militant and more conciliatory views. This time the owners held together, and they were ecstatic.
If they had all been in the same room, they would have been high-fiving each other and delivering Champagne toasts. Their comments to reporters would have translated into whoops and hollers, back slaps, hearty handshakes of congratulations and more high fives.
So what did they accomplish? They killed the World Series for the first time in history and practically destroyed their business, that is, their sport.