Pittsburgh Pirates 2004 Season Preview

PNC Park: Build it, and ?

Imagine a wretched, disgusting horror film, with plenty of gore but no real redeeming features to the plot after the first 15% of the flick. Then imagine having to pay for your ticket over a thirty-year period and having to watch sequels to that movie over and over.

Ladis and Gentlemen, I present Plan C from Pittsburgh, with many sequels planned.

Being a baseball fan in Pittsburgh in 1995 was an act of love, because there was precious little to fuel any other emotions - pride, etc. The strike and three years of losers had reduced the crowds to a few thousand for each game. The only advantage ten years ago of Three Rivers Stadium was that parking was easy to find (although mysteriously even with only a few hundred cars in the parking lot, the wretched traffic engineering meant it still often took a half hour just to get out of the lot). Baseball, it was said, was in trouble, and only a new ballpark could bring back the crowds, the payroll, and the winning ways of the early 1990s dynasty.

The problem was with a nearly bankrupt franchise and a nearly bankrupt city, there was no money to spare. The taxpayers were asked to foot the bill on the ballot, and rejected the offer. That was when the phrase "Plan B" started to be used by the city politicians and the business establishment, which was a code name for a way of getting the taxpayers to pay for a ballpark (and a convention center) without the pesky problem of getting their approval.

If we build it, went the mantra, they will come. How many ballparks were built based on the fictitious whisper from a movie? Well, PNC Park was one of them. Plan B worked. Opening in 2001, it was a fan's dream come true. I very much appreciated the fact that my $10 season tickets in the front row of the upper deck were being subsidized by about $15 a game by my neighbors. As much as public policy in this country skews to the interests of a few, at least in that case as a baseball fan my interests were being subsidized by somebody else. That first year, the house was indeed full, expectations, if not high, were at least raised that the franchise would break the then-NL record for most consecutive years without a winning record.

Bill Veeck used to say that the only thing five-year plans lead to are more five-year plans. The five-year plan was the great fallacy of the Cam Bonifay era for the Pirates, and it was ungraciously abandoned about year eight when Bonifay was finally sacked in favor of the somewhat more progressive and paradoxically more long-term oriented Dave Littlefield. The Pirates, as a money-losing franchise now for sure stuck in their market for another thirty years, nevertheless remain committed to not losing money ahead of not losing, period, and the excesses of the Bonifay era continue to eat away at the franchise's present and future. The gross contracts awarded to the likes of Derek Bell, Kevin Young, and Pat Mears are finally working their way out of the the net payroll, and only the Jason Kendall contract remains as the major oopsie of the period (although Kendall at least remains somewhat productive). The problem was, of course, that the budget balancer was to get rid of Brian Giles, the Pirates' only legitimate star and a multiyear bargain, relatively, in order to get the team back towards the black.

The reason, of course, is that the fans have seen the ballpark, enjoyed it, and declined to keep coming back repeatedly for a loser. The cosy ballpark would provide sufficient revenue for an Oakland A's-like franchise budget, if only it were filled to 90% capacity. But with only a shot at 4th place to keep fans' interest, PNC has been emptying out to a distressing degree in each of the past two years, and that in turn has made the ever-pecunious Pirates reluctant to do anything except keep building for the future. So we've passed on by the "Plan C" and gone straight to what I've been calling Plan 9 From Outer Space. Instead of Field of Dreams, the expectations of rescue from beyond have gotten closer to Closer Encounters of the Third Kind while the results have occasionally be closer to Ed Wood.

To be fair to Littlefield, last year saw some riffing and re-invention of the cycle of despair. Kenny Lofton and Reggie Sanders were hired as one-year guns to make the offense semi-respectable, then were offered up (successfully in Lofton's case) for some more of those all-precious grade B prospects. It kept the Pirates interesting for April, at least, provided a little hope for the fan base, and kept the Pirates relatively close to their budget. The problem, of course, was that this strategy wins only rotisserie leagues with salary caps and no dependency on attendance. The biggest draw in Pittsburgh is still fireworks night.

This year the Pirates are staging a sequel, bringing in more questionable veterans - Raul Mondesi in the role Reggie Sanders played in the original, Chris Stynes in the role of the super hero Utilityman, a mild-mannered semiskilled journeyman given a full-time role, and Rick Reed as The Has-Been (played last year by Jeff Suppan, who was magically somehow turned into Red Sox prospect Freddie "Not that Freddy" Sanchez in one of Littlefield's best moves).

Making his first starring appearance is the exciting Jason Bay, who not only came over in the Brian Giles deal, did his best impersonation of him for about two weeks. Bay's going to be a fan favorite, and if he's no Brian Giles, his paycheck is only a third as big as Abraham Nunez'. Also on the re-imported youth front, there's one-time Cubs can't miss prospect Bobby Hill who's succeeding Pokey Reese (one-time can't miss Reds prospect). In the role of Kevin Young as the platoon-ridden once promising contact hitting first baseman without power, we have Randall Simon.

Rounding out the offensive crew is Tike Redman, who may or may not be reprising the role of Jacob Brumfield. Tike's got a few more OBP skills than the typical Pirate "prospect" but we'll see how Lloyd McLendon manages to waste them.

And in a special cameo, in the role of The Closer Philly Threw Back, fresh from the implosion of Veteran's Stadium, it's Jose Mesa (in the Mike Williams role)!

In the meantime, the Pirates' best two players - Kendall and finally-living-up-to-half-the-promise Kris Benson (remember the Penthouse interview? You don't, hunh?), are on the trading block, continuing to fuel the death by a thousand cuts.

Littlefield continues to do a sort of poor man's Dan Duquette impersonation by mixing in cast-off prospects with cast-off veterans, minus the $100 million of stars. The team will be gritty, occasionally entertaining, definitely cheap, and will lose many, many games. It's possible the Pirates will even lose more than the worst-run franchise in baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers.

If this sounds hopelessly cynical, you try living with a team that continues to extend the all-time record in futility at even approaching mediocrity. I'd characterize it as hopelessly cyclical. The Pirates enter 2004 on an 11-year streak of not having reached .500, and not even Detroit Tigers fans can boast that kind of horror. "If you build it, they will come" really means if you build a team they will come. Bricks and mortar have limited appeal and long-term costs.

Some hope remains on the horizon in the farm as Littlefield's hard work at rebuilding the minor league system continues apace. The Pirates have a half dozen legit pitching prospects, including touted Sean Burnett, John van Benschoten (still probably a better hitter), and Bryan Bullington. Baseball America has the organization ranked 11th overall, although it notes the renewed depth is not matched by having any star impact players on the horizon. So it looks like even the minors are going to produce a supporting cast without the stars.

The city is definitely better off with PNC Park, and the team is definitely better off with Dave Littlefield at the helm. Whether that's enough to take this low-budget feature into the realm of the independent success story is anybody's guess. Look for "Jason Kendall vs. Freddy Sanchez" at a theater near you in 2004.