The best things in life are free

I would like to start this by saying that above and beyond everything, without Kevin McClatchey and his ownership group there would be no baseball in Pittsburgh. When the team went up for sale in 1996, the only person that seemed interested in the Pirates and keeping them in Pittsburgh was John Rigas, a cable television mogul that made billions from Adelphia. He is currently in jail, and his hockey team, the Buffalo Sabres, spent over a year as the Montreal Expos of the NHL, that is owned by the other owners. His bid to buy the team was (thankfully) turned down by Major League Baseball and the clock began ticking. Shortly before offers to take the team out of town were made (and they were there), a very young and very rich newspaper magnate from California put together a bid to buy the team, and Kevin McClatchey succeeded. Eveyone said he would move the team to Sacramento, he didn't. He said he would build a new ballpark, the best in the league. People laughed, but he did it (with some of of the people's money, but hey, tell me PNC Park wasn't worth it). So no matter what he or the ownership group does, just remember that without Kevin McClatchey there is probably a 95% chance that the Pirates would currently be owned by Paul Allen and playing in Portland right now.

That being said, there's no excuse for what is going on right now. The Pirates are, in effect, the Clippers of the MLB. The owners know exactly what they have to do to make and profit, and they do it. That's the idea behind both articles in the PG today about the Pirates financial situation, an investigation by Kovacevic and an editorial by Smizik. The article by Dejan is very good, with lots of depth, so I won't rehash it here. The simple problem of the Pittsburgh Pirates is this: The owners don't care if they win, as long as they make money. This is, as Smizik points out, a violation of what owners promise to fans. They promise us that if we keep coming to the ballpark, they'll do their damndest to put a winning team on the field. I really believe this can be done with a $40 million payroll, but the owners have to want it. The owners have demonstrate that they're willing to go the extra mile to put a winning team on the field, to shell out that extra money to Jack Wilson to keep him happy, to reward Oliver Perez and Jason Bay for their superb performances last year, pay scale be damned. The Twins were loyal to Johann Santana and he just signed a contract way below his market value to keep him in Minnesota beyond his arbitration years. The Pirates owners don't do this. They'll lowball players like Wilson, Bay, and Perez for their arbitration years, then complain about how the players aren't loyal to the team when they sign a big contract somewhere else. They'll point to the contract they gave to Jack Wilson this year as proof of their loyalty to the team, but honestly if Jack were to keep getting 200 hit seasons with the way he plays defense he'd be worth twice the $4 million a year we're paying him over the next two years. The Pirates lowballed Perez this spring (they can pay him whatever they want, he wanted about $400,000 and we gave him less than $200,000 I think) and he responded by switching agents to Scott Boras. See ya later Ollie. In this week's Pirates Q&A someone wondered when the last time the ownership did anything to indicate they were trying to win. Dejan (probably correctly) pointed to the Shawon Dunston trade. In 1997. Maybe the first Brian Giles trade that offseason, trying to add a big bat to a team that made an unexpected and spirited run at the division in '97. Just about every other move they've made was made to either dump money or make the team look like they were trying (a la Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, or the falied Raul Mondesi signings... I'm talking about moves to sign people that the fans would recognize but would not result in many more wins). Does this year's lineup look THAT much better than the one from 2002? Or 2000? Or 1998? (OK, it's better than the one in '98, but then again we could definitely lose more than 93 games this year) Is Lloyd McClendon better than he was in 2001? No, but he's still cheap. Sure, Giles for Perez, Bay, and Stewart looks good, but in the Padres eyes it was a known quantity for a pitcher that couldn't throw strikes, an outfielder that couldn't stay healthy, and a minor leaguer. If those predictions were right that trade would look like Schmidt and Vander Wal for Rios and Vogelsong all over again. It still might. We trade Kendall to free up payroll, but none of that extra money goes back into the team. We pick up Matt Lawton because he's an All-Star, irregardless of whether he hustles anywhere but in the batter box because "Hey, he's an all-star! We care!" Right now the owners are running a team with the sole purpose of collecting a paycheck, winning be damned, and that has worn off on the players, most of whom are playing baseball to collect a paycheck, winning be damned.

The bottom line is this, without McClatchey there's no Major League Baseball in Pittsburgh, but with him and this ownership group it looks like there might never be a contending Major League Baseball team in Pittsburgh ever again. The question is, which is worse? No one's asking them to spend $100 million a year, we're just asking them to care, and if they can't do that they should sell the team. That, or the Pittsburgh Pirates may be just as dead as they would be if they had moved to Portland.