Post Gazette Rips Frugal Pirate Ownership Group

'"The business is in very good shape right now," [McClatchy] said."'

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette ran Part II of their 'How Not to be Competitive in Professional Sports' series yesterday.. you can read about it here. Part I is here. Of course, it isn't really called that - just what it should be called.

I am not going to go into the gory details of how the ownership group will 'probably' net about $50MM in profits from 2005 thru 2006.. maybe even more.

Suffice it to say, it is very hard to be a Pittsburgh Pirate fan these days, no matter how much you love the history of the organization. As I stated in my first post in this blog, we are on a Mission from God to get these fat cat owners to spend reasonable amounts of money towards fielding a competitive product.

Goose Goslin, the ex-Pirate pitcher and a very conservative and typically a hard-nosed, organization friendly writer, blasted the ownership group in this April 17, 2005, article where he stopped just short of calling for an all out boycott:

"Those guys you see masquerading in Pirates' uniforms these days are not really the guys representing the tradition of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Rather, they are the Unacceptables.

Forget the fact that it is early in the season. Forget the fact that they are a small-market team with a limited budget. It is time to turn up the heat on the Pirates' ownership, management and players. Let's quit babying the Buccos.

So long as the media, Pirates fans and politicians who made PNC Park possible continue to accept the low standards established by the organization (more than 10 years of incompetence), they will never get better. If what educators say is true, then all of us need to demand a better effort.

Let's not baby the Pirates anymore. Let's scream and yell when they stink, which they do. And, let's stay away from the ballpark, too."

Joe Starkey,  a writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, was more blunt when he said last year:

"Kevin McClatchy is a genius.

Either that, or Pirates season-ticket holders are fools. There is no in-between.

McClatchy is selling crud. We're buying it. Maybe it's time to look in the mirror instead of blaming McClatchy, G. Ogden Nutting and the rest of the crew for putting such a pitiful product on the field. They're just running a business -- and a profitable one, at that.

If we're regularly buying tickets to PNC Park, we're enabling them.

We're part of the problem"

Oh.. did I mention that attendance was up 17% last year and that the Pirates are selling more tickets this year than they have in a decade?

I guess we are fools.