Screw the general baseball thread, this deserves its own for history...Pirates!

Love the Orlando Merced sighting on this board. It's about time!

 

Not true at all. The city has been dying for the Pirates to be a winner. Won't matter what is going on at training camp. If the Pirates stay in the race, the fans will continue to come out in droves.

If I were still in town, I'd be going to as many games as I could. As it is, I've been to three games at PNC this year, all sellouts. I paid double face value for tickets to one game, nearly that to another. It was very, very strange. But I loved it and it was worth every penny.

Do I expect this team to continue this pace? Not really. You have to think the pitching will come back to Earth. But I'm going to enjoy every second of it.

 

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/07/18/the-pirates-are-scouting-hunter-pence/

 

All the national games rave about how gorgeous PNC Park. To you hometown guys in this thread, is it all that it is cracked up to be? I'm kind of curious, and I have some vacation time upcoming, so I've thought about trying to hit some MLB parks within driving distance of me (PNC, Philly, the New York stadiums, etc).

 

I would put PNC above any other modern park to which I've been. I'm going back home in a few weeks and I can't wait to go to a game there now that the atmosphere seems like it will be more lively.

 

I'm not a hometowner but I've been to every park except PETCO in San Diego... and PNC and AT&T are my two favorite parks hands down. (For those of you who haven't been to AT&T, yes... the view is as advertised.)

PNC is a small, cozy park with great sightlines and the dramatic skyline view. The North Shore area has also gotten crowded with hotels, some restaurants and The Rivers casino.

 

It would be difficult to sit down and draw a more beautiful skyline than what you see from a seat at PNC. And the entire park is bright and inviting. Good concessions, too.

 

Sorry, but I am familiar with Pittsburgh's history when it comes to supporting the Pirates. The attendance was still near the bottom of the league even when they were winning division titles in the early '90s.

The novelty of them actually winning and the NFL strike is helping tremendously, but that doesn't mean the attendance spike will continue.

 

Agreed on the park. I remember being blown away the first time I went. It is everything it is "cracked up to be" and more. T

he one cause for hope that the current uptick in attendance might actually last once the Steelers get going is that this is the first time the Pirates have looked good this late in the season since moving into PNC Park. Maybe the combo will give them the attendance they could never manage when they were good in Three Rivers.

 

mjp doesn't know, either. The difference is that the city's history supports my more pessimistic view.

I hope I'm wrong. The Pirates may have turned me off long ago and I may no longer live there, but Pittsburgh will always be home and what's going on is nothing but good for my home town.

 

It really doesn't. The novelty of being in a pennant race makes it a different draw than it's been in ages. EVEN different from the '90s, because they expected to win then. Now, it's like David popping up and slaying Goliath every night.

 

They expected to win? Not when that run started. They were not far removed from the awful teams of the early and mid-80s.