Pirates of the Allegheny

It had been 18 very long seasons. Nearly two whole decades of failure for Pittsburgh Pirates fans. Many of them might have forgotten what winning was if it weren’t for the prowess of the Steelers. After losing to the Atlanta Braves in the 1992 NLCS, the Pirates haven’t been back to the playoffs, and haven’t had a single winning season. The franchise that had won five World Series with moments like Bill Mazeroski’s championship-winning homer, and players like Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell, was now a perennial cellar-dweller in the NL Central. But that was all before the 2011 Pirates turned it around.
Prior to this current season, the consensus view of the Pirates was the same one of every season in recent memory: they were going to stink. Competing in a division with the likes of Albert Pujols and Joey Votto, the last two NL MVPs, without any stars of their own, the baseball world just tossed any notion of Pirates’ success aside. The Pirates started the year 4-2, winning on Opening Day behind a Neil Walker grand slam, but struggled through the rest of April. Things seemed business as usual in the Steel City, but then something peculiar happened. The Pirates started winning. They improved to 38-37 in June, and with a win on July 8th the Pirates entered the All-Star break with a winning record for the first time since 1992. They had three All-Star selections in pitcher Kevin Correia, closer Joel Hanrahan, and outfielder Andrew McCutchen, marking the first time that the team had at least three All-Stars since 1990. To make the story even sweeter, on both July 15th and July 18th, the Pirates moved into first place in the NL Central, which is the latest they have been in first in the regular season since 1997.
The Pirates, who are currently 52-47, obviously still have work to do if they want to break the trend and reach the playoffs. Their extra-inning victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday moved the Pirates into a three-way tie for first place in the NL Central with St. Louis and Milwaukee, with Cincinnati sitting 3.5 games back. In such a crowded division, it will take a lot of stellar play through the dog days of August and pressure-filled moments of September from these young buccaneers to put the Pirates in the postseason for the first time since many of the players were kids. Nevertheless, they’ve got many rising stars like Hanrahan and McCutchen, and manager Clint Hurdle, who led the Rockies to the World Series in 2007. And, for the first time in a long time, they’ve got the support of a city that’s been longing for their baseball club to re-join Pittsburgh’s winning sports tradition.