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REWIND: The Freak Show Pirates · Pittsburgh Sports Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: Hi, everybody.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to the Pittsburgh Sports Memories Podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_04: My name is Tim Hannon, and joining me as always Steve Ward.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_04: And in this episode, Steve and I are going to talk about the 1997 Pittsburgh Pirates.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_04: That team was called the Freak Show Pirates and we'll talk about why.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_04: Did they have a bearded lady or a like Nope, that was not the reason.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man, actually.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: Not that not a literal freak show, but.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Lizard Lizard Man or something.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody with like three eyes and two arms.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_04: P.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: T.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: Barnum was not involved anywhere in the uh in the season.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: This episode was a suggestion by a listener named Bobby.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_04: So thank you, Bobby, for the suggestion.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: And just a note for everybody else, we always welcome suggestions.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_04: You can always contact us via our website, which you can find.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'll link for in the show description.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_04: If you have a topic that you think would make for a good episode, please let us know.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: So let's get into this.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_04: The best way I think to describe the 1997 Pyrus is that it was it was kind of similar to the plot of the film Major League.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: Steve, have you ever seen Major League?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I have.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: The first one, though, right?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: Not not all the subsequent.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't know what happened after the first one, but yes, the first one.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: So it's kind of what's going on with the Oakland A's right now.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_04: Similar, yeah.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: So the the the if you've never seen Major League, the the plot of that movie is that the owner of the Cleveland Indians wants to put together a team of nobodies so that she can relocate the franchise to Florida.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't think anybody had those kinds of ill intentions with the Pirates.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_04: But it was a very similar collection of guys no one had ever heard of.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_04: And just like in the movie, this Pirates team ends up surprising everyone.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_04: So to talk about the 1997 Pirates, we gotta we gotta back up a few years.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_04: Let's start back in 1992.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_04: And at that point, the Pirates, of course, had rebuilt from the ashes of the drug trials in the 80s.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_04: They had put together this team that wins three straight division titles.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: They have superstar players like Bobby Bonia and Andy Van Syck and Doug Drabeck.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: They also have the best player in all of baseball, a guy named Barry Bonds.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_04: But as we all know, they never realized their full potential.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: They lose three straight times in the NLCS.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_04: We did a whole episode on that team and that era, and we called it the day the baseball died, because the moment when Sid Bream slides into home plate to eliminate the Pirates in '92 effectively destroys baseball in Pittsburgh.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_04: And what ends up happening is Bonds and those other guys we mentioned, they all leave via free agency because Major League Baseball doesn't have any kind of salary cap or revenue sharing at the time.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_04: And the Pirates really like overnight, Steve, go from this great team to basically a dumpster fire.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_04: And attendance is way down, and people are losing interest pretty quickly.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, that all happened really fast.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_04: Would you agree?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um I can't I I the only thing I would say is like I don't think Sid Green, like he destroyed baseball for maybe like 20 some years, but I they had a couple good years from like 2013 to 15, 16.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, they four good seasons.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, only only a couple of decades.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_04: A couple of generations.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: And then and then they went promptly right back into suctitude.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: But um yeah, it definitely attendance went down.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think they guess like once you didn't have a good product on the team, there isn't much to sell except for, you know, I guess you'll get into that.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, Three River Stadium was not the greatest place to watch a sporting event.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_04: But but just my point that that happened really fast.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you you're talking about the 20-year thing, but I mean, even 93-94, like even by that point, people were starting to massively lose interest.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_04: You know what I mean?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_04: It wasn't a s it was I I don't remember it being a gradual decline.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: I I felt like it was very they fell off a cliff, huh?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_04: They fell off a cliff, yeah.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: I it makes sense.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that was such a I mean, that's such a dark day in Pittsburgh sports that um being that October and '92.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's just and it really does nobody won.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, when did the Penguins win their last Stanley Cup?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: Was it before or after that?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_04: It was before that, yeah.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: So really there was not another championship in the city of Pittsburgh until 2005.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: January 2005.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_04: So right, and and the Steelers and Penguins had their had their disappointing moments also um, maybe not as dramatic as the Sid Bream thing, but the the Sid Bream thing, like we detailed in that episode, that was much more hurtful because what followed was everybody leaving and the pirates basically having no chance to compete.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: Didn't compete for years, but outside of this, we're you know what we'll go over here.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_04: So really that all comes to a head in 1996.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_04: That year the pirates have new ownership.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_04: And and remember that the pirates had been saved in the 1980s by this conglomeration of Pittsburgh companies.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm I'm not sure that was ever meant to be like a long-term thing.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_04: I always felt like that was more of like an emergency response.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_04: I know, Steve, you kind of know more about that that whole thing than I do, but that was always always my view of that.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_04: Was it was more like Mayor Caligury just got everybody together, let's all pitch in and save the team.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't know if that was ever meant to be a real long-term thing.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, thinking back to the eighties and what was going on then, everything was leaving town, and maybe you know, Mayor Caliguri just was like, this is one business that isn't going to leave town.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, it was kind of a reaction to that, probably.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: And like, like I think your fair assessment of that is this was just meant to be until we could find a permanent owner.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that's kind of how it went.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and in in 1996, they they find that permanent owner, they sell the team to a guy named Kevin McClatchy, who's who's kind of an interesting guy.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_04: He's from Sacramento and he's only 33 years old.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_04: Imagine owning a major league baseball team at age 33.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh his family has this very large newspaper empire, so that's how he's rich enough to be able to buy a baseball team at age 33.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, he should just be rich for the rest of his life owning newspapers.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: No one will ever replace them.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, newspapers in 1997, still a profitable business.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and he and he's kind of charismatic.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_04: He used to sit behind home plate during the games.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_04: He was always very accessible to the media.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_04: I I it was a very different style than the net like faceless conglomeration of corporate ownership.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_04: The uh the 1996 season, the Pirates finished in last place that season, so it's another terrible season on the field.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_04: And then general manager Cam Boniface trades away the last kind of remaining pieces from his early 90s division-winning teams.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_04: J-Bell and Jeff King are dealt to Kansas City.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_04: Orlando Mercedes traded to Toronto, and Denny Nagel's traded to Atlanta.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: Not Denny Nagel.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: Denny Nagel.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: What will we ever do without Denny Nagel?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and and and you know, Jeff King and Orlando Merced, I mean, these guys weren't on the level of like the the bonds and Draybex, but again, it was kind of like that last Jeff King was actually kind of good.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: Denny Nagel was the mediocre on a good day.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_04: I mean it was it was the point being that it was like that was the last tie back to those early 90s teams.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_04: Now, now every now it's like officially everybody's gone.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_04: And and and so that all happens.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_04: And then really though, the biggest shock comes in September when manager Jim Leland quits.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_04: And that's that's really the last key piece to those those teams.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_04: Leland was uh I I think I think I said this before, you could put him in the in the top five or top ten greatest coaches in Pittsburgh sports history.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_04: He is the guy that made the Pirates relevant again.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_04: He had a contract too that ran all the way to the year 2000, and he had said during that season he was gonna honor that contract, he's in it for the long haul.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_04: But apparently he has a change of heart, maybe after seeing those guys we mentioned shipped away.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's pretty clear to him that the new ownership wants to start from scratch.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't know, Steve, I I can't blame him at all for wanting to leave at that point.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think too, like he saw they just didn't want to spend any money.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't want to spend any money, like what do you unless you can catch lightning in a bottle, which gee, uh that's a little bit of foreshadowing.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it's just yeah, that's that's the only way they could do anything.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's just they're you're not gonna be able to get enough even if you let's say you bring a like a solid core of like uh Bonds and Bania and uh Van Slick in, you won't be able to build enough pieces around that to make it you know a successful team.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, he sees he definitely sees the the writing on the wall that it's gonna be a rebuild and it's gonna be a a very hard rebuild.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: Well yeah, he he sells his soul to Wayne Haizenga and basically rent who basically rents a baseball team for a year.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: So but Wayne Wayne Haizenga did start Blockbuster, so maybe that was what he was used to.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, there you go.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so so yeah, the the team at this point has been completely gutted.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they have to rebuild it from the bottom up.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: The first thing they have to do, obviously, is find a new manager for the first time in over a decade.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: And they choose a familiar face.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's Gene Lamont.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Lamont had been the third base coach under Leland for a lot of years, and then he got gets a shot to manage with the Chicago White Sox and does a pretty good job.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_04: The White Sox finished in first place in both 1993 and 1994, but for whatever reason, Lamont gets fired like 15 minutes into the 95 season by uh Chicago general manager Ron Scholler.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_04: So I it at the time I always thought getting him to come back to Pittsburgh was kind of a good little steal.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_04: You know, he had he had had success in Chicago and um and you know obviously he had been a Leland disciple, so that seemed like a good hire.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: Wasn't a bad hire.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, I mean, all these guys, I mean, you can have the greatest baseball coach in the world if you put him out there with little league talent, it isn't gonna matter.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's a very good point.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_04: That's a very good point.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_04: I mean that you have to have a manager in place, but but uh what about the strategy for putting together the rest of the roster?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_04: And and going back to the film Major League, there's a scene from the beginning of that movie.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and I like to think that the Pirates pretty much had this exact same discussion.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a list of the players we'll be inviting to camp.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: I never heard of half of these guys, and uh ones I do know are way past the prime.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Most of these guys never had a prime.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, are we lost our two best players to free agency?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's time for changes.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Croft him offense.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: Croft him offense.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: He's dead.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like when Mr.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: Bird, the Mr.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: Birds baseball team, your left fielder's been dead for 50 years.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like what?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: Same concept.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, I mean, that's really the pirate strategy.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_04: It's this collection of young guys who were just sort of getting thrown into the deep end of the pool, guys that no one had ever heard of, uh, or or whatever veterans they did have were way past their prime.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh third baseman Joe Randa said uh usually on on any given team, you're gonna have three or four guys like that on the roster.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: We had about 20.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_04: The total team payroll, Steve, nine million dollars for the whole team.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: Can you give us some like context on that?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, like here's here's some great context.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: White Sox left fielder, Albert Bell, that same season made$10 million.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_03: In a season.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so that season, Albert Bell made more money than the entire Pirates roster.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that that sounds good for Kevin McClatchy.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he doesn't have to sell as many newspapers to cover that.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it that was and then there was a lot made of that at the time.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, heading into 97, there's literally no hope for this franchise.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_04: McClatchy says that when he got to spring training, there was a reporter there from the New York Post who wanted to do this story and interview him about the Pirates possibly having the worst record in the history of baseball.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: I think there's like the uh, what is it, Steve?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_04: Like the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's like 20 wins or something.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_04: It's some ridiculous thing that this team in 1899 had, and and they were wanting to do a story about like, do you think that it's possible that you could, you know, you could leapfrog them?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_04: So that was that was the tone going into the season.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_04: So before we jump into the season, let's let's talk about some of the guys from that very low-paid roster of nobodies.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_04: So the the catcher is a guy named Jason Kendall.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_04: Kendall, interesting player, kind of plays with this like Pete Rose style grit.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_04: And he also had speed, which is is odd in a catcher.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_04: It's not often you bat your catcher in the leadoff spot, but that's what the Pirates had done with Kendall.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_04: He had he had made his major league debut the season before this and had a pretty good year.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, he finished finished his third in the National League Rookie of the Year voting in 96.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_04: So uh he was a guy that could have been up and coming, for sure.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the first baseman is Kevin Young.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_04: Now, Kevin Young, interestingly enough, he had actually been with the organization for several years before that.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_04: And he has shown some flashes of greatness, but he was never consistent.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, at this point, he's actually on his second stint with the Pirates because they had actually released him a year earlier.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh in the outfield, they have a guy named Al Martin, who's I remember Al Martin.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Al Martin, kind of an odd guy.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, got caught in several lies over the course of his career, like saying he was selected for an all-star game when he wasn't.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_04: Also said that he played college football for USC, even though he never actually even attended that university.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_04: But he was a pretty good hitter.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Tim, I just want you to know that I used to play football for um Youngstown State University.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: See, see, that's his problem, is he picked USC.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: You pick like South Dakota State.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: How are they gonna how who's gonna prove it?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: Who's gonna prove me wrong?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_04: I guess I guess I guess in the pre-internet era it was easier to make stuff up, right?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh by the way, I just made all that up, but yeah, just in case anybody wasn't catching my sarcasm.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: I I figured that out.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Al Martin, though, was a pretty good hitter.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_04: He had actually hit 300 on that awful 96 team.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Joe Randa, as we said, was the third baseman, another young, inexperienced player.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_04: He had come over from Kansas City in the Jeff King J.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_04: Bell trade and was not happy about it.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_04: He said it took him all of spring training to get over it.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, Kansas City wasn't great back then either, but apparently the Pirates were a much worse place to play, at least that was his per initial perception.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they had a right fielder named Jose Guillon.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_04: He was a rookie from the Dominican who who had just like an absolute rocket for an arm, uh, even though his stories were were a little bit wild at times.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Tony Womack was the second baseman.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_04: That was another rookie who had some talent.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_04: And and then they had also in the infield uh Del Swayne.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_04: He was kind of like the Jake Taylor of this group.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: You know, going back to Major League, he was one of the few guys on the team who's a veteran, and he was kind of like the veteran leader, like again, like in the movie that uh Jake Taylor is the veteran leader.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_04: And then when you look at the pitching staff, it's even more desolate than the position players.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_04: So the starting rotation that year, Esteban Liza, John Lieber, Jason, Jason Schmidt, Steve Cook, and Francisco Cordova.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: See, uh, yeah, I mean, looking back, that I I I think before that season I could see your point.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_03: At this point in the season, but there's one guy who's going to become an all-star on that, become a pretty darn good pitcher.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, actually, Steve, three guys that are going to become all-stars.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, did well too.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_04: Loisa, Lieber, and Schmidt all do become all-stars.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but to your point, at this time, literally none of those guys had any significant major league experience whatsoever.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_04: And and to throw a starting five rotation out there that had no experience.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_04: Again, I mean, you might have one or two of those guys in your rotation, but not all of them.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_04: And then the closer was a rookie, it was Rich Loisell.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_04: So I don't I don't remember him at all.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_04: He he was the closer that year.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_04: So so again, it's I mean, it is quite the um you just you can't get any more bare bones in that roster.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_04: You really can't.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_04: So so needless to say, uh, expectations are pretty low.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_04: Nationally, everybody's picking the pirates to finish dead last.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_04: Uh general manager Cam Bonifay even admits that the team was expecting to, quote, lose more than 100 games that year, uh, given the roster they assembled.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: You could just recycle that quote like every year for like the next like 20 years.
• 17:59
  unknown: Yeah.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna lose 100.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: They said that this year, too.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: We're gonna lose 100.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it never changes.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yep.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_04: So, so yeah, nationally the pirates are are seen as a joke.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_04: Saturday Night Live even gets on the bandwagon.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, one of the recurring sketches they did back then was Perspectives.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_04: Steve, do you remember that sketch?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_04: It was Tim Meadows.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Was that the late night talk show?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: Or no?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that was yeah, oh yeah, it is 5 a.m.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's what it was.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_04: It was it was Tim Meadows hosting a show that aired at like 4 45 in the morning, and he's this terrible interviewer that just asks these awful questions.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_04: So one of the sketches they did that spring was Meadows interviewing a baseball player about the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_04: So because you know his show was was terrible, then the joke would have to be him interviewing a no-name baseball player for that occasion.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_04: So, of course, they pick a pirates player.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_04: So I'll play some audio.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_04: This this sketch is Tracy Morgan playing Pirates outfielder Jermaine Allensworth.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think Jermaine Allensworth a real person.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_04: Jermaine Allensworth was a center fielder.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: That that's an awesome claim, though, that Tracy Morgan played you on Saturday Alive.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: I take it.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_04: It's not something uh something you can tell your grandkids one day.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um good morning.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's Sunday, 4 52 in the a.m.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that means it's time for perspective.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Lionel Osborne.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: We have a very special guest on our show today.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: He is baseball rookie Jermaine Allensworth, and he's here to talk about the 50th anniversary celebration of Jackie Robertson breaking the color barrier.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you are a major league baseball player.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, this is my first in a big league, and uh, I thank Jackie Roberts for that opportunity.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, without him, I'd probably be pumping gas somewhere.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you play for which too?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: The Pittsburgh Pirates.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: If you're just joining us, it's 454 in the AM, you'll watch your perspective.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: With us is Jermaine Allensworth, who plays for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, it's I it's it's actually pretty funny if you listen to the rest of the um the sketch because he just goes on and on about um, you know, like he asks them, uh, what was it like to play with Jackie Robinson?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_04: And he had to explain that he didn't, and then he he talked about like all the terrible stuff that Jackie Robinson had to go through.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_04: And Tim Motors is like, fantastic.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_04: And he's like, no, he yeah, fans like made threats against his life and everything.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_04: It was awful.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_04: You know, he's he's and Tim Motors is like, baseball fever, catch it.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_04: You know, he's just terrible.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_04: But but again, that's that was the Pirates.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_04: They were they were seen as a joke.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_04: So they open the season with an eight-game road trip to the West Coast.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_04: Not an easy way to start the season, but they fare okay.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_04: They go four and four.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_04: And when they come back to Pittsburgh for the home opener, 43,000 fans, which was a lot back then, show up at the River Stadium, scorecards in hand, I'm sure, to see this team, this new team of theirs, uh lose 7-1 to the Dodgers.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, ouch.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_04: On April 15th, they're playing the Padres at home, and the game's tied in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the bases are loaded, and Tony Womack is at the plate for the Pirates.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_04: And Tony Womack gets hit in the head with the ball.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, which leaves him on the ground kind of out of it, but the bases were loaded.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: So game winner.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_04: And and Steve, you mentioned the The Simpsons episode earlier.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_04: I almost played the audio because that's the same way that Homer wins the game.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_04: And they have to like roll him out of the way out of home plate, you know.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_04: So I just thought Tony Womack, same thing, like, yay, and they just roll Tony Womack off to the side and step on home plate.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but I I figured I had I had too many pop culture references in.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Here to begin with, so I did not get the clip of The Simpsons.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_04: But that that was really kind of indicative of how this season will play out.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's the Pirates scraping together wins kind of any way they can.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_04: And in the early part of the season, the young guys are performing at the plate.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_04: The starting pitching is proving to be at least serviceable.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_04: And Rich Lilly Zale is able to come in and close out games where the team is ahead.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_04: And it kind of continues that way for a while.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: The Pirates are hovering around 500 into the summer months, which I don't think would be a big accomplishment normally, but with a with a$9 million payroll of nobody's, I mean$500 is downright shocking.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the it's like it's like three-fourths of an Albert Bell.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's a team.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_04: Pretty much.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_04: The other thing that's happening that year is that the National League Central Division stinks.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_04: And and and that was kind of a an odd occurrence.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you you see that, Steve, like in the NFL, I feel like you see that every four or five years where there's an entire division that sucks, and then someone wins a division with like an eight and eight or seven and nine record, right?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_04: I think you see that in football sometimes, but that that kind of thing almost never happens in baseball.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, I looked it up.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_04: The closest it ever came to happening was the 2005 San Diego Padres, who won their division with an 82 and 80 record.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_04: So that was the worst, like two games over 500.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: Two games over 500 and they made the, yeah.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that was the worst division-winning record in in the history of baseball.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_04: So that that where the whole division stinks, uh, that doesn't happen often in baseball, but it's happening here in 1997.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_04: So when the Pirates are hovering around 500, they're also hovering around first place.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_04: On May 25th, the Pirates are trailing the Montreal Expos in the eighth inning.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_04: Remember the Montreal Expos.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: Who are these expos of which you speak?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Montreal, is that like in Kansas somewhere?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, it's right in the middle of Kansas.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_04: I knew it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um Kevin Young is at the plate against Hall of Fame closer Lee Smith, and the bases are loaded.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Kevin Young gacks a grand slam over the center field wall at uh Stadium Olympique.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_04: And that's when Pirates announcer Greg Black Greg Brown blurts out, it's a freak show.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_04: There it is.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_04: And what happens is that ESPN puts it as the lead-on Sports Center that weekend, and that was the Dan Patrick Keith Olbermann Sports Center.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, back when it was like good, huh?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: Back when it was not only good, Steve, but I I feel like it was for especially for like people of our generation, it was like cool and hip.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like like sports center just kind of always set the tone, and especially that Patrick Olberman Sports Center for for whatever you know uh people are gonna be interested in in sports.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_04: And so that that weekend sports center, they they Patrick and Olbermann keep calling it the whole time they keep calling it the freak show edition of SportsCenter.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well i it's so different because you gotta remember what what year was this, 97, right?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: So the the internet really hasn't taken off.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like you can't get your you can't just like, oh, I wonder what the pirates did last night.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like right now, if we wondered what the pirates did last night, we'd just jump on our phones and you know Google it or whatever.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: Back then you either had to wait for the newspaper to come out the next day or watch it at 11 o'clock at night and see what all the scores were, what was going on.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: And and they would give you highlights too.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Now, if you let, oh, I want to see the highlights from last night's Pirates game, you would just go on YouTube or MLB.com or whatever and you would get those.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that's that was a big reason.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: Kind of like how I was making fun of newspapers, like that that was a big reason like newspapers and sports center kind of went out the way it did, is because you know, what once you get rid of like highlights that you can watch anywhere, what what's left of those two mediums, there really, you know, is no reason to I guess consume them.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_03: People just I consume their news a different way.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's that's a really good point about you know that that that's why it kind of going back to what we said about setting the tone, because you didn't have all that other stuff to go to go look at.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: There were no blogs.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: There wasn't like a hundred people.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like right now, there's probably like a hundred million different opinions about the pirates season this year.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Back then you had Bob Smysick and Gene Collier and Well and if you didn't live in if you didn't live in Pittsburgh, you're only you know New York Post, whatever the Post or The Times would write about it.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_04: And your only view of of a team that wasn't in your market came from places like SportsCenter.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: So or or yeah, or like this week in baseball.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm now that might be more 80s.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if they still had that in the 90s, but I remember like if you wanted to see what was going on in baseball, like they would my dad like loves to get ear come to early.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: We would watch this week in baseball.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: They would literally show that on the scoreboard.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you that's the only way I would know what's going on in the American League West.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: The California Angels today, you know, I don't know, save the Queen, you know.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't know.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so yeah, that's that's a really good point.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_04: And and that freak show thing really blows up.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_04: It catches on everywhere, including in the Pirates locker room.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_04: Al Martin said that after they won, guys would walk into the locker room yelling, freak show, freak show.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_04: And he said that they really embraced it and made it their identity.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_04: So so uh the players are are starting to believe in themselves.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_04: Fans are also starting to get excited.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, as we said, the level of apathy was really high going into that season.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_04: People had really tuned out, uh, especially after Leland quit.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_04: But fans were starting to come back to the team.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_04: On June 30th, the Chicago White Sox come to town for a three-game series, and and that that was big for a couple of reasons.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_04: Interleague play.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_04: Woo! Yes.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_04: Number one, it was the first time that the Pirates and White Sox had ever played each other.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_04: Both teams had been around for about a hundred years at that point, but they had never played each other because the the two leagues did not play against each other unless they unless he made it to the World Series.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_04: So uh that was big.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Chicago was also a pretty decent team back then.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_04: I I actually bought tickets, Steve, to one of those games because I wanted to see Frank Thomas.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_04: He was my favorite player back then, and I never got to see him because he played in the American League.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh what I'll what I'll really never forget though about that series is how many Cleveland fans were there.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_04: And you might wonder why in the world were there Cleveland fans at a Pirates White Sox game.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: Well, Cleveland had a player back then that we referenced earlier named Albert Bell.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_04: And he was he was kind of like their Barry Bonds.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he was a real jerk.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: He was their Barry Bonds.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: He was a great, great power hitter, great player, super surly all the time, acted like a jerk for most of the years he was with the Indians.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_04: And in 1997, Bell leaves Cleveland and signs a huge free agent deal with the White Sox, which really made people in Cleveland hate him.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_04: So the reason there were so many fans from Cleveland They just came to boot.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_04: They made the two-hour drive just to sit in the left field stance to scream obscenities and throw coins at Albert Bell.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: That that's that's crazy.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's one of the crazier things I've ever heard of.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: It it it happened.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_04: It really happened.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_04: I I because I sat in the outfield and I there was a bunch of Cleveland fans in left field, and they're throwing, like in between pitches, they're throwing quarters and stuff and yelling at him to pick it up, and you know, you're so greedy.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, kudos to you folks in Cleveland for properly holding a grudge.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, if if you're gonna hold a grudge, that's how you he's a jerk, but I wouldn't throw stuff at him.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: Jeez, I mean, yell at him if you want.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't know.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, people take jobs for more money all the time.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't know.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: What was he supposed to not do that?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: I I think it didn't help that he was surly.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: That that was it.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: That was it.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it was that was it.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_04: It was it was if you think about Barry Bonds, Yar and Mary Arger, the guys we booed when they came back were guys we we didn't really like when they left, right?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_04: We didn't we didn't boo other guys who left for more money.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_04: You know, I don't remember anyone ever booing, I don't know, Leon Searcy, right?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_04: Or you know, somebody else who signed a big free agent contract somewhere else.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but as far as the Pirates, they actually sweeped that series against the White Sox, and then they sweeped the subsequent four-game series with St.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_04: Louis.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's a was that the divisional game even back then with St.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: Louis?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: St.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: Louis was a big, yeah, that's a big win.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_04: And and so, yeah, at the All-Star break, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the$9 million joke of a team, sit atop the National League Central Division standings with a 43 and 43 record.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: At the All-Star break.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: At the All-Star break, if you can believe that.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, what do you what do you think of interleague play?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: Just uh I I don't know.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: Has it gotten old?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Should we get rid of it?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: I know it's a little off topic, but just because you were mentioning the White Sox.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, it was there was a time when it was like new and exciting.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_04: And again, like I you would buy tickets to see a team or a player that you never normally got to see, and obviously that the the uh the kind of the new appeal of that has gone away, but I mean, why not?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_04: I it's like I why why only play the same teams over and over again?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, too, like what if the Angels came to Pittsburgh, which I don't think they are this year.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I would want to see that Otani and Mike Trout.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I I guess to your point, yeah, there is there's something to be said to that.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: I digress.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_03: So the Pirates are on top, five playing 500 ball and leading the division after winning seven games in a row, and they're only it's that they win seven games in a row to oh my gosh.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, okay.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, going going back to the division being bad, right?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_04: The the team that was supposed to win the division that year was the Houston Astros.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: Wait a minute, the American League Houston Astros, Tim.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, this is this is when the Astros were still in the National League and they were in the Central.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: Are are we getting old that all the I just said I feel really old.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_04: This this was this was a strange time.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_04: There was a baseball team in Montreal.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the you know, the Astros were in the National League, the Seattle Seahawks were in the AFC.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh singer.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: The uh the uh Quebec Nordiques, I think, probably still existed.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, you could go on and on.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the the Astros, though.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um, I mean, remember back then they were they were the class of the division.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_04: They won the division actually pretty much.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_03: So so they're playing the Astros, but it's not an interleague game.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: Huh.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so so the Astros were a good team.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_04: They they won the division.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_03: Did they have Biggio and Bagwell and all that, all those guys?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, they yeah, Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, um the late Daryl Kyle was one of their pitchers.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_04: He was he was a really good pitcher.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, they they they were the team that was supposed to win the division, and and again, pretty much won the division every year during that era.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_04: I think they still played in the Astrodome back then, too.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_04: I think you're right.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_04: So coming out of the All-Star break, the first series after the break is at Three River Stadium against the Astros, and it does not go well for the Pirates.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_04: On July 10th, they get shot out seven and nothing.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_04: On July 11th, they get shot out ten to nothing.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh boy.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_04: Then comes the July 12th game, which ends up being one of the most memorable games in team history.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, we mentioned the no-name pitching staff.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_04: By this point in the season, the ace on that staff is Francisco Cordova.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, he and he and Jason Schmid Jason Schmidt are the only pitchers who have a winning record, and only by like one or two games.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_04: So imagine that's for a first place team.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_04: But but Cordova, he had a really good sinker.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_04: That was kind of his um specialty, his superpower.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_04: And according to Kendall, he really owned the Astros.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_04: Kendall claims he used to have lunch with Jeff Bagwell, and Bagwell would talk about how much he hated facing Francisco Cordova.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_04: And that night of July 12th, Cordova's sinker is quite literally unhittable.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_04: The game goes all the way through the top half of the ninth inning with Houston not getting a hit.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_04: The problem was that the Pirates, once again, could not score any runs.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_04: So we mentioned they were shut out the first two games.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_04: Here we are in the ninth inning in the third game.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_04: So literally at this point, they haven't scored a run in almost a week because of the all-star break.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm no I'm no baseball expert here, Tim, and I'm not I'm not the greatest stats guy in the world.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: But correct me if I'm not wrong on this.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: You can't win a baseball game scoring zero runs.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: Is that correct?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, checking uh I'm just checking the uh baseball encyclopedia here, Steve.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh apparently that's never happened before.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I just wanted to make so so scoring zero runs, you cannot win.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: The best you can do is tie.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: All right, got it.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: Got it.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, yeah.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_04: Good, good, good observation.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_04: So um in the bottom of the ninth inning, all three pirates batter strike out.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_04: So now the game's going to extra innings.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_04: It's 0-0, and it's it's still a no-hitter, but we're going into extra innings.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_04: So Gene Lamont has to make a decision at this point.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_04: Do you leave Cordova in the game?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_04: And Lamont does send in a new pitcher.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Lamont's quoted as saying that Cordova had thrown enough, uh, in fact, a few too many.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_04: Remember, the game is riding on every pitch, and that puts even more stress on his arm.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_04: End quote.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_04: Cordova doesn't like it.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_04: He wants to stay in the game.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_04: I I think probably the way that Gene Lamont was leaning was, you know, what if this were not a no-hitter?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: It's a tie game and extra innings, but the team you're battling for first place, your pitcher's already throwing a ton of pitches.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_04: If it's not a no-hitter, would I take this guy out?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_04: And if the answer is yes, then why would I leave him in just because it's a no-hitter?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_03: That's fair enough.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's I mean, you know, and two, if he's one of your better pitchers, you don't want to like ruin him for the rest of the season, you know, for one game.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_03: You can recover from losing one game in a hundred and sixty-two-game season.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_04: So the guy that Lamont sends in is Ricardo Rincone, which is kind of appropriate because Cordova and Racone had both come up from Mexico and they were best friends and roommates.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, neither of them spoke much English.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_04: So if there was anybody that was going to combine on a no-hitter with Cordova, it was nice that it was Rincone.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_04: And Rincone does indeed continue the no-hitter through the top of the tenth.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_04: And in the bottom of the tenth, the Pirates get a couple of guys on base, and due up to the plate is Ricardo Rincone.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_04: So Lamont decides to send up a pinch hitter, and the guy he sends up is Mark Smith, another guy who is a nondescript, no-name player.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, his name is Mark Smith.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: This is Mark Smith, yeah.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's like he could have it could have been uh, what's his name?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: Al Martin, and nobody would have That's true.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: Is that Al Martin?
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: No, that's Mark Smith.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: Sounds so made up.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: So Mark Smith comes up to the plate, and here's what happens next scoreless game, 10 pinning.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_03: And there was no no.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, great, a great moment.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_04: Uh in the history of the Pirates, Steve, there's only been six no-hitters.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_04: In the whole history of the team.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_04: And this one was a 10-inning no-hitter.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: And didn't they have another one that was uh losing?
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_03: They lost a no-hitter.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_04: That was yeah, that was Harvey Haddock's.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_04: Well, that was not a no-hitter.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_04: That was actually a perfect game.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_04: But it doesn't count as one because they didn't finish the game without hits.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_04: So uh, you know, but yeah, six no-hitters as of the time of this recording, that was the most recent one.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_04: And the this was a 10-inning no-hitter, so I mean, pretty, pretty special.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Steve, do you remember where we were that night?
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I do.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: I do I wondered if you were gonna bring this up.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I remember back then, like, you know, the pirates weren't exactly a tough ticket.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: So we went, we're like, it was a Saturday night, wasn't it?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm pretty sure.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it was.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we were like, hey, let's go to a pirates game, just like on a lark, you know?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: And we went up and they were like, oh, we're all out of tickets, sold out.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: We're like, oh well, whatever.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: We'll just miss a pirates game.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's not like there's like 80 some more of them.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: Little did we know we're missing pirates baseball history.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_04: We were missing a game that we were still gonna be talking about almost 30 years later.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that hurt.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, and and like you said, to to have it be a sellout, like it that was unheard of, just absolutely unheard of.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_03: In July, yeah.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's yeah.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, and so I mean, that just shows the excitement that this team was generating that they could sell that game out.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_04: And then this happens, uh a no-hitter that ends on a walk-off home run.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: And I think people really were starting to believe.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, this that was really the apex for this team.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: Fans are really getting excited.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, the the team also is doing things like uh lining up before the game to shake hands with people who were coming into the stadium.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know if you remember that.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow, I don't remember that.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_04: That's yeah, that that was, you know, I mean, that was the kind of stuff they were doing.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_04: They were really endearing themselves to Pittsburgh.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like this was a whole new group of guys.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, the these were guys that were starting to win.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, uh, people really were starting to fall in love with that team.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, Garth Brooks, the country music star, even sends them a letter saying that he was rooting for them and quote, what you guys are doing is amazing.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_04: So even outside of Pittsburgh, people were starting to catch on to this great story.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_04: It also turns the pirates into buyers at the trade deadline for one of the only times in really the past several decades.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, one of the one of the guys on this team who we haven't talked about yet is shortstop Kevin Elster.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, like Swayne, he was one of the only veterans on the team.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Kevin Elster had been around for a while.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_04: In fact, he was on that 86 Mets team.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_04: Mets team, yeah, he was.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_04: That's what I thought.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: The Bill Buckner World Series.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_04: So he had been around for a while.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_04: But what happened to Kevin Elster was he broke his wrist in May, and then his replacements had gotten hurt too.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_04: So the Pirates really needed a shortstop.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_04: So Boniface swings a trade with the Cubs for Schwan Dunstan.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_04: And Dunstan had been one of Chicago's most dependable players for the previous decade.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_04: He had been to multiple All-Star games.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_04: He was a guy that was a real leader in the clubhouse.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_04: He was he was really the perfect guy for this young team.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_04: Steve, I kind of I kind of he was kind of the um comp to when the penguins went out and got Gary Roberts.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_04: That's what I was just thinking.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_04: Because all those Crosby Mulk and all those guys were really young.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_04: And they Gary Roberts was, you know, very battle-tested.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_04: And uh that was Swan Dunstan.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_04: Kendall even says that the Pirates players were super excited because many of them had grown up watching Dunstan.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_04: And he Kendall said it was like having a rock star in the clubhouse.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, the only guy who wasn't as as excited about it is Schwan Dunstan.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_04: He said he said, quote, the last thing I wanted was to be traded.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_04: I was so mad and frustrated.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but he's a professional and he comes to Pittsburgh, and in his first game, he hits two home runs.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_04: He he says that Mark Grace, the first baseman for the Cubs, called him after that game and was like, Hey, I thought you were mad about leaving.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_04: And uh Dunson said he he said something back to him like, Hey, how's it feel being in fourth place?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_04: So nice.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Dunson later admitted that you know, even though he was kind of upset at first, he he quickly realized it was a good thing.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_04: He said, uh, quote, those guys put a little fire into me that I started liking baseball again.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that team was special.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_04: On the morning of August 31st, the Pirates are 68 and 68.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_04: They're two and a half games behind the Astros for first place.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_04: So here we are with a month left in the season, and this team is in a pennant race.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_04: Even even better story is that the team that they would play in the NLDS would be the Atlanta Braves, which would be a rematch of you know 91 and 92.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, so it was it was very compelling.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_04: It was literally the only time in that 20-year stretch that Steve mentioned earlier, where you could say that that with a month left in the season, the Pirates were in a pennant race.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_04: Meanwhile, off the field, McClatchy is trying to lobby the taxpayers for a new stadium.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_04: On the ballot that November would be something called the Regional Renaissance Initiative.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_04: Steve, do you remember that?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I remember us debating about it a lot.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: So yes.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_04: The plan was to temporarily raise the sales tax by half a percent in the eleven counties that make up southwest Pennsylvania.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_04: It was supposed to be like a temporary tax, it was supposed to only be for seven years.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, named me the last tax that was temporary.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_04: Well, that's kind of yeah.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_04: There there was a lot of things that people were cynical about, the the temporary nature of them being one.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_04: The other thing was that the py primary beneficiary of all that new tax revenue would be the pirates and steelers who would each get a beautiful new stadium.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_04: And the politicians tried to argue that no, no, there's other things too, things that would directly benefit those.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, the aviary and, you know, whatever, the children's museum and and things and also things that would benefit the surrounding counties, because if you don't live in Allegheny County and you live in one of those ten other counties, you know, why do you why do you Want to raise your sales tax to pay for a new stadium in the city of Pittsburgh.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: Because the people in like, you know, Venango County really care.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and that's yeah, that's that's so it was it was definitely an uphill s uh sell, but McClatchy figures, boy, what great timing.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_04: The city has just fallen in love with the pirates again, so maybe they would be up for paying for a new ballpark for us.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_04: And he he's really everywhere pitching this plan.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_04: I was a student at Duquesne University at the time.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_04: He even came up to talk to the students at Duquesne uh because we I mean we were of voting age, right?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_04: And he probably figured that young people were more apt to go for a sales tax hike than than you know people that had mortgages and kids and all that stuff.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_04: In common sense.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_04: So we head into September where the Pirates are all set to make this run at the division, but that's where the clock strikes 12 on the Cinderella season.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_04: The Pirates lose 10 out of 14 games.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_04: Gosh.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_04: They're now seven games under 500, and they're five games behind Houston.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Joe Randis said that he felt like they were starting to read their own press clippings and listening to the noise outside the clubhouse.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_04: He thinks that really affected them.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_04: Al Martin said that they were starting to get information about things like the playoff format and the postseason bonus shares.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_04: He said it was becoming real and serious, and maybe they just put a little too much pressure on themselves and didn't play as loose as they did earlier in the season, which I think makes sense.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, early in the season, there was nothing to lose.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: You're playing with house money, yeah.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_04: You're playing with house money, absolutely.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_04: And now it's like, boy, we could actually win this thing.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_04: We could be in the playoffs.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_04: And now that now the pressure sets in, and maybe they weren't ready for that.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, they they do start to get back on track a little bit.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, some of the players credit Kevin Young with that.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_04: Kevin Young got in their faces and kind of set them straight.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_04: And remember, KY had been around the block a couple of times already by this point, and he said that you know he didn't want to see this team squander their opportunity.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_04: So they get to a point where they're three games out of first with four games left in the season, which seems like, you know, okay, they're pretty much dead in the water.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_04: But good news, they actually still control their own destiny because three of the final four games are against the Astros, the team that they're chasing.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: And they pitch Crangesco Cordova every game.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_04: So how dramatic is this, right?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_04: These two teams are going to play a three-game series for the division.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_04: Granted, the Pirates would have to win all three of those games, but hey, this is the freak show, right?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_04: Anything's possible.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_04: The Pirates just have to beat the Mets at Shea Stadium on September 24th, and then they can go to Houston with a shot at the division.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_04: So they had they have to beat the Mets to be able to get to that point where they can um potentially sweep the Asters and win the division.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_04: And in that game at Shea, the Pirates have a one-on-one lead.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_04: But unfortunately, uh John O'Lood hits a grand slam in the sixth, and that sinks the Pirates.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_04: Peters was the pitcher that gave up that pitch.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_04: So here's a local guy.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_04: He said that uh when he went back to Peters Township to speak, the kids actually asked him about John O'Lood.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_04: Like everybody remembered that he gave up that home run.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_04: Uh when Houston beats Chicago the next day, that clinches the division for the Astros and eliminates the Pirates.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_04: So that final series in Houston actually ends up being moot.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_04: The Pirates finish with a 79-83 record, which is probably the most proud that any group of players or fans have ever been of a sub-500 Pittsburgh sports team.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_04: Jason Kendall said, quote, it wound up being one of the coolest years ever.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_04: We didn't have anybody, but we played as a team.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_04: And the silver lining really was that this was a young team.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, they could seemingly only get better.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_04: And some of the just some of the numbers from that year, Kendall carries an OPS plus of 114 over the course of the season.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_04: Tony Womack led the league with 60 stolen bases, and he made the All-Star game.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_04: Kevin Young led the team in home runs and actually got National League MVP votes that year, if you can believe that.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, Kevin Young.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_04: Al Martin and Joe Randa both hit around 300.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_04: Rich Loisell has 29 saves.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's solid.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's that's good.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_04: And as we said, Cordova really had proven to be a capable number one starter.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_04: So let's talk about the aftermath of all this.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the Astros get swept out of the playoffs.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_04: The Florida Marlins end up winning the World Series that year behind manager Jim Leland, as Steve said, they kind of rented a team, but hey, he got Jim Leland a World Series title, so I was happy for him.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_04: He deserved it.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_04: The regional renaissance initiative is soundly defeated at the ballot box, but no worries because we found a way to pay for new stadiums with other tax money.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_04: So PNC Park does get built a few years later.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_04: Heading into the 1998 season, there's real actual excitement about the Pirates.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_04: I one thing I remember, Steve, I don't know why I remember this, but the season opener that year, uh, do you remember they had this that blue padding on the outfield walls at the River Stadium?
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_04: They they uh they armoralled those walls.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_04: So like that stuff you put on like your dashboard or your car to make it all shiny.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_04: They were like armoralling all the walls.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like they were really like trying to make the stadium look pretty because it was going to be these big crowds for the opening series, and everybody was so excited.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but things fall apart very quickly in 1998.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_04: The Pirates lose 93 games, they finish in dead last, and they finish that season by losing 25 out of their last 30 games.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's like a historically bad month of September.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_04: I think it might be one of the worst months, maybe the worst month that they've had in the franchise history.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_04: So they just totally collapse the next year.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Jason Kendall becomes the Pirates marquee player.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_04: In 2000, he signs the richest contract in team history.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_04: He turns out to be a really good player, just not one who the Pirates really won anything with, not that that was necessarily all his fault.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_04: Kevin Young follows up that '97 campaign with two really huge seasons of production, and then he also gets rewarded with a big contract.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_04: But he has some knee issues, and then his play goes like way south after that.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I don't I I just remember Kevin Young was really good for a really short period of time, and then when he wasn't, he was really bad.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_03: He struck out yeah, like he couldn't hit a breaking ball.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_03: I remember that.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_03: That was like his big weakness.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh when Kevin Young is released in 2003, he fights back tears and says that his biggest regret is that the pirates are in exactly the same place he is when he came in at the bottom trying to rebuild.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't realize he cared so much about the pirates.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh good for him.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: He does games now, so yeah.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Al Martin runs into all kinds of trouble off the field.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's discovered that he has two wives who didn't know that he was married to the other wife.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_04: Well, but what about his uh football career at USC?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's what I'm really concerned about.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Al Martin apparently uh very good at deceiving a lot of different people.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_03: Including two different women, apparently.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_04: He had also fathered a bunch of kids with other women.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_04: He also pleads guilty to a domestic violence charge.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Al Martin, not a not a great human being.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Joe Randa ends up having some good seasons later, but not with the Pirates, with the Royals.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_04: Jose Guillon bounces around the majors for a while with like 20 different teams.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_04: He's also implicated in the Mitchell report.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_04: And it's widely rumored that he's using HGH, which unfortunately didn't really help him a whole lot.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, if you're gonna if you're gonna use performance-enhancing drugs and maybe like have it enhance your performance a little bit, just saying.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, maybe you should stop using them.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, just think how bad he would have been without them.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Tony Womack goes on to become a World Series hero for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he gets a hit against uh what's his name?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: The Yankees.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_04: Uh uh Mariana Rivera.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, like the greatest clever of all time.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Good for Tony Womack.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think Jay Bell, Jay Bell was on that team, too.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_04: He was, correct.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Dale Swain becomes a manager for the Brewers and Cubs.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and then the pitching staff, you know, Cordova plays for the Pirates for a few more years, but never replicates that success that he had in '97.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_04: His career is over at age 28 due to arm injuries.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_04: So another guy that was ends up kind of being more of a flash in the pan than a long-term star.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, same story for Rich Loisell.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_04: He never again saves that many games and is out of baseball a few years later.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_04: And then, as we already mentioned, Leliza, Lieber, and Schmidt all become all-stars, but with other teams.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_04: And really, what ends up happening is Cam Bonifay makes a series of just catastrophic personnel moves.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_04: And then after he gets fired, David Littlefield comes in and he makes a series of catastrophic personnel moves.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: I always thought Jason Schmidt was the worst one because you knew that guy was good.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, that that always that they just got like nothing.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: They got like a bag of baseballs for him, and that was that was that was bad.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like Louisa was like pretty more mediocre, I thought.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_03: He was good, but he wasn't like Schmidt was really good, I thought.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_04: We we did an episode about that 20-year losing streak, and we went through a bunch of those personnel moves, and and my my thread throughout that whole episode was okay, in a vacuum, I can see missing on Loisa or Jose Batista or some of the other terrible moves they made in a vacuum, right?
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_04: Every every team gives up too early on somebody, or maybe that guy just needed a change of scenery, right?
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_04: Or different whatever.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_04: So, but to have it happen consistently over and there's something, yeah.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's time to look in the mirror.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_04: So the end result is, as we said, the North American pro sports record of 20 consecutive losing seasons.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_04: McClatchy ultimately hands the team over to Bob Nutting.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_04: 97 ends up being the closest the Pirates ever come to any kind of success under Kevin McClatchy.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: As of the time of this recording, the Pittsburgh Pirates have never once won the National League Central Division.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, uh now I it's still unclear when McClatchy and Nutting like did the transfer, right?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: That's like a big hush-hush secret.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't understand, like I I yeah, whatever.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_04: It it's it speaks to the dysfunction of the ownership groups.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_04: You know, Nutting came on, I believe it was 2002.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_04: We we talked about this in that 20 year episode.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_04: Nunning came on, I think, in 2002, and then by 2007, he was like the official owner.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_04: So somewhere in that five years, he was running the team.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_04: Was it closer to 2002 or closer to 2007?
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_04: Nobody knows, but it really didn't matter because you know they they sucked before and they sucked after.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: I guess, yeah.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_03: What does it matter at this point by you?
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_04: So yeah, not not a happy ending, but I think it's a good it's a really good story.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's a team that's worth remembering.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's almost like a Hollywood worthy story.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, imagine if they just would have won really one or two more games.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_04: They could have won that division and they've been in the playoffs, and then who knows what happens.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_04: So a great story and a great a great team to look back on.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_04: Steve, any any final thoughts on the uh 97 Bucus?
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: Wish we would have gone to that game in July.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: We should have bought our tickets in advance.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: Go back and tell uh well a 19-year-old me that, or 20-year-old me, I guess.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_04: Well, yeah, who again, like you said, who would have ever thought to do that?
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you you just that wasn't what you needed to do back then.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_04: It was you just walked up to the gate and kind of a ticket.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_04: Sure, here's here's how many?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_04: Do you want 20, 30?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_04: Like the whole upper deck.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_04: Good seats still available, but but at that point, people were very excited, and and the that was the first place at you know, the battle for first place with the Astros, and and it was a sellout, and it was it was a fun time.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_04: I I do remember, Steve, that it was like three hours later, somebody called one of the people we were with who didn't know much about baseball, and she she put down her phone for a second.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_04: She's like, Hey guys, is a no-hitter, is that good?
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_04: And we're like, Oh my, you really that's what happened?
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_04: Your kid.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: I remember we went we went over your parents' house like later that night, and your dad was like, give us something sarcastic remark, like, yeah, you missed the game, didn't you?
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yes, we did.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_03: He singed us pretty good.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yep.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: Rightfully so, rightfully earned on our part.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I mean, uh you can make an argument that that that game and the the Queto dropping the ball game were probably the two most memorable games of the last since 92 plus years.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_03: 79, yeah, since the Baltimore World Series win, yeah, maybe.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_04: Well, at least since 92.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you could at least make that argument.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_04: So but yeah, again, a fun season.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_04: So um I I I I it was worth remembering.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's a shame that you know, I you would have thought with that team overachieving as much as they did, things could only get better.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_04: They were so young and now they would have some experience, and then it never manifested, unfortunately.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_03: I I think it's the perfect example of like the pirates like didn't the pirates have a guy named Adam Frazier and like like just like guys that were really good for one year, and I think that was a team of guys that just they were gonna have a really good year, and they just had them all together one year.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't indicative of like a team becoming you know really good for a long time.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_03: It take it takes a good like general manager to like be able to sort that out, and we didn't have a lot of people.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_04: All right, folks, thank you so much for listening to our podcast.
• 58:20
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• 58:24
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• 58:35
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• 58:38
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• 58:41
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks everybody, and we will catch you next time.