PITTSBURGH — Pirates attendance jokes wrote themselves over the past year, topped by some version of, "Nothing has changed at PNC Park: It's still empty."
Thankfully, fans are back. Just not many of them. "Re-opening weekend" is not going to change that, although the Pirates might get a bump when they open the ballpark to 100% capacity with the Milwaukee Brewers visiting Thursday through Sunday.
On one hand, this is cause for great celebration. We're living with some sense of normalcy again. Fans at games are a sure sign of it.
On the other (realizing it's only sports), look at this team. Look at this season. The Pirates had won 29 of their first 78 games going into Wednesday's game at Colorado. They were on pace to lose 102. They still have a real shot to be the worst Pirates team since the 112-loss outfit of 1952.
Oh, except for last year, when they won just 19 of 60 games in a shortened season for a .317 winning percentage, their worst since ... 1952.
This team isn't just bad. It's calamitous. It lost a game 20-1. It had a 10-game losing streak. It delivered a couple of all-time blooper plays at first base. Most recently, it somehow managed to score zero runs in back-to-back games in Colorado's thin air. It was nearly no-hit in the second of those (not that no-hitters are unusual anymore) and soon will trade a few of its best players, if all goes as expected.
The season, like so many others, is basically finished before Steelers camp begins, and no amount of free shirts, fireworks or concerts is going to bring fans back to PNC Park in droves. Only winning will do that.
And be sure of this: Winning will do that.
If a 20-year losing streak didn't drive Pirates fans away for good, nothing will. Winning truly is the magic elixir.
I realize many of you have been burned twice now. You dared to love again around 2012 and saw the relationship disintegrate over money issues, as so many do, and a twice-broken heart can be harder to mend.
Some of you will follow through on threats to stay away for good. I wouldn't blame anyone for swearing off this franchise forever. But for every one of them, I'd wager there'll be five or 10 who return. They might threaten to "never give Nutting another dime" — and again, who could blame them? — but I bet they'll return. If they don't, others are sure to take their place. And I wouldn't blame them, either.
Everybody loves a winner, no matter how much losing came first.
We learned as much, yet again, 10 years ago this month. Remember? The Pirates were coming off a 105-loss season (their worst since 1952) and riding a pesky 18-year losing streak. People like me spoke of how they'd "lost a generation of fans."
Well, guess what? It took that club all of two months to win back the allegedly lost fan base. Not two years. Two months. Sixty days, give or take a few, and the town was going nuts.
Nearly 27,000 fans showed up on a Tuesday night — July 19, 2011 — to see James McDonald dominate the Reds and keep the Pirates in first place in the NL Central. The next morning, in the midst of a wicked heat spell, fans were honking horns on the Parkway and waving brooms out of their car windows in anticipation of a sweep of the Reds.
More than 25,000 turned out for a 12:35 p.m. game that day (the Reds won). The Pirates were in first place that late in a season for the first time since 1997. A series with superstar Albert Pujols and the St. Louis Cardinals loomed that weekend. Tickets remained only for the Sunday game.
To recap: A decent little 51-45 start virtually erased all the ill will built over an 18-year losing streak. The Pirates would collapse later that summer, but the fire was rekindled. Attendance shot back up toward the 2 million mark and would increase even as the losing streak hit 20 years.
Fast forward a decade. Here we are. It's bad. Lots of people don't have the disposable income they had a year ago. The Pirates are terrible. They're in the midst of a total rebuild. Attendance figures in the two years before the pandemic were hitting lows not seen around here since the mid-1990s.
Fans are bitter, rage-filled and demoralized.
But guess what? If the plan works — and that is hardly a guarantee — PNC Park will be packed again. This team could lose 100 games this season and next, but if it gets off to, say, a 51-45 start in 2023 and is contending for first place in mid-July, fans will return.
They always do.
