Meet the Pirates There is an old baseball saying that goes Good pitching stops good hitting That may be true for most teams but it’s usually the other way around with the Pittsburgh Pirates For generations they have been among baseball’s best-hitting teams Pittsburgh has a proud tradition of batting champions and league-leading home run hitters Of course it also takes good pitching and defense to win championships When the Pirates have been able to put all of of these pieces together they have been unbeatable Even if Pittsburgh rgh doesn’t win a championship the team plays exciting baseball and never gives up This book tells the story of the Pirates They have given baseball some of its greatest moments and most unforgettable players Pittsburgh plays to win from the beginning of the season to the end When you wear the team’s black and gold uniform you are expected to do nothing less Jose Tabata congratulates Pedro Alvarez after a home run 5
Glory Days P ittsburgh joined the National League NL in 1887 The club was originally called the Alleghenys They actually played their first game five years earlier in 1882 That season Pittsburgh became a member of the American Association AA a rival league to the NL The team’s best player was Ed Swartwood He won the AA batting crown in 1883 By 1900 Barney Dreyfuss had bought the Pittsburgh club The team was now known as the Pirates though the name wasn’t originally meant as a compliment Pittsburgh got the nickname after people accused the club of stealing a player from another team Dreyfuss was a smart businessman He also owned an NL team in Louisville Kentucky Dreyfuss decided to shut down that club 6
but first he traded his best players to Pittsburgh Included in that deal were outfielder Fred Clarke and shortstop Honus Wagner the game’s greatest young star The Pirates won the pennant three years in a row starting in 1901 In 1903 they played in the first modern World Series and lost to the American League AL champions from Boston Six years later Pittsburgh won the championship That team defeated the Detroit Tigers in a showdown between Wagner and Ty Cobb the AL’s best player The Pirates took the NL pennant again in 1925 and 1927 Those clubs had strong hitters including Pie Traynor Kiki Cuyler and Glenn Wright and later the Waner brothers Paul and Lloyd Pittsburgh finished in second place five times in the years that followed but the team did not return to the World Series The Pirates sank to the bottom of the league in the 1950s The only reason many fans came to the ballpark was to watch the amazing power hitting of Ralph Kiner LEFT Honus Wagner slides home safely He was the NL’s best player in the early 1900s ABOVE Slugger Ralph Kiner appeared on a lot of magazine covers in the 1950s 7
