Martha Rial, Post-Gazette photos Longtime Pirates fan George Coury, 70, of Homer City, teases Jake Benhart, of Indiana, in the stands during Wednesday's game against the Cubs. Coury has missed only 12 Pirates games in 36 years. Click photo for larger image.

This is all about the fundamental question of why, and for the purpose of tracking its origins, the question of why begins with an old man walking to a baseball game, holding a battery-powered radio and a polyester Pirates jacket, the kind you could probably find at a flea market. He is Bill Cummings. And he is 80. And he is by himself.

He passes through the turnstiles of PNC Park's left-field entrance, and he retreats to the back row of the left-field bleachers -- an angled hiding spot behind the foul pole, where nobody notices him until the Pirates turn their first double play. "Get two!" he suddenly screams. "Way to go! Way to go!"

Kip Wells is the Pirates' pitcher on this particular evening. He is 400 feet away, and he does not hear Cummings scream. But there is still a reason Cummings screams, just as there's a reason he keeps score every game, then files away the box score when he returns home, in a safe place where it will remain forever preserved. These are the things Cummings does, and the question is why.

Cummings, from Crafton, is a Pirates fan, same as most of those around him. The Pirates haven't won any thing of any kind since 1992, and even then they managed to break fans' hearts. For 12 years since -- perhaps now going on to 13 -- those who have pored over the box scores and watched on TV and paid money for tickets and merchandise have seen only sub-.500 seasons. They invest their emotions in a franchise that has become one of the most inevitable losers in modern sports. They are fans of a team that rarely wins and a sport that gives little hope for the future. And the question, once again, is why.

West View Elementary School fourth-graders Christopher Glabb (left) and Jordan Blackmon (right) whoop it up when the Pirates played the Cubs Wednesday. Click photo for larger image.

For Cummings, answering the fundamental question of why requires an excavation of old memories, buried, at their roots, under the thicker tissue of more recent experiences. But he remembers, with some effort. He remembers buying his first pack of baseball cards in 1933, and then, well -- "It wasn't too long after that when Pie Traynor took over as manager," he says. "And I forget who succeeded him ... well, wait! It was Frankie Frisch. Then came Billy Herman, then Billy Meyer after him. Billy Meyer died suddenly if I can recall -- he was manager of the year in 1948 -- and Meyer was replaced by the guy Fred Haney, who later had a lot of success with the Milwaukee Braves. But when he was with Pittsburgh in the '50s. Oh, some of those teams were terrible.

"After Haney came the guy that ended up getting fired, Bobby Bragan. Joe Brown was actually GM of the Pirates at the time, and he hired Danny Murtaugh. Murtaugh was actually here two or three different times. He was there when we won it all in '60, and I think he was there the next time, in '71, too.

"And then [Chuck] Tanner was the manager by 1979, but not with a few other guys in between first. [Larry] Shepard, Bill Virdon, Harry Walker -- but anyhow, Tanner won it in '79, and let's see, who'd they have after that? [Jim] Leyland, oh yeah, of course. And then you get up to the '90s when they won those three division titles, and Leyland left, and then you get up to Gene Lamont, and then now you get to the guy they have presently... What's his name? Yeah, [Lloyd] McClendon."

It should be noted, for the sake of historical propriety, that Cummings forgot three managers. Spud Davis (1946), Bill Burwell (1947) and Alex Grammas (1969). All served as interim managers after firings or resignations. They managed a combined 10 games.

But in that way, baseball is a game of details, layered with the complexities of trivial statistics and forgotten nuances and unwritten rules and intangible appeal. Baseball is complicated. The easy suggestion would be that Bill Cummings goes to Pirates games because he is 80, and because that's what he has always done. But this is a question of why, and the question of why, like baseball, inspires layers and layers and layers.

There are voices layered atop more voices. Perspectives tangled with perspectives. Some fans, like Cummings, know baseball like a historian. Others, like 11-year-old Alex Hinton, know Pirates history in one sentence: "They get good players, then they trade 'em."

They attend games, then, for many reasons. Because they just love PNC Park. Because of the drip-by-drip drama of a sport with no time limit. Because of a specific player. Because of the chance to watch a particular opponent.

Because baseball is a summer sport. Because baseball is a family sport. Because baseball is an American sport.

"Because of the food and Jason Bay," says ninth-grader Taylor Westbrook.

"Because it's a long, lazy game," says Lauren Baumann, 30.

"Because I have continued hope things will get better," says Mark Scheig, 24.

"Because the beer tastes better here," says Matt Shealy, 22.

Because of the stories:

"I was actually named after Andy Van Slyke," says Andy Olsen, 17, from Wexford.

"I've missed 12 home games in 36 years," says George Coury, 70, from Homer City. "I broke my knee once and missed six. I missed four more because of graduations and graduation parties. One game I missed because my father died. The other, I was on vacation in California."

"My brothers and I invented something called Apathy Mode," says Bill Moritz, 26. "I mean, 12 years of losing baseball ... we had to. I don't live in Apathy Mode all the time, but if the Pirates are losing six, seven games in a row -- and that happens quite often -- I gotta do it. And Apathy Mode just means I won't allow myself to get upset about the team. I still follow them, but I just do it apathetically. It's my psychological trick. Then, when the Pirates win a few games again -- even just two or three -- and they start playing like actual major-leaguers, then I come back. It's not the same as being a fair-weather fan. Because I'm always paying attention. But that's Apathy Mode. Yeah, you think I'm nuts."

No, he's nuts: "I'm telling people, 2008 is our year!" says Tyler Bluemling, who just graduated from Duquesne University. Actually, he played basketball there -- four years as a guard -- and it's almost unfair how much losing he has forced himself through. The Dukes, during Bluemling's career, won 32.5 percent of their games.

When freed from playing for a losing team, Bluemling watches one. Last summer, he organized his travel schedule to catch a few Pirates games on the West Coast. He attended 30 games last season, always hoping -- with a tinge of blessed desperation -- to see something he'll cherish.

Like that steamy July night in 1997. His friends gathered for a neighborhood block party, and of course Bluemling wanted to go -- but tickets to a Pirates game? He couldn't say no. He went to Three Rivers with his parents.

"It will go down as one of the greatest nights of my life," he says. Inside Three Rivers Stadium that evening, a 10-inning no-hitter unfolded pitch by pitch, breath by breath. Francisco Cordova and Ricardo Rincon. Pirates 3, Astros 0. "And that was amazing. I'll never forget ... every inning my dad kept grabbing my shirt, and the guy next to us, he must have chain-smoked two packs of cigarettes -- he was so nervous. So now, anytime I get tickets, I always go. I want to be there when it turns around. I want to say, I was there all along."

But the question is why. And why do fans trade present-day agony for the hope, however farfetched, that such devotion will someday be rewarded? At Duquesne, Bluemling's basketball team won nine, 12, nine and eight games. Four seasons. No rewards. "I know first-hand how depressing it can be, going into a 30-game season and losing all but eight," he says. "Oftentimes I wonder what the Pirates are thinking, because they continually say the players are really positive -- you know, that's one of McClendon's favorite things to say. But I've seen first-hand how the work ethic can decline, how a team's attitude can go straight down the tubes. I wonder if they're thinking and acting the same way."

If you parcel a baseball season into its smallest part, and divide a year into 162 separate chances for greatness, you can forget about everything that came before, and everything that can cause misery. That's a mental trick -- but a hard one. Because some memories, Pirates fans seem stuck with. Memories of Game 7, 1992, NLCS. Memories of Sid Bream.

"The darkest day of my life," Bluemling says.

"Ugh. Sid Bream."

Sid Bream. Ugh.

Bream started all of this. He joined the Pirates in the mid-1980s, and stayed with the team until 1990, and then -- the cruel twist! -- the first baseman with the slowest stride you have ever seen joined the Atlanta Braves, and when the Braves needed Bream to run 180 feet, he turned out to be just fast enough.

After losing the National League Championship Series in 1990 and 1991, the Pirates returned in 1992. This time, they faced the Braves, and when they rebounded from losing three of the first four NLCS games, and when they tiptoed into the ninth inning of Game 7 leading, 2-0, a legion of Pirates fans sat on their sofas and bar stools, waiting to release three years of on-hold celebration.

Then trouble. A few runners on base. An error. A pitching change. With two outs -- and the Pirates leading, 2-1 -- the Braves attached their hopes to pinch-hitter Francisco Cabrera. Bream, the winning run, waited on second base. When Cabrera struck a line drive to left field, the tying run scored from third, no trouble. Everybody watched Bream.

He ran, slowly. It was the start of an eternal slow-motion replay. He slid underneath the tag of catcher Mike LaValliere. The Braves celebrated, and that was the last second when the Pirates rightfully called themselves a winning team.

"Wherever I go, it's a sore spot," says Bream, who now lives with his family in Zelienople. "I try to make it comical, but for a lot of people here, that was a huge downer. But I can tell you, it was a big highlight in my career. I can remember speaking recently down in the city, and I was at a very serious part of my talk, and somebody suddenly jumped up and shouted, 'You were out!'

"But no, I'm not going to tell you, sitting here today, that I'm a die-hard Pirates fan. I keep up with what's going on. I always make sure to sit back and watch what's happening. I love this run right now. Nine wins in the last 12 games, I hope and pray they can keep it rolling."

Bream said that last Monday.

The Pirates lost their next two games, both times blowing leads in the ninth inning.

Dismiss it as a coincidence, sure. That only makes sense. But even within matters of coincidence, the fundamental question of why interrupts. Like why does karma refuse to retire, even when players do? Why does fate drive sports fans crazy? You know, people actually study these questions.

These questions of why first bothered Daniel Wann 20 years ago, long before the psychology professor became a national expert on the behavior of sports fans. While in graduate school, Wann always reserved time -- even when it proved counterproductive -- to root for his sports teams and attend games and draft his fantasy teams. He followed the Royals and Cubs.

And he wanted to know why. "What is it?" he wondered, "What is it about sports that makes people do this?"

The question of why has made Wann, now at Murray State University, desperate for answers. He has strolled into arenas and passed out questionnaires to fans. He has studied anxiety levels among fans in days leading up to a key game and discovered, in some cases, that they're as high as the players' levels. He has uncovered fans who believe their actions directly influence a team's success, like the Notre Dame fanatic who insists on reading particular scriptures before each quarter. Or the basketball fan who, when watching games on television, uses her hand to cover the eyes of opposing free-throw shooters.

But baseball, unlike any other sport, plays psychological games with its fans. The rally cap is an American tradition, but why on earth would it ever rally anything?

"The most interesting thing is that there are sports fans at all," Wann says. "Because the thing is, by default, 50 percent of the customers -- half of all fans! -- will be disappointed when a game is done. And you wouldn't order pizza from a place if, five of the last 10 times you ordered it, the pizza came to your house cold.

"So what that tells us is, there's far more to sports than the outcome."

Pirates fans, then, follow the team not simply hoping for victories. Some fans -- the die-hards -- appreciate the poetic grace of the game. By nature, most human beings enjoy the atmosphere that extends from a group gathering; the stadium is the 21^st century church. For some, baseball's leisurely pace provides the perfect complement to a life that's too stressful. For others, its spurts of excitement inject adrenaline into a life that's too boring.

In that way, baseball persists as the ultimate diversion.

And in that way, the Pirates of the 1970s, those teams famous for championships, lend just about the same thing as Pirates of the modern generation, those teams notorious for disappointments. They're pieces in an ongoing story.

The story, though, changes a little here. It changes because of one angry fan, who believes there are thousands others like him. He is Eric Bowser, 27, from Forest Hills. He works as a banker. "And that's all the information I want to give," he says.

He runs an Internet site that uses this banner atop all text below: "Pirates Ownership Must Go!" Oh, how Bowser believes it. He loves baseball, and he loves the Pirates, but he decided more than a year ago to boycott games at PNC Park. He calls it his mini-protest. He also says, quietly, that it's killing him.

Every few days, Bowser writes a couple of hundred words and posts them on his Web site. One day, he criticized general manager Dave Littlefield for a litany of poor trades and free-agent signings. Mostly, he targets owner Kevin McClatchy for failing to deliver the winning team fans once expected.

People are reading. Bowser can count on receiving a few e-mails every day, some from fans who are similarly frustrated, others from fans who blast him for disloyalty.

"My wife thinks I'm totally insane," Bowser says. "Well, maybe not insane. She thinks it's funny. She's like, 'You're not going to get us sued, are you?' But when most people ask why I do this, I tell them that I just had to release my frustrations. I know there are thousands of other people, too. People who are unhappy."

In Pittsburgh, attendance, bulwarked by an attractive ballpark, remains steady. This year, the Pirates average 20,692 fans. In 2002, a year after PNC Park opened, the Pirates averaged 22,595. Still, crowd numbers could improve, just like the wins. Excluding 2001 -- PNC Park's inaugural season -- the Pirates have drawn more than 2 million fans only twice, in 1990 and 1991.

Now, for Bowser, it comes down to this.

"The Pirates can't sell hope," he says, "because they haven't shown any hope."

What about somebody who doesn't need to buy hope? Somebody who never lost it in the first place? What about this kid, this 11-year-old from Mechanicsburg, who stood outside Gate A of Three Rivers Stadium in 1972, ready for a moment he could never forget?

Hundreds of people swarmed the players' exit after a game, and when Roberto Clemente squeezed though the mass, lungs tightened. Mouths dropped. The 11-year-old felt this, though he stood too short to see it.

So he started pushing. And then, an opening -- the boy's eyes caught Clemente's. The ballplayer was in a hurry. Clemente's chauffeur kept saying, "Let's go. We're late." It was a blind stab, really. Pure fortune. "Let's go. We're late!" The boy urgently hoisted his pen and pad into the air. Clemente grabbed the pad and scribbled an autograph. The boy gulped a "Thank you," and though you wouldn't have recognized his voice in 1972, you'd recognize it now.

Both on television and radio, he broadcasts baseball games of the team he has loved since childhood. He's Greg Brown.

He's enthusiastic. He wrote a five-page letter, in 1979, to the Pirates' front office explaining his qualifications to work for the team ... as the Pirate Parrot. Even now, enthusiasm floods his voice. He has announced Pirates games since 1994. He's still waiting for his first winning season. Still.

Brown's brother once told him he sounded too excited when broadcasting games. A few of his brother's friends agreed.

"And you know, I thought about that long and hard," Brown now recalls. "And the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Because it's OK for Myron Cope to scream about the Steelers on the radio, and it's OK for Mike Lange -- who's one of my best friends and mentor -- to go nuts over the Penguins. But the minute a guy comes into Pittsburgh and gets excited about the baseball team, people think that's wrong. And that infuriates me.

"I just think the Pirates have taken a back seat over the years, and it's almost unusual for people to get real excited. To me, that doesn't make sense."

Sense is relative, and so it only makes sense, to 10-year-old Jordan Blackmon, that when a miscalculating PNC scoreboard quotes the changeup of Cubs pitcher Glendon Rusch at a slower-than-leisure 50 mph, it is the fault of the pitcher, not the radar gun. The pitch is probably closer to 80, but no matter. Blackmon explains that his Little League fastball is only 2 mph slower.

And on that tangent, Blackmon, like the many kids around him -- he's on a field trip at PNC Park with a few dozen fourth-grade classmates from West View Elementary -- suggests he'd like to play some day in the major leagues.

"I have fun playing sports," he says, "and if you can get paid for having fun, why not do it?"

Baseball, for the kids who love it, reflects possibility, and in this way, kids relate to sports differently than adults -- the opportunity for emulation binds them to what they are watching. But the Pirates? Why emulate? Even teenagers now graduating from high school cannot remember a winning baseball season in Pittsburgh. For an entire generation -- the youngest generation -- the Pirates are losers; always have been.

"Two things I don't like about the Pirates," says William Alexander, 11, Blackmon's friend and classmate. "One, they traded Jason Kendall to the Yankees -- "

On this piece of information, Blackmon quickly corrects him. The Pirates traded Kendall to the Oakland A's. (Baseball, remember. The details.)

" -- And two," Alexander continues. "They always lose."

Blackmon was born in 1995 and must wrinkle his forehead, in mock consternation, to remember Three Rivers Stadium. Still, he is a baseball fan, a sophisticated one, who can explain why home runs are overrated (he loves Marlins small-ball whiz Juan Pierre) and why he appreciates Matt Lawton more than Daryle Ward.

At schools across the region, the popularity of football trumps that of baseball, no contest. Even so, baseball fans like Blackmon and those who sit around him -- Alexander; Colin Tranquada, 10; and Chris Glabb, 10 -- are easy to find. Baseball is ...

"The best," they say.

This is word association. A few voices, but the first to answer enjoys immediate consensus.

Oliver Perez? "Speed."

Barry Bonds? "Steroids."

Steroids? "Bad."

PNC Park? "Awesome."

Lloyd McClendon? "Angry."

Tranquada interjects. On this particular afternoon, between pierogi races and out-of-town scoreboard highlights and on-the-hour applications of sunscreen, one thing still draws the kids attention: the game. "This is one of the best games I've ever seen," Tranquada exclaims. And the question is why. "Because they're winning," he says.

The Pirates don't win. They blow a lead and lose, 3-2. After the final Pirates batter hits into the final out of the ninth inning, Alexander removes his Pirates hat, pretending, with theatrical disgust, to throw it on the ground. But the hat never leaves his hand.

Leaving PNC Park, the kids talk about everything they saw that afternoon, and every reason they can't wait to come back. They talk about the game, and not how it ended.