Home >  Sports >  Columnists

Monday, May 05, 2003

An argument has been boiling in Pittsburgh about Pirates attendance for the better part of three decades or since Three Rivers Stadium opened, and instead of turning on baseball fans it turned them off.

For whatever reasons, Pittsburghers pined for worn-down Forbes Field, although you would never know that from the attendance figures at the old ballpark, which was located on what is now part of the University of Pittsburgh campus. In 1969, the Pirates' final full season at Forbes Field, attendance was 769,369, although the team won 88 games. In fact, only once in their final seven seasons at Forbes Field did the Pirates attract more than 1 million fans.

It wasn't until Three Rivers Stadium was 15 years old and the Pirates were in the midst of a 104-loss season that attendance fell below what it was the last year at Forbes Field.

But Three Rivers Stadium had a public relations problem that never went away. The stadium was routinely criticized for just about everything, although the Steelers and their fans didn't seem to mind it. It was out of this disappointment in Three Rivers that this debate began: Is Pittsburgh a good baseball town?

The criteria for what a good baseball town is have never been defined. Several measuring sticks are used.

The most common is tickets sold, and Pittsburgh doesn't do well. The Pirates are 24th (out of 30) in attendance in Major League Baseball this year, selling an average of 17,828 tickets. That's down from 22nd in 2002 and 17th and in 2001, which is, to say the least, an alarming trend.

Of course, it's unfair to go strictly by total attendance. Considering the size of the Pittsburgh market, 17th is good. As has been pointed out many times, the Pirates sell more than their share of tickets considering the population base of the region.

When a third measure, television ratings, is put in the mix, the region does even better. According to Fox Sports Net, the Pirates have the fourth-highest ratings in baseball. Those ratings are based on percentage of population tuned in, not total number of viewers.

So why doesn't this interest reflect more in tickets sold? The argument often presented as a defense for Pittsburgh is the failure of the Pirates to put winning teams on the field. There's no disputing the region has had to put up with a steady succession of losers. But winners haven't necessarily been the answer.

When the Pirates won the World Series in 1971, they drew 1.5 million.

Attendance fell for the next three seasons, although two of those teams were division winners and the third was in the race until the final day of the season.

From 1990 through 1992, the Pirates won three consecutive division titles, but attendance fell 11 percent from the second to third season.

On the basis of the two longest-running successes the Pirates have had in the past 35 years, it might be assumed the town enjoys winning but soon tires of it. More to the point, if the fans of the region are only going to support winners, the Pirates are doomed. With the way baseball is presently structured, and with no major changes in the foreseeable future, the Pirates' chances of having any kind of success, let alone a long run of it, are slight.

Pittsburgh might be a great baseball town in terms of comparative tickets sold and television ratings, but in the real world of baseball, where gross revenue is a crucial statistic, comparative ticket sales don't matter. It's not about what percentage of the population buys tickets but how many tickets are sold.

If having a large percentage of the population buy tickets were all that important, then Major League Baseball should rush a franchise to Washington, Pa., where it seems the entire town turns out to see the Wild Things of the independent Frontier League.

If a greater percentage of Pittsburghers go to see the Pirates than Dallas residents go to see the Texas Rangers, that might be enough to make you feel good. It might even be enough to make you think Pittsburgh is a good baseball town.

But it's not good enough. Pittsburgh is not supporting the Pirates the way they need to be supported to compete with larger markets. This isn't to suggest anyone owes the Pirates anything. No one does. We already have done our share by building them a stadium. But it is to suggest that until a greater number of people start going to game than are presently going, baseball in Pittsburgh will continue to struggle not just to thrive but to survive.