My wife is from Pittsburgh, so I have a soft spot in my heart for the city and its sports teams, with the exception of the Penguins. I have trouble rooting for those guys. Anyway, I cannot imagine being a Pirates fan. I don’t even think as Phillies fans we can adequately empathize with their plight.

Even when the Phillies were trading away their best players earlier this decade, most notably Curt Schilling and Scott Rolen, they did so with a gun to their head. Their intention was not to jettison key players in order to save money and propagate an unending rebuilding of the team. The Phillies’ management philosophy was a bungling mess. They started to turn it around by signing Jim Thome in advance of their move to Citizens Bank Park, and then they rewarded the fans who bolstered their revenue via the new park by investing in their young core and not being afraid to sign free agents. They just couldn’t figure out how to make it work until they realized that the core problem was the GM. 3 years later, jackpot.

The Pirates organization is pathetic by comparison. And worse yet, they know exactly what they are doing. They play baseball in a palace – If you’ve never been to PNC Park, get there asap. I know you’ll be helping line the pockets of these scoundrels in the Steel City, but that ballpark is something else.

This is a franchise that has 5 World Series championships, including the iconic 1960 series that concluded with Bill Mazeroski’s Game 7 walk off homer run at Forbes Field.

This is Roberto Clemente’s franchise. This is a franchise that built a ballpark with the promise to field competitive teams once they were able to sell club boxes and all of that other crap.

This is a franchise that used public funds to help build their new stadium, with the expectation that the building of this stadium was in the public interest. How can that be justified at this poiint? Because they had an All-Star Game there? Has any other meaningful game ever been played there?

Now, the Pirates are on a collision course with a 17th straight losing season, which will set a new mark for major league futility.

So, what do the Pirates do this week? Trade their best player for 3 prospects from the Atlanta Braves, 1 each at A, AA and AAA ball. Only Charley Morton, according to Dejan Kovacevic’s great article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has an opportunity to help the Pirates this year. The Bucs called up Andrew McCutchen, their Number 2 prospect according to Baseball America, to replace McLouth. This will give McCutchen an opportunity to showcase his skills to the team that will trade for him in a couple of years when the Pirates decide they can’t afford to pay him. You can tell from Kovacevic’s article how thrilled the Pirate players are about this trade.

I’d have more respect for the Pirates’ brain trust of they just came out and told the truth – “Hey, we turn a modest profit, and that’s what we’re really in this for, after all. We’re hoping to catch lightning in a bottle like the Rays did last year. If so, great. If not, no big deal”. Instead they lie about how this is somehow part of some genius plan to turn the Pirates into a championship caliber team. Bob Smizik of the P-G isn’t so sure.

Pirates fans have spoken loudly with their non-attendance at Pirates games. In the end, everyone loses. The Pirates players can’t help but be demotivated by the front office’s lack of desire to win (not to mention the lack of fan support), and the fans are deprived of an opportunity to get behind a team with a promising nucleus. I guess it’s not easy to get emotionally involved in a team that won’t look nearly the same a year from now.

Instead of avoid PNC Park, perhaps it’s time for Pirates fans to arrive there in droves and storm the front office looking for answers. Or maybe it’s time for Bud Selig to ask Pirates ownership when they are going to spend some of that luxury tax windfall that they get from the Yankees on building a winner. It’s also time for taxpayers to wonder why we were even involved in funding a major league ball park for a perennial minor league team.

Pittsburgh deserves better.

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Corey over at We Should Be GMs deciphers bungling Pirates GM Neal Huntington’s press conference quotes.