No one, as far as I know, has ever accused Frank Coonelly of being funny, but last week the Pittsburgh Pirates’ president, said something that, though unintentional, turned out to be very funny.
I called Coonelly to ask him about the Pirates’ trades, within a week, of their two best players, pitcher Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen. In particular, I wanted to find out the fans’ reaction. It’s not every week that a team trades its two best players.
“I’m not sure this is the right venue,” Coonelly said. “We’re going directly to the fans and talking to them.”
As Coonelly spoke on the telephone Friday, Pirates’ fans were already talking. More than 50,000 had signed an on-line petition demanding that Bob Nutting relinquish control of the team. For the past decade, Nutting has been chairman of the board.
“Pittsburgh is a baseball town that is being destroyed by a greedy owner,” the petition read. “There are so many loyal fans who truly care and support this team through thick and thin. We deserve better. … There needs to be change from the top of the organization down. Bob Nutting needs to sell this team, so that we can see a competitive baseball team year in and year out. It is obvious that he doesn’t want to spend the money to make that happen. We need an owner who has a competitive spirit and loves the game of baseball!”
In posting the petition Jason Kauffman, a 43-year-old Pittsburgh area resident, tweeted, “I know this petition won’t force Nutting to sell but I view it more as a representation of the collective anger of the fan base, being fed up with ownership’s unwillingness to do what it takes to compete in today’s game.”
Kauffman was correct in saying the petition would not induce Nutting to sell the team. Fan protests seldom have the desired effect. One exception was the sale of the New York Mets in 1980.
Under the misguided leadership of M. Donald Grant, the Mets refused to spend money for players, and the team deteriorated. The Mets became so bad fans stopped going to games, and the severe decline in revenue undermined the Mets and forced the sale of the team.
Nutting does not appear to be in peril no matter what the Pirates do. He assumed control a decade ago, and no one is going to bump him from his ownership perch. Thousands of fans, on the other hand, want to do precisely that.
When Kauffman posted his declaration of independence from Nutting last week, he set 25,000 signatures as his goal. Then 50,000 came and went, and by Saturday night nearly 54,000 fans had signed the petition.
“It just goes to show you how angry the fan base is,” Kauffman said by telephone Saturday night. “You have small-market teams like Pittsburgh – Colorado, Kansas City, Cleveland – getting players, but Pittsburgh is sending them away.
He referred to Cole and McCutchen, the Pirates’ best pitcher and best hitter, respectively. It’s not a new story; it’s an old tale. If a good player is a free agent or nears free agency, the Pirates trade him or let him leave. Anything but pay him.
Twenty-five years ago, Barry Bonds was a free agent, and the Pirates let him go to San Francisco. The Pirates traded McCutchen because they knew they would not pay him enough to keep him from free agency. Where did they trade him? To San Francisco.
“It gets to the point where I can’t stand it anymore,” Kauffman said. “I have to be honest. I’m 43 years old. There were some years when they were really bad.”
I thought I would try to relieve some of the angst from Kauffman’s head. “You should’ve been around in the ‘50s,” I said, preparing to unload names like Eddie and Johnny O’Brien, Dick Hall, Vic Janowicz and Clem Koshorek.
But that would be small comfort for a fan paying hundreds of dollars for a game today when I was paying a dollar a game to sit in the left field bleachers at Forbes Field.
On the other hand, we had our McCutchen moments, the day in 1953, for example when the Pirates traded Ralph Kiner to the Chicago Cubs. We were stunned, maybe even distraught, but who knew from protests and petitions?
“The McCutchen trade,” Kauffman said. “He was our player.”
“Enough is enough,” he went on, his voice rising. “When are they going to start building a winner?”
As he said, Kauffman doesn’t expect his petition to force Nutting to sell his controlling share of the Pirates to someone who will sign a bunch of expensive players, but he wants the message to be loud and clear.
“I want it to be an eye opener for ownership,” he said. “We’re mad. Nutting never talks to the fans. This is an historic franchise: Wagner, Clemente, Stargell. We deserve better.”
A season-ticket holder for eight straight seasons, Kauffman said he would definitely talk to Nutting and anyone else “if they allow me.”
“We deserve a more competitive baseball team,” Kauffman said. “If I had the opportunity, I’d tell them this is what we want. We want them to listen to us.”
I don’t think Kauffman meant Nutting should do what the fans say he should do. Just listen to their gripes and grievance and do something to alleviate them. If that would have meant signing McCutchen at any cost, that wouldn’t have been a problem.
But the Pirates are in business to attract fans to their games, and right now they have a lot of angry fans, whose absence from PNC Park would mean more trouble for the Pirates.
This is how the fans view ownership: “If Roberto Clemente were playing today,” Kauffman said, “they’d trade him away.” He added, for local contrast, “The Penguins won’t trade Crosby. The Steelers won’t trade Roethlisberger.”
Since the Pirates aren’t expected to fix their problem any time soon, Kauffman and fellow fans may want to take a page from Howard Beale’s rant in the film “Network” and “go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’”