Recently I attended a Pirates vs Phillies game at PNC Park in Pittsburgh PA. A pre-game tradition followed by the Pittsburgh fans is to park on the other side of the Allegheny river and walk across Roberto Clemente bridge over to PNC park. In support of this tradition the city of Pittsburgh officially shuts down the bridge. This allows fans to walk right down the street. While you cross the bridge (which is painted yellow like most Pittsburgh bridges) you can see the beautiful stadium, the boats floating down the Allegheny river and downtown Pittsburgh. Outside the Park there a bronze statues of Past Pirates Greats. Once you enter the stadium you are in for a treat as PNC is one of the most beautiful stadiums in MLB. The right field wall is low enough that if you are sitting anywhere but right field you can see an awesome view of downtown Pittsburgh. The main score board continues with the excellence. It is a beautiful. The Pirates use it to its full power also showing lots of short videos throughout the night.
However, despite this awesome baseball atmosphere, the Pirates have managed to put together 18 losing seasons in a row. This is the longest continuous losing streak in all the major American sports. The game I attended was the 3rd in a 4 game series against the Phillies. The Pirates had already won the first 2 games. You would think the Pirates fans would be riding a wave of high spirits. Or maybe you would think the fans would still be pessimistic after such a long history of falliure. However, here is the thing, there weren't many Pirates fans. Most of the people were Phillies fans, probably 70% plus. The citizens of Pittsburgh appear to be wasting their great baseball park.
Perhaps if Pittsburgh lost some weight...
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