PITTSBURGH — It’s rare to see a sellout crowd at PNC Park these days. More often than not, empty blue seats far outnumber fans in attendance.
The Pirates sold out their home opener against the New York Yankees on Apr. 4. They had a sellout again last month for a Paul Skenes bobblehead giveaway.
On Friday night, the Pirates had their highest-attended game of the season and their third sellout as 38,041 fans voyaged to the banks of the Allegheny River.
It wasn’t because of their recent play on the field. The Pirates were rocked for the second-straight by the lowly Chicago White Sox, falling 10-4 on Saturday after losing 10-1 in the opening game of the series on Friday. With back-to-back losses, the Pirates have dropped 10 of their last 11 games.
The reason for the full house on Friday night was due to another giveaway. As part of their ‘Yinzerpalooza’ weekend, the Pirates celebrated Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller and handed out his bobblehead to the first 20,000 fans in attendance. Fans were lined up hours before first pitch to try and get one.
Regardless of the reasoning for the sellout, the Pirates will take one any way they can get one, given how understandably disgruntled the fanbase has become this season. But once again, an opportunity for a sold out crowd to see a good product on the field was squandered.
The game was promising early on. The Pirates built a three-run lead in the first half of the game and were up 4-2 headed into the sixth. Then all hell broke loose.
The White Sox sent 11 men to the plate and scored six runs against a trio of Pirates’ relievers.
As the Pirates’ lead was unraveling, chants of “sell the team” again echoed throughout the stadium. The chants have been heard quite a bit throughout the season. Sometimes it’s a small pocket of fans participating on a random weekday game where there is hardly anyone in attendance. Other times, like on Saturday night, the chants can be heard from as far back as the lines spanned leading up to the game, or the bobblehead giveaway, anyway.
It’s a reflection of how fans have felt, for years now, but this season in particular. Even for games where there is real excitement and enthusiasm, the end result is still frustrations boiling over.
The season has been a disaster. The Pirates are now 21 games under .500. If it wasn’t for the Colorado Rockies, they’d be in contention to finish the season with the worst record in baseball. One of the other teams in contention for that unwanted title would be the White Sox, who have outscored the Pirates 20-5 through the first two games of this series.
If the on-field product wasn’t bad enough, so bad that the team had to make a change at manager, there have been numerous off the field blunders and public displays of disgust. There was the whole Surfside fiasco, the Bucco Brick debacle, and a plane that flew a banner calling out owner Bob Nutting on Opening Day. A plane carrying a similar banner again flew overhead this weekend, by the way.
To top it all off, the Pirates’ latest loss pushed their all-time record to 10,878-10,879. A once proud franchise has seen its record dip below .500, something that seemed unimaginable not that long ago.
Yeah, those sell the team chants won’t be going away any time soon.