{"id":480885,"date":"2025-12-17T05:16:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T05:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/480885\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T05:16:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T05:16:26","slug":"jim-bowden-suggests-pirates-fans-trade-themselves-to-the-dodgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/480885\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Bowden suggests Pirates fans trade themselves to the Dodgers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pittsburgh Pirates have become the punching bag for small market teams in Major League Baseball who aren\u2019t investing resources into building a winning team. And former MLB general manager Jim Bowden has a simple message for fans who are fed up.<\/p>\n<p>Start rooting for the Dodgers.<\/p>\n<p>Bandwagon fans are generally looked down upon in the sports world. We all have someone in our lives who is a Yankees, Lakers, and Cowboys fan. Of course, those Cowboys fans probably became Patriots and Chiefs fans in recent times. But they are treated with the derision and resentment that they deserve.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s been <a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/mlb\/jeff-passan-mission-pittsburgh-pirates-problem.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an issue for Pirates fans<\/a> specifically because they have a generational talent in Cy Young winner Paul Skenes who we all know is counting down the days until he can sign a massive free agent contract with a big market spender. The most publicity the Pirates have gotten outside of Skenes is when Pitt fans at\u00a0College GameDay\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/awfulannouncing.com\/mlb\/sell-the-team-pittsburgh-pirates-college-gameday.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">started a \u201csell the team\u201d chant<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But instead of actually encouraging competition and parity, Bowden had a much simpler <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TalkingFriars\/status\/2000789410863046785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">message<\/a> for Pirates fans on\u00a0Foul Territory \u2013 give up and become a Dodgers fan.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\u201cYou can retire as a Pirate fan or trade yourself to the Dodgers\u2026you don\u2019t have to root for the team that\u2019s your home city\u201d\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBowdenGM?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">@JimBowdenGM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yeah who cares about your family raising you as a fan of your city\u2019s team and the bond that creates? Who cares about the feeling of winning\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/rHvn2BKaNu\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/rHvn2BKaNu<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Talking Friars (@TalkingFriars) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TalkingFriars\/status\/2000789410863046785?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">December 16, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe bottom 15 markets have not won a World Series in a decade,\u201d Bowden said. \u201cYea, I get it. But I tell people as fans, you don\u2019t have to be a Pirate fan. You can retire as a Pirate fan or trade yourself to the Dodgers. If you want to see your team win, right now the Dodgers have the best chance to win a World Series again this year. So if you want to win, as a fan you can go to any team you want. You don\u2019t have to root for the team that\u2019s your home city. And you can see the Dodgers come play in your home city. They\u2019ll come into Pittsburgh and beat you. If it bothers you that much, just become a Dodgers fan, that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s particularly hopeless about this message is that Jim Bowden himself was a small-market general manager with the Cincinnati Reds in the 1990s. And they haven\u2019t won a playoff series since 1995 when Bowden was part of the organization. While the Pirates beat the Reds in a 2013 Wild Card Game, they haven\u2019t won a full playoff series since winning it all back in 1979.<\/p>\n<p>But Bowden\u2019s words probably aren\u2019t going to go down well in Pittsburgh or any other small-market MLB team, who would much rather actually see their team compete than \u201ctrade themselves to the Dodgers.\u201d If everyone followed Bowden\u2019s advice, there wouldn\u2019t even be any fans left in those markets. We\u2019d just all be Dodgers or Yankees or Red Sox fans and then you might as well contract half the league.<\/p>\n<p>\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Pirates have become the punching bag for small market teams in Major League Baseball who aren\u2019t&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,4747,3804,57,4,10,776,64,4297],"class_list":{"0":"post-480885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-foul-territory","10":"tag-jim-bowden","11":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-pirates","14":"tag-pittsburgh","15":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","16":"tag-pittsburghpirates"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115733213681699324","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}