From the Publisher
"I can tell you with all certainty that the Pirates franchise, for more than a century, has offered Pittsburghers exciting baseball by players who do everything they can to win." --from the foreword by Steve Blass
"In an eight-team league, we should've finished ninth." --Joe Garagiola on the stream of terrible Pirates teams during the late 1940s and early 1950s
From the Inside Flap
One of the oldest teams in Major League Baseball, the Pittsburgh Pirates have a rich and storied history. The team boasts a loyal and rabid fan base that has refused to turn its back on its beloved Bucs, despite the less-than-stellar record the Pirates have accumulated over the last 15 years.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have been at both extremes of the spectrum--at times a formidable contender with a remarkable lineup and at other times commonly regarded as the worst team in professional baseball. In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Pittsburgh Pirates, John McCollister dissects the team's dense and turbulent history in minute detail, holding nothing back. The Pirates' five World Series victories provide a luminous counterbalance to the rampant hard-drug use that permeated the Pirates clubhouse in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The glory of the championship 1979 Bucs is somewhat dwarfed by the slew of atrocious 1940s and 1950s teams that failed to perform time and again.
In a region that values hard work and modesty, Pirates fans still praise Roberto Clemente as one of the classiest and most unpretentious men ever to play the game. Clemente, called the "Great One," played baseball like he lived his life--with intelligence and finesse. When Clemente died in a plane crash in 1972, the National Baseball Hall of Fame waived its usual waiting requirements and inducted him immediately.
Conversely, Branch Rickey's tenure as the Pirates' general manager is remembered as a blight on the team's history. Hired to pull the Pirates out of a slump, Rickey began trading established players for younger prospects at a rapid clip. When he traded away hometown legend Ralph Kiner, Rickey lost the support of not only the team, but Pittsburgh as a whole. He resigned as general manager two years later, having never elevated the Pirates to better than seventh in an eight-team league.
The contrasts are all here. Relive the most glorious victories and the most brutal defeats, the most famous and infamous moments in the team's history, the wealth of outstanding players and those whose abilities did not live up to their boasts.
So settle in, Pirates fans, and savor the Bucs history--good, bad, and ugly--that fills these pages.
