The Pittsburgh Pirates have become the punching bag for small market teams in Major League Baseball who aren’t investing resources into building a winning team. And former MLB general manager Jim Bowden has a simple message for fans who are fed up.
Start rooting for the Dodgers.
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.
It’s been an issue for Pirates fans 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 College GameDay started a “sell the team” chant.
But instead of actually encouraging competition and parity, Bowden had a much simpler message for Pirates fans on Foul Territory – give up and become a Dodgers fan.
“The bottom 15 markets have not won a World Series in a decade,” Bowden said. “Yea, I get it. But I tell people as fans, you don’t 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’t have to root for the team that’s your home city. And you can see the Dodgers come play in your home city. They’ll come into Pittsburgh and beat you. If it bothers you that much, just become a Dodgers fan, that’s fine.”
What’s 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’t 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’t won a full playoff series since winning it all back in 1979.
But Bowden’s words probably aren’t going to go down well in Pittsburgh or any other small-market MLB team, who would much rather actually see their team compete than “trade themselves to the Dodgers.” If everyone followed Bowden’s advice, there wouldn’t even be any fans left in those markets. We’d just all be Dodgers or Yankees or Red Sox fans and then you might as well contract half the league.
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