Take Heed, Pirates; I'm Watching You

Disgruntled? Yeah!: This may or may not seem lame to some of you, but I think its pretty cool. You'll have to stick with me while I talk about some dorky internet stuff I do.

That being said, there is a website that I have been following as a "favorite". Its called UniWatch, and its an "analysis" blog that talks about uniforms in sports. I'm a semi regular "commenter" to the site, usually something goofy about the Erie teams (Otters, Seawolves, and Bayhawks) but mostly just making jokes about the Yankees or something. Sometimes discussions get about as heated as internet discussions could be (and I say that because most of us internet dorks couldn't fight ourselves out of a wet paper bag).

On Tuesday, they featured a story about a guy who made a baseball helmet modeled after the pillbox style Pirates hats of the late 70's. He created it as a kitschy baseball hat for fun, but then realized it'd be a cool idea for the base coaches to wear (long story, if you care why they wear helmets while in the field, you can email me and I'll explain it).

I for one, thought it was a great idea, considering the Minnesota Twins had done something sort of the same this year, having their basecoaches wear helmets modeled after their 1970's hats.

Near the bottom of the entry, Paul Lukas, who runs the site mostly by himself, commented that he knew a few folks in the Pirates PR team who might be interested by this invention. I agreed completely, and went down into the comments to make my supportive voice heard. As I scrolled down through the comment board, I noticed that NOBODY said anything about it; rather they were making comments about the design of hockey jerseys in the 1980's. Made me angry; not at the site, but at the fact that a Pirates themed idea garnered no criticism or positive reinforcement.

I decided to write a comment that made my voice heard toward those "Pirates PR guys" that Paul knew. There had been 148 comments before mine, and that just upset me dearly. Here's what I wrote:

Dear apparent Pirates office workers who follow Uniwatch,

Being a huge hockey fan..., I hate to gloss over the awesome discussions about hockey jerseys.

But you know, if there’s someone watching this site that works for the Pirates… then I have something to say. Do you realize that this website has taken the time to HIGHLIGHT a great Pirates themed idea and nobody on this message board so far has commented about it? What does that tell you about the respect out there for this team?

Take this guy’s great idea for the basecoach helmets and run with it. Use the money from the dumb freaking bobbleheads of players that you’ll probably sell off in August and make this helmet a reality for the basecoaches.

I don’t think I can possibly take any more mediocrity from this organization.

1. Get rid of the red jerseys, I’m talking press conference, formal apology from Frank and Neal.

2. Get rid of the pinstripes. You’re not the Yankees, stop trying to fool us.

3. Scale yourself down. Go to a simple jersey set; road greys and home whites. Nobody buys your jerseys outside of Pittsburgh (and even then its a stretch) anymore so stop trying to push merchandise by creating another alternate.

4. Take all the money you saved from recycling those red jerseys into Primanti napkins, getting rid of the IDEA that anyone gives a crap about bobbleheads of Nyjer Morgan, only doing fireworks on the fourth of July like IT SHOULD BE…

AND BUY SOME BETTER PLAYERS!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely,
Tony in Erie
Disgruntled Pirates fan since 1980

I meant every word. Sounds silly, but I do. I'm tired of all of this crap about the Pirates not being able to afford good talent but continue to do basically nothing and let this organization be a laughingstock. We had our chances last summer when Jason Bay, Xavier Nady and Nate McLouth were ripping the cover off the ball and we were having our chances at finally winning more games than we lost for the first time in 16 years...and they traded Bay and Nady for a couple guys who flopped after a few months, helping the Bucs to lose 95 out of 162 games.

Immediately had a response from another reader, identified as ScottyJ In WV:

Well said, Tony!! Here here!!!

Also, gotta say that [the helmet creator] is the kind of fan a team should be proud to have. The pillbox coaches helmet is one idea the Bucs should run with.

Thought it was pretty nice to have someone support a comment that I actually thought would be deleted by the site administrator! But there it stayed, well after I went to bed last night. I also received a personal email from another reader, Doug Keklak, that reads as follows:

I was away from Uni Watch after 3 yesterday and didn't fire it up until much later.

Read your post regarding the Pirates.....GOD DAMN are you dead on! I was thinking the same stuff..how Ricko's scanned print ad of old hockey jerseys took over and no one really gave a damn about the main entry.

This will be the first summer since I moved to Allegheny County in '98 that I plan on going to no games whatsoever.

F--k them.

Kek

have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, always enjoy your comments

Nice touch, Doug. :)

Shockingly enough, I saw the coup de gras; I woke up today and found the following comment from the Pirates employee on the site:

I know of at least one other Pirates front office member, besides the aforementioned Dan Hart, who is a regular reader/contributor. However, she is extremely busy right now and the rest of the office is closed.

I’m not exactly sure how much I can say, but look for new jerseys to be unveiled at some point during the winter caravan/Piratefest. From what I hear, Tony in Erie is pretty close.

The bobbleheads have been greatly trimmed down, along with all the other garbage giveaways (collectible plates, etc.). Fireworks are not going anywhere. I have never seen a town go so stupidly bat-poo crazy for fireworks, no matter the date, time, or spectacle, as they do in Pittsburgh. Other teams actually have more fireworks nights than the Pirates. The Tigers had them after every Friday and Saturday night game last year.

I’m going to assume, that by the “buy better players” comment, he really meant “draft and develop better players” since that’s the only realistic option.

I hope this person, by the way they wrote, were part of the Pirates front office team. Talk about hitting your mark! I'm pretty excited that at least SOMEONE who is paid by that team saw my letter and maybe, JUST maybe, is circulating it around down there. Yay for me!

Next they'll be calling me for a job!

Yeah right. :)