My Fandom On A Timeline

I am a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. I didn’t just become one, I was born one. They’re the team my family followed from the time they landed in western Pennsylvania from Italy, which was about the time they picked-up the Pirates nickname for allegedly stealing players.

Because this team will soon clinch a North American pro sports record 18^th consecutive losing season (just 10 defeats to go for 82 as I write this) I thought I’d give perspective to what’s happened around here, and beyond, relative to that gap in time in which I, and my Pirate-faithful brethren, are supposed to be categorized as “long-suffering”, so let’s see just how long it’s been since life playing winning baseball for this club was extinguished when Sid Bream’s foot barely crossed home plate before the tag from Mike LaValliere on that fateful night in Atlanta in October of 1992.

-Every other current MLB team has made post-season play at least once with the exception of the Royals and Expos/Nationals. Consider that the Marlins and Rockies had yet to play a game while the Rays and Diamondbacks had yet to be conceived.  Careers have begun and ended. Chipper Jones played for a G-Braves team that won 107 games that season.

-Clemson and USC are on their fourth head football coaches since then, USC is on its fourth men’s basketball coach and Clemson on its fifth.

-True freshman football players this season at Clemson and USC, and everywhere else for that matter, were just a few months old.  All of the players you’ll hear about or read about on recruiting websites this year had yet to be born.

-Just two men remain as head coaches of area high school football programs since then. Actually, the way such jobs have turned over the past five years that may actually be a high number.

-Byrnes has won six state football titles since then, Gaffney five, Spartanburg four, Greenwood, Daniel, and Union Co. three each, Dorman and Greer two apiece.

-The Panthers were nothing more than an idea, albeit one that was growing in momentum in October, 1992 and just one year from reaching fruition.  Since then, Baltimore got a team back, Cleveland got a team back, Houston got a team back as its team went to that once NFL-starved outpost that is Nashville, TN.  Wide-spot-in-the-road Los Angeles lost both of its teams, not to yet get one back, while Jacksonville provided jobs for those who manufacture the giant tarps that cover sections of stadium seats, which is what the Jaguars’ brass use each Sunday to compress their seating capacity by about 20,000 so that they have a shot to get their games on TVs within their own market.  Back in 1992, someone probably could have told the good folks at the NFL that, maybe, the north Florida city wasn’t necessarily rabid NFL territory-----stand by, L.A.

-Jimmy Johnson was appearing regularly on CBS as head coach of the Cowboys that fall, his hair thick and never out of place.  He’ll appear on CBS this fall, for a while at least, as a contestant on Survivor, his hair unchanged from his previous appearances on the network.

-Bobby Cox does remain in place as the Braves manager as he was on that night, but even his run will come to an end this year.  Gee, maybe getting him into retirement will be a part of breaking the curse.

Here’s hoping, for my sake at least, that 18 years from now I’m not conjuring up a similar list in “Year 36”.