the pittsburgh pirates were not always black and yellow

Pittsburgh Baseball Club, circa 1919

And neither were the Penguins. From their inception in 1882 until the 1947 season, the Pittsburgh Baseball Club wore red, white and blue or blue and yellow. While black and yellow has become synonymous with the City of Pittsburgh, as recently as 1979, only two of the cities’ three teams wore the colors. In January of 1980, three months after the Pirates won their fifth World Series and during the Super Bowl in which the Steelers would prove victorious over the Rams, as a move of city solidarity, the Penguins changed their colors from blue and white to black and yellow.

The colors, for the city, have a history beyond the Steelers, the Pirates and finally the Penguins. Pittsburgh is named after William Pitt and the city colors of black and yellow (with blue as a secondary color) were part of the Pitt family coat of arms. When the city adopted colors for its city flag, it borrowed from the Pitt family coat of arms to establish an historical precedent for the use of such colors. It’s incredible that centuries later, the black and yellow not only fly over the city’s municipal building, but form an informidable city identity as well as a sports identity that spurred on Wiz Khalifa’s rap single “Black ‘n’ Yellow.

Pittsburgh is the only city that boasts the same colors for each of its sports teams and whether it’s the Steelers, Pirates or Penguins, the teams represent the city’s rich heritage as a strategical point during the American Revolution as well as its industrial strength and penchant for winning championships.

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october, 1992.

When Terry Pendelton doubled down the right field line my heart sunk. I knew what was coming. Behind 51,000 Tomahawk chops the Braves would rally and mercilessly end the Pirates’ 1992 season. Drabek, in all his moustached glory was running out of gas. One hundred and twenty-nine gut wrenching pitches weren’t good enough on this night. Not even the immortal Barry Bonds could throw out the concrete-footed Sid Bream at home. Later that off-season, Bonds would leave for Forty-three million San Francisco dollars and Pittsburgh became the equivalent of baseball’s Siberia — the place where careers went to die or where middle-30s vets could try to earn one final contract from a contender in New York or Boston.

PBC victorious over SF Giants, 3-1.

It’s a hazy, hot and humid day in early July and for the second time in as many years, the Pittsburgh Baseball Club has remained competitive deeper into the season than any of the previous 19 editions. Every Saturday home game is sold out for the rest of the season. Andrew McCutchen is in the midst of a 49-for-100 tear. And JMac has established himself as a top flight starter. Pittsburgh, for the first time in nearly two decades, has baseball fever.

Since my freshman year of college, when Brian Giles was terrorizing NL pitchers, I’ve read nearly every game story and box score of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club. All too often, these game stories were full of disappointment. But now, thirteen years later, the victories are piling up and Cutch and Pedro are launching homers at a ridiculous pace. In years past, getting tickets was as simple as showing up 15 minutes before game time and pointing to the ticket broker which section you wanted to sit it. Now, $24 seats are going for nearly triple. Baseball life in Pittsburgh has surely changed.

Clemente Bridge

The walk from Downtown to the North Shore is always beautiful, even on a typical cloudy Pittsburgh summer day. The magnificent gold bridges span the Allegheny, while sailboats dot the northern river. PNC’s limestone facade and steel frame jut out from the North Shore landscape and that oh-so-typical green Pittsburgh ivy covers select portions of the limestone once inside the gorgeous stadium.

The stadium is awash in Black ‘n’ Yellow. Cutch jerseys abound. To me, it is still unfathomable that baseball actually means something in Pittsburgh. It has been so long. Is this even real? It hardly seems it, but for now, I’ll soak in every last second of it.