Nutting should hit the road

... and Pirates' fans should boycott Seven Springs

Robert Nutting has demonstrated one point during his time with the Pittsburgh Pirates: He is more concerned with his bottom line than he is with whether or not he wins baseball games. As a businessman, he has a right to make money. However, we as consumers can decide whether we want to buy his product. 

Last year, he saw the fans thumb their collective noses at him. Some numbers that I sawindicated that the tv numbers were down 23 percent last year. The fans also stopped attending the games last year, dropping below two million for the first time in years.

Suffice it to say that things will be much worse this year. The trades of former National League MVP Andrew Mc Cutcheon and pitcher Garrett Cole demonstrated to fans that Nutting is focused only on unloading players with big contracts. Forget about winning. Just bring in cheap players. 

That means that the team is going to be relegated to the cellar for the foreseeable future. In addition, that shows the fans that he does not care.
Means boycotting Nutting' businesses, like Seven Springs Resort. And, this is vital, boycotting 
And the fans will likely reciprocate. They will refuse to attend games at PNC Park this year and they will refuse to watch games on TV this year. They have also started an online petition to force Major League Baseball to sell the team. That, while commendable, will not work.

The Pirates desperately need a new owner. They need someone with deep pockets, a billionaire like Mark Cuban. Nutting does not have deep pockets.

To force him to leave town, the fans need to exert their collective muscle. This

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering the toughest loss I ever experienced in approximately a quarter-century of coaching football. George Pasierb was a great coaching adversary.

Image
R.I.P. George Pasierb, 1946-2020 Shade-Central City High School football coach Photo: Tribune-Democrat No high school football fan could ask for anything better than this. On a beautiful sunny, warm afternoon on Saturday, October 30, 1982, in Nanty Glory, Pa., the battle featured a clash of two undefeated titans of the Appalachian Conference.  One was the preseason unanimous favorite to win the title, the other a veritable surprise that season, one that had built an 8-0 record entering that game.  This battle lived up to the pre-game hype, ending in a one-point decision that was not certain until the final play of the game.  I thought of this because the coach of the powerful Shade-Central City High School Panthers, George Pasierb, passed away earlier this week. He coached the Panthers for 20 years, but his best team was arguably that 1982 team that battled the Blacklick Valley Vikings on that Saturday afternoon before more than 3,000 ebullient fans.  And, the one-po...
Read more

Why did Tennessee-Chattanooga hire trainer Tim Bream despite his role in the alcohol-induced death of Tim Piazza at a Penn State frat?

Image
… was a live-in advisor at the fraternity On paper, Tim Bream has an impressive resume. Actually, very impressive — up to a point. That seems to be when Bream’s life appears to careen out of control. Bream, who resigned as Penn State trainer in Feb.,  was a graduate of Penn State with a bachelor’s degree in physical education, specializing in athletic training. He then attended West Virginia as a grad assistant trainer, where he received a master’s degree in Physical Education with an emphasis on Sports Science. All of this information is from his bio on the Penn State athletic site. He then worked his way up the ladder impressively, working at Syracuse, Vanderbilt, and finally at the University of Richmond, where he was the Director of Sports Medicine and Head Athletic Trainer. Then he received his big break, being name as Assistant Athletic Trainer for the Chicago Bears in 1993, and four years later, Head Athletic Trainer. He was with the Bears for 19 years when inexplicably,...
Read more

Why did Mike Tomlin start hiring black coaches after 15 years?

Image
Brian Flores … hiring Flores probably rankled Goodell To place this into context, understand that the only reason that the Steelers hired Mike Tomlin 15 years ago is because he was black.  Why? He had never even been a coordinator anywhere, never in the NFL. The only reason that he was interviewed was because of the “Rooney Rule.” That rule is one named after the late Dan Rooney who led the effort to force every NFL team to interview at least one black coach when it had head coaching openings.  The Steelers had focused their coaching search after Bill Cowher left on Ron Rivera, then a defensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears. Their interview with Tomlin was a peremptory one, something to satisfy the smell test.  After all, why interview a guy who was just a defensive coach? Coordinators are the people who are hired for the big gig.  Tomlin, though, is a great talker, and he wooed Dan Rooney so much that he was hired for the position.  Which begs the q...
Read more