Editorial: Bob Nutting was selling, but sadly it wasn't the Pirates

Pittsburgh Pirates owner Bob Nutting should take note of how the public reacts to events.

When the news came Wednesday that Nutting was selling three Pennsylvania ski resorts — Seven Springs Mountain Resort near Champion, Hidden Valley Resort near Bakersville and Laurel Mountain Ski Area in Ligo­nier Township — to Vail Resorts Inc. of Colorado for $125 million, there was interest in the story.

There was also a question — sometimes humorous and sometimes hopeful. When is he selling the Pirates?

It was the same kind of exasperated reaction some had after the rumored $900 million sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins to Fenway Sports Group was announced. Why couldn’t it be the Pirates?

The Pirates fan base might not be the most long-suffering in baseball history, but at least the Boston Red Sox got to blame Babe Ruth’s curse for sitting out the championship for 86 years. Whose ghost is haunting PNC Park?

It has been 42 long years since the Pirates breathed the rarefied air of a World Series win. The hope felt in 2013 after a 20-year losing season streak was broken has waned as familiar patterns returned. Valuable players traded away. Underinvestment in new talent. Lost games. More lost games. So many lost games.

To be a Bucs fan is to know that you aren’t hoping to see your team win a title. You’re just hoping they can tip the scales toward a winning season. You go to the park knowing the odds are good for the away team.

And when you hear about a multimillion-dollar sale, your breath catches for a minute as you hope against hope that someone willing to put in the money and commitment to make the Pirates what they were in 1979 has stepped up to the plate.

Is that what Nutting wants from the people who buy the tickets and watch the games and wear the gear? How long does he think they will hold on? A quick glance at the attendance shows that they aren’t.

PNC Park has a capacity of more than 38,000 for baseball games. The average attendance for 2021 was 10,611, but even if you dismiss that as a pandemic anomaly, looking at the years before covid-19 isn’t reassuring. Just over 18,000, they still fell well below half of the available seating — and how many of those came from opposing fans?

There is a problem when the most exciting fantasy that baseball fans are dreaming up is the potential sale of the team. If Nutting wants to stop that, he needs to make changes that will make people care about what’s happening on the diamond again.