When it comes to sports, I am a product of my environment.

My soul has fed on the Steelers’ Super Bowl wins and the Penguins’ names etched on the Stanley Cup. Even when they missed the playoffs or if it was charitably described as a “rebuilding year,” the faith is easier to keep when you have followed your team to the top.

But baseball? Not my game. Why would it be? You can be old enough to drink a beer legally in PNC Park and never have seen the Pirates do better than one measly wild card game victory.

The Pirates are not just the worst pro team in Pittsburgh. Objectively, on any list evaluating the worst teams in all pro sports, the Pirates are going to merit a mention, if not a medal.

If you are a die-hard fan who rejects that assessment, the May 27 game against the Chicago Cubs should have changed that. The ludicrous chain of missed balls and stolen bases wasn’t just mocked on sports shows. The Cubs were incoherent with laughter in the dugout. It was savaged on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

And it should have been. It was more than slapstick. It was the culmination of years of bad moves by the Pirates front office.

So why am I talking about it in an opinion piece? Because it’s unfair to the people. Not the fans. The taxpayers.

The Pirates, like the Steelers and the Penguins, do not play in a house they built on their own. PNC Park isn’t owned by the team but by the Sports & Exhibition Authority of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. It came with a $216 million price tag largely paid by public money. The team kicked in about 20%, plus leasing and operating the park.

The authority gets a portion of ticket money. That means when the team does better, the taxpayers should do better. Since PNC Park was built in 2001, that’s questionable. The team owes the people better.

Most people point to payroll as the big problem. Out of all of Major League Baseball, the Pirates have the second smallest payroll, followed only by the Cleveland Indians.

The Pirates total payroll is $56 million. Eighteen of MLB’s 30 teams have a payroll more than double that. The Los Angeles Dodgers quadruple it.

Responsibility for that is frequently laid at the feet of lead owner Bob Nutting, but that’s not strictly fair. His predecessor Kevin McClatchy — who served as chairman of the McClatchy news group — was no fan of paying people either. (Full disclosure: I worked for a McClatchy-owned paper for years and can attest to that firsthand.)

Do I know everything that goes into running a baseball team? Not by a long shot. But before the Pirates feel smug about that, my failure is their fault. I don’t care about baseball because they have trained me to not care.

I do know that everything is cyclical. Teams have ups and downs and that pendulum is meant to swing as talent and coaches come and go. Every city with a pro team invests in its stadiums, knowing they both foster pride and nurture a sports economy that spirals outward to other industries such as hotels, restaurants, bars and retailers.

But interest in the Pirates isn’t like that in the Steelers or Pens. The Steelers have famously sold out their games since 1972. For the Pens, it’s been more than 14 years. The Pirates? Well, they sold out the home opener in April, but that was with just the 25% capacity mandated by the pandemic. While other teams have struggled to look occupied while conforming with social distancing rules, empty seats have been nothing new for the Bucs.

From a purely monetary, political standpoint, the Pirates owe it to taxpayers to be a better team, something that ultimately would benefit the organization, too.

It’s long past time the Pirates start pulling their City of Champions weight.

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