Pittsburgh Pirates

The Pittsburgh Pirates are a Major League Baseball club based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They play in the Central Division of the National League, and are five-time World Series Champions. The Pirates are also referred to as the Bucs (derived from buccaneer). more...

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Franchise history

Name

The Pirates began as a charter member of the American Association (19th century) in 1882. Their various home fields in the 19th century were in a then-separate city called Allegheny City, across the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. The team was listed as "Allegheny" in the standings, and was sometimes called the "Alleghenys" (not the "Alleghenies") in the same generic way that teams from Boston, New York, and Chicago were sometimes called the "Bostons", the "New Yorks", and the "Chicagos", in the sportswriting style of that era.

The Allegheny club transferred to the National League in 1887. By about 1890 the team had redesignated itself as "Pittsburgh", although Allegheny remained a separate city until it was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907.

When the one-year player rebellion known as the Players' League dissolved after the 1890 season, most of the league's player contracts were assigned to National League and American Association clubs, mostly to their previous clubs provided they had been "reserved" by their former teams' owners. Highly regarded second baseman Lou Bierbauer, who had previously played with the Philadelphia Athletics of the American Association, was awarded to the Pittsburgh team on the grounds that the Athletics had not reserved him. This led to loud complaints by the Athletics that the Pittsburgh club were "pirates". This incident (which is discussed at some length in The Beer and Whisky League, by David Nemec, 1994) quickly accelerated into a schism between the leagues that contributed to the demise of the A.A. The colorful epithet stuck with the Pittsburghers, and eventually became the club's official nickname. It was first acknowledged on the team's uniforms in 1912, but even by the 1903 World Series, "Pirates" was in common usage.

Pre-1900

Professional Baseball started in Pittsburgh in 1876. The teams of the era were "independents", barnstorming throughout the region and not affiliated with any organized league, though they did have salaries and were run as a business organization. In 1882 the baseball team in the city joined the American Association as a founding member. After five mediocre seasons in the A.A., Pittsburgh became the first A.A. team to switch to the older National League in 1887.

In those early days, the club benefitted three times from mergers with defunct clubs. The A.A. club picked up a number of players from a defunct Columbus, Ohio, team in 1885. In 1890, they merged with the Players' League franchise in the city after that league folded. That same season the team experienced their worst season record in franchise history going 23-113 . In 1900, the Pirates picked up several players from the defunct Louisville Colonels club, which shared an owner with Pittsburgh, when the N.L. contracted from 12 to 8 teams after the 1899 season. Despite their nickname, the Pirates at least waited until Louisville had folded, unlike what happened in 1899 to the Cleveland Spiders and, to a lesser extent, the Baltimore Orioles, who were also part of two-team ownerships.

Read more at Wikipedia.org