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They didn’t hold a dance-off at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center on Saturday.
If they did, the unlikely winners would have been the Pittsburgh Pirates trio of team president Travis Williams, general manager Ben Cherington and manager Derek Shelton.
None of those three men broke out real dance moves, denying them an opportunity to become viral TikTok sensations before the app was shut down in the United States later Saturday. However, they gave an award-winning performance of verbally tap dancing around questions from disgruntled fans during an open forum on the first day of PiratesFest.
The fans had plenty of questions for the three men. And Williams, Cherington and Shelton had answers.
However, they gave answers that said nothing. None of the three vowed that the Pirates would try to contend this season or even field a competitive team.
The fans’ frustrations were palpable.
A few broke into chants of “sell the team” in the opening moments of the question-and-answer session, playing on the five billboards erected in Pittsburgh urging Bob Nutting to sell a franchise that has had 28 losing seasons in the last 32 years.
Williams made it clear that Nutting is not going to sell. That was the only straight answer he gave and it came after a hollow and long-winded reply about understanding the fans’ frustrations.
“I’ve been in sports a long time, different sports, different organizations,” Williams said. “One thing I’ve learned long ago is that passion for your team turns into frustration whenever you’re not winning. It’s just a reality. It happens whenever it’s in Pittsburgh. It happens in other cities. We see that all the time. We know that there is frustration, frustration because we’re not winning with expectations of winning. But at the end of the day, that’s not due to a lack of commitment to want to win.”
Surprisingly, Williams didn’t get laughed out of the building because of that response.
The Pirates “commitment to want to win” this offseason has been overpaying the Cleveland Guardians to acquire first baseman Spencer Horwitz from the Toronto Blue Jays in a three-way trade, bringing back designated hitter/franchise Andrew McCutchen in free agency and claiming a bunch of guys off waivers who are known only to those who play in deep fantasy leagues.
The gutsiest question of the day came from a fan already lamenting the idea of reigning National League Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes eventually being traded. The fan urged Cherington and the Pirates to sign Skenes to a long-term contract extension before shipping him out of town in the future for the “usual hot pile of garbage.”
Cherington gave a long answer, but it wasn’t revealing enough for me to make you sift through his answer.
I have about as much chance of walking on the Moon as the Pirates do of paying Skenes what he is worth. Fans are already feeling angst about losing a player who has yet to even surface in trade rumors, which shows frustration and hopelessness.
The 26,000 people expected to come through the gates before Pirates Fest closes on Sunday afternoon shows how much the fans care and dispels the myth that Pittsburgh isn’t a baseball town. Sadly, ownership doesn’t seem to care nearly as much—about the fans or baseball.
