Last year Rob Neyer, then of ESPN.com, began a series of columns in which he divided each franchise\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history into eras that are tied to particular players.\u00c2\u00a0 As he explained:<\/p>\n
As far as I know, Neyer only got through four teams and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s revisited the project in a year, so hopefully he won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get cross if I steal his idea and apply it to the Pittsburgh Pirates.<\/p>\n
So when you think of a period in Pirates history, what player comes to mind?\u00c2\u00a0 Or, who is the kind<\/span> of player who typifies the organization\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s direction at that time?<\/p>\n 1901-1916:\u00c2\u00a0 The Honus Wagner Era. <\/strong> The Flying Dutchman began as an outfielder-third baseman; he never played a game at shortstop until he was 27 and had been in the league four years.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Wagner, Fred Clarke, Tommie Leach, and Deacon Phillippe arrived together from Louisville in 1900 and formed a solid core that stuck together for more than a decade, leading the Bucs to four pennants and, in 1909, a World Series title.<\/p>\n Wagner remained productive until 1916, but when your best player is 42 years old, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re probably in trouble.\u00c2\u00a0 As he aged and owner Barney Dreyfuss struggled to procure fresh talent, the Pirates slowly tumbled into the second division.<\/p>\n 1917:\u00c2\u00a0 The Al Mamaux Era.<\/strong> Mamaux had a little Kerry Wood in him with a dash of Dontrelle Willis and maybe a pinch of Mark Fidrych thrown in to taste.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 This was a colorful kid who threw hard and turned a game into an event.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He reached the big leagues at age 19 and dominated almost immediately, piling up 21 wins at age 21 in 1915, then 21 more the next year.<\/p>\n But then Mamaux imploded in 1917.\u00c2\u00a0 He sunk to 2-11, while the Pirates, who had been in a steady decline for years, hit bottom with a mark of 51-103.<\/p>\n 1918-1920:\u00c2\u00a0 The Billy Southworth Era.<\/strong> After the fiasco of 1917, Dreyfuss ordered a radical overhaul of the roster.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the newcomers was Southworth, a speedy 25-year-old outfielder.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He was never a great player and those weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t great teams.\u00c2\u00a0 But he was useful, and his presence suggested the organization had begun to open the windows, pull back the curtains, and rid itself of that old musty smell.<\/p>\n 1921-1925: The Pie Traynor Era.<\/strong> The Bucs loaded up on gifted young hitters like Traynor, Kiki Cuyler, George Grantham, and Glenn Wright in the early 1920s.\u00c2\u00a0 Add to that a handful of key veterans and you have a team that captured two pennants and one World Championship \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and one that arguably should have done even more.\u00c2\u00a0 With his childlike exuberance, daredevil base running, and defensive wizardry, Traynor became a cult hero in Pittsburgh almost instantly.<\/p>\n 1926-1929: The Kiki Cuyler Era.<\/strong> In the wake of their title the Pirates got distracted by a lot of silly infighting, and Cuyler often found himself at the center of the storms.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Manager Donie Bush thought he was a troublemaker and benched him for the entire 1927 World Series.\u00c2\u00a0 Dreyfuss traded him to the Cubs for essentially nothing, just to be rid of the guy.\u00c2\u00a0 That worked out well for Cuyler, but it marked the beginning of the end of the Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 run as a serious contender.<\/p>\n 1930-1935:\u00c2\u00a0 The Paul Waner Era.<\/strong> In contrast to the sturm und drang<\/em> of the previous decade, the early 1930s were a boring time in Pittsburgh.\u00c2\u00a0 No controversies, no pennant races, no terrible teams but no particularly good ones either.\u00c2\u00a0 Soaring above the mediocrity was the old reliable Okie, Paul Waner, trusty flask never far from reach, banging out hit after hit after hit with the consistency of a metronome.<\/p>\n 1936-1939: The Cy Blanton Era.<\/strong> Reporters portrayed the late 1930s Pirates as a group of underachievers, a club good enough to win a pennant if they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so preoccupied with carousing and philandering.\u00c2\u00a0 They came within a hair of a pennant in 1938, blowing a seven game lead over the season\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final month, and then dissolving into nothingness in 1939.<\/p>\n Blanton burst on the scene in 1935, winning the National League ERA title as a rookie.\u00c2\u00a0 People around the game said he had electric stuff, but he never put it all together in the same way again.\u00c2\u00a0 After an elbow injury 1939 his days as an effective pitcher were over.\u00c2\u00a0 Blanton quietly drifted out of baseball, and died in a mental institution in 1945.<\/p>\n 1940-1945: The Frankie Gustine Era.<\/strong> Pittsburgh ushered in some new blood late in the \u00e2\u20ac\u212239 season, and swept into 1940 with a promising young lineup.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The 20-year-old Gustine took over at second base and hit .281 with an OPS of .702 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a nice debut.\u00c2\u00a0 That was about as good as it got, though.\u00c2\u00a0 For years, Gustine was a solid player on a team of solid players, but without a real star the Pirates were always stranded on the periphery of the pennant race.\u00c2\u00a0 Team president Bill Benswanger asked in frustration, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we do better than wind up fourth all the time?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n 1946-1951: The Ralph Kiner Era. <\/strong>With new ownership in place, the organization became directionless and these clubs were mostly awful.\u00c2\u00a0 Nonetheless, fans came out and stayed late \u00e2\u20ac\u201c no one dared leave Forbes Field early lest they miss Kiner sending one deep.\u00c2\u00a0 He hit 257 home runs over these six seasons before the Bucs went with another youth movement and Kiner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back gave out.<\/p>\n 1952-1960:\u00c2\u00a0 The Dick Groat Era.<\/strong> Groat stepped off the Duke University campus and into the starting shortstop job on one of the worst teams in history.\u00c2\u00a0 Eight years later he was the National League MVP and was leading the Pirates to their first title in 35 years.\u00c2\u00a0 Groat, an intensely proud man, suffered the jokes about those dismal young Pirate teams of the 1950s and has carried that sting with him ever since.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very easy to criticize a team that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s finishing dead last,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said sharply in a 2007 interview.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[But] when you win a championship, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s over. \u00c2\u00a0You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t criticize then.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n 1961-1969:\u00c2\u00a0 The Roberto Clemente Era.<\/strong> The Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 underappreciated star during a mostly barren stretch, Clemente was the kind of free-swinging, bad-ball hitter that general manager Joe L. Brown grew fond of.\u00c2\u00a0 He also was the first prominent minority player for a franchise that became one of baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most racially and ethnically diverse.\u00c2\u00a0 Clendenon, Stargell, Veale, Sanguillen, and Ellis followed and all were pioneers in their own ways, but Clemente was at the vanguard.<\/p>\n 1970-1976:\u00c2\u00a0 The Willie Stargell Era.<\/strong> For the first seven years of his career, people thought of Willie Stargell in the same way many people think of Ryan Howard today \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a very good player but one with some obvious shortcomings.\u00c2\u00a0 An all-time great?\u00c2\u00a0 Not even close.<\/p>\n Stargell began to alter that perception in 1970 when the Pirates moved into Three Rivers Stadium and departed Forbes Field, which neutered so many long drives and turned them into harmless outs.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 No one in baseball hit more home runs in the 1970s than Willie Stargell.<\/p>\n 1977-1979: The Dave Parker Era.<\/strong> The Cobra was arguably the game\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best all-around player during these three seasons, a near-certain Hall of Famer if only he had stayed in shape and kept his head right. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0He was a beloved figure in the clubhouse \u00e2\u20ac\u201c bold and loud and colorful and boastful.\u00c2\u00a0 His personality and style defined the hard-hitting, hard-living Pirates of the late 1970s.<\/p>\n 1980-1984:\u00c2\u00a0 The Jason Thompson Era.<\/strong> Thompson became the Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 long-term replacement for Stargell at first base.\u00c2\u00a0 He was no Stargell, of course, and he suffered by the comparison.\u00c2\u00a0 He just seemed like a big, slow moose who struck out all the time.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, he was<\/em> a big, slow moose who struck out all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 But he also had some power and a genius for drawing walks, which no one cared about in the early 1980s.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Thompson was a quiet person with quiet skills who kept the Pirates quietly respectable in the immediate post-Fam-a-Lee years.<\/p>\n 1985:\u00c2\u00a0 The George Hendrick Era.<\/strong> This might have been the darkest year in the history of the franchise.\u00c2\u00a0 The Bucs lost 104 games and were threatening to leave town.\u00c2\u00a0 Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh drug trials exposed the rampant substance abuse that was occurring right under manager Chuck Tanner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nose.<\/p>\n The lasting image from that season was an old, lethargic Hendrick ambling leisurely toward first base after yet another weak ground ball to the infield.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 A man with not a care in the world.<\/p>\n 1986-1992: The Barry Bonds Era.<\/strong> Bonds\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rise and maturation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and his failures \u00e2\u20ac\u201c mirrored those of his club.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 They were a mess when he arrived and became a mess again when he left.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Bonds grew highly unpopular in Pittsburgh following his exodus, and those division-winning teams from 1990-1992 ultimately left fans heartbroken.\u00c2\u00a0 But it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all bad.<\/p>\n 1993-1996:\u00c2\u00a0 The Midre Cummings Era.<\/strong> As the key members the early 1990s Pirates slowly went their separate ways, like the refugees from a war-torn land, the financially-strapped front office had no clue how to fill the gaps.\u00c2\u00a0 Cummings was a top prospect who arrived in Pittsburgh with great fanfare but his career, like everything about those years, proved eminently forgettable.<\/p>\n 1997-2001: The Jason Kendall Era.<\/strong> In the late \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc90s, Pittsburgh began to assemble a respectable collection of talent.\u00c2\u00a0 At the center of it was Kendall, who emerged as the face of franchise and, for a brief time, one of the best catchers in baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, injuries and front office missteps left the team in shambles again.\u00c2\u00a0 A 2001 thumb injury flattened the trajectory of Kendall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s career and transformed him into a below-average hitter.<\/p>\n 2002-2007:\u00c2\u00a0 The Jeromy Burnitz Era.<\/strong> What frustrated fans during this time wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just the losing, it was also the complete lack of accountability on or off the field.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Ownership stood by filing its nails while bumbling general manager Dave Littlefield eviscerated the organization.<\/p>\n The past-his-prime Burnitz personified all that was wrong.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Littlefield signed the 37-year-old outfielder to a $6 million contract in 2006.\u00c2\u00a0 Burnitz re-paid that largess with an empty .230 average in 111 games.<\/p>\n 2008-2010:\u00c2\u00a0 The Andy LaRoche Era.<\/strong> LaRoche was a product of the atrocious talent evaluation that plagued the early days of general manager Neal Huntington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tenure.\u00c2\u00a0 LaRoche was the centerpiece of the Jason Bay trade, the third baseman of the future, they said.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In three seasons, he batted .226.<\/p>\n 2011: The Andrew McCutchen Era.<\/strong> After two decades of empty promises, is the future finally here?\u00c2\u00a0 The Pirates are contending at the All-Star break for the first time in 14 years and the 24-year-old McCutchen already is one of the most exciting and productive players in baseball.<\/p>\n James Forr\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book, <\/em>Pie Traynor: A Baseball Biography (co-authored with David Proctor) was a finalist for the 2010 Casey Award.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He also was the 2005 winner of the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award and recently profiled Willie Stargell for the SABR Bio Project.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year Rob Neyer, then of ESPN.com, began a series of columns in which he divided each franchise\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history into eras that are tied to particular players.\u00c2\u00a0 As he explained: I’m not talking about identifying each franchise’s best player over a number of years; that’s easy and doesn’t tell us much that we don’t already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}