As spring training for the Pittsburgh Pirates springs into full gear, my mind wanders back to Syd Thrift, the former GM during the Jim Leyland era. For all of you youngsters with wrinkled brows and the “Bambi” look, put down your iPhones and Androids, your “googling” can cease; at least for the life of this column.
See, folks, a few people erroneously think I have come to the conclusion that the late nineties through 2012 were desert days in regards to the Pittsburgh Pirates fielding and maintaining a winning team, aaat, wrong answer.
The era of the eighties was not a stellar era either. The eighties were a wretched time for the once proud Pirates franchise. The Pirates were doing bad, not just bad but really, really bad.
In an article written by Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette titled The Eighties: A terrible time of trial and error Three Rivers Stadium,1970-2000 and originally published on September 29, 2000, Cook wrote that “Carl Barger, a prominent lawyer [from Pittsburgh lead the charge to keep] the Pirates in town.
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