...for Readers to Digest: Raise the Jolly Roger!

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It is a tale of one of the most storied franchises in baseball history that has come back to life over the past two years; they are the buccaneers with bats, big ones that swing for the fences to conquer their foes and like the swashbucklers of old, they are back on the waters in Pittsburgh, camped near the confluences of the flows known as Three Rivers, the Allegheny, the Monongahela and the Ohio and the natives there are once again excited and restless! Not from fear as visiting teams from other towns may be, of what this one is capable of, but of anticipation that these guys have once again restored order and saved the city from another year of being knocked around and vilified as losers; something that had been happening there for several years. These Pirates came out of hiding and a two decades-long exile to once again be reckoned with when they earned a spot last year in the 2013 Major League Baseball playoffs and then came back again in the summer of 2014 to prove that was no fluke, that finally the Bucs are back!

Raise the Jolly Roger!

It is the battle cry of sons, grandsons and great-grandsons of Pirate fans around the world, echoed by their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who know the story of Honus Wagner, "The flying Dutchman", Pittsburgh's Hall of Fame shortstop from 1900-1917 whose likeness on a baseball card is the Holy Grail for collectors, now worth nearly three million dollars for its rarity. Only 60 to 200 of those cards were printed while even fewer were ever distributed and the whereabouts of the most valuable one still in existence is now believed to be in the possession of Ken Kendrick, owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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Production of that card ceased when Wagner insisted that The American Tobacco Company stop using his likeness on a product he didn't approve of. He didn't want young fans to have to buy cigarettes to get his baseball card. I have heard tales of some people tearing down walls and ripping up floorboards of old homes hoping to find one and indeed one man in Ohio did come across one in recent years, along with a dozen or so other cards from the early 1900s while going through his grandfather's attic; he sold the collection at auction for a little more than a half-million dollars!

In the decades to follow the Pirate legacy continued to build with names like Bill Mazeroski whose ninth inning home run against the New York Yankees in the 1960 World Series remains one of the greatest baseball stories ever told and seen in videos. His jersey sold last year for more than $633,000.00.

The greatest Pirate of them all, Roberto Clemente who was killed on New Year's Eve 1972 when a plane he was on crashed. It was delivering relief supplies to Nicaragua following a devastating earthquake there.

It remains one of the saddest stories ever to surround the drama we call baseball. The crash happened just a year after his Pirate team had won their second World Series title against the Baltimore Orioles and after making it back into the playoffs a few months earlier.

There is a bridge named after him next to the stadium and one of baseball's most coveted awards bares his name; The Roberto Clemente Award is presented each year to the player who best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship and community.

And then of course there is that team-mate of his that has been my favorite ball player since I began following baseball, Willie Stargell who played on the 1971 and 1979 World Series championship squads; the man everyone called "Pops" in his later career; a bronze statue of his likeness stands guard in front of the stadium known as PNC Park as a reminder of those glory years when Pittsburgh was the home of perennial contenders for baseball's glory year-after-year.

PNC is named among the most beautiful sports facilities in America every year by publications that know about such things. Once again this year there is a home-team worthy of playing in such a palace.

Someday I hope to visit it as I did the stadium in Pittsburgh that preceded it (Three Rivers Stadium)...

and the one the Buccos played in before that, old Forbes Field.

Yes, I have been following these swashbucklers of a proud legacy for a very long time, for more than fifty of my own 62 years and the last time I saw a team like the current one was back in 1991-92, the last time the Pirates made it into post-season play in back-to-back years. Oh yes, they are back! All of those autumns us die-hard Pirate fans suffered through and whispered "maybe next year" are behind us for now and hopefully will be for a very long time to come. They may not go all the way to the World Series this year but I am more than hopeful, I expect it! As of this writing the Pirates are the hottest team in baseball, winning 15 of their last 18 games and the echoes of Raise the Jolly Roger will be heard again and again by Greg Brown, the Pirates stadium announcer who coined that battle cry until this race to the championship is settled.

Somewhere another voice of the Pirates is smiling down at this current crop of players and fans and saying "we had 'em all the way!"

The old Gunner kept me awake many nights through my youth as I dialed around the AM radio looking for the game and wanting to hear Bob Prince narrate and brag about what was happening on the field. For 28 years he sat in the booth looking down on some of the greatest names ever to play the game and for 28 years I wished I could sit where he was just once. Wherever he is now I am sure he would say it the loudest, he might even shake Greg Brown's hand and thank him for coming up with what is fast becoming a new lexicon to best feel the emotion being felt again in Pittsburgh and anywhere else this heritage is known and adored.