Origin of the Pittsburgh Pirates Name

My favorite baseball team is the Pittsburgh Pirates. As a kid in the 1970s, there was plenty to cheer about with players like Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, Dave Parker, and sidewinding pitcher Kent Tekulve. I took it for granted that the team I loved had a cool swashbuckling name, the Pirates. As I get older, one of the questions arises: what is the affiliation with a buccaneer in a town with no coastline but only rivers? I dove into the research on it and found an exciting story that even includes my hometown of Erie, PA.


How Did the Pittsburgh Pirates Get Their Name?
Immediately, I realized that the Pirates did not start as the Pirates and technically did not even play in the City of Pittsburgh at their onset. By today's standards, they did play in Steeltown, but the area of the Burgh where their home games were was called something different. April 15, 1876, according to the MLB's official website, was the start of the ball club, known only as the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. Back then, the Burgh was two different municipalities: Pittsburgh south of the Rivers and, on what is now the North Side, the town of Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. The North Side is where Three Rivers Stadium was, and now PNC Park and Heinz Field stand today. It is also where pro football was first played when Pudge Heffelfinger was paid to play on the gridiron. Anyway, the Alleghenys also played ball on the rivers' northern side at Union Park. Since their home field was in the "metropolis" of Allegheny City, it was an easy naming choice for the team. Playing at first as an independent, they eventually joined a minor league for a year in 1877 called the International Association. It must not have worked so well because they disbanded after that season. A few years passed, and in 1882, the club reformed as the Alleghenys once again and joined the American Association of Baseball. They soon changed home venues to Recreation Park, where Pudge played, and jumped to a rival conference of teams known as the National League in 1887. Now, that association sounds familiar. Pittsburgh of the National League! The club's first game in the NL was on April 30, 1887, when they defeated the Chicago White Stockings, 6-2.



The 1882 Pittsburgh Alleghenys baseball club courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

That may have been the National League's highlight game for the first few years. The Allegheny was a dreadful product, finishing at least fifth place in the 8-team league. Now, that sounds familiar to us modern-day Pittsburgh baseball fans. It got so bad that in 1890, even the good players in the club decided to bail and go to other, more competitive squads. Many jumped to a new team, the Pittsburgh Burghers Club, and played in a start-up Player's League. The 1890 record of the Alleghenys was a dreadful 23-113, ugh! It didn't seem like it at the time, but things were about to change with the team's fortunes, and who would've thought it would get much better? First, the Players League folded after just one season, and the players who had left other leagues to join those clubs were expected to return to their previous teams in 1891.

The Alleghenys did see some returning players but also watched for other opportunities to improve. They had their eye keenly on second baseman Lou Bierbauer, who in 1889 played for the Philadelphia Athletics in the American Association before spending a year with the Brooklyn Ward's Wonders in the Players League in 1890. Bierbauer was a free agent, and being a student-athlete, almost everybody and their brother wanted his services on their team. One thing the Alleghenys had on their side was the prominent bonus realtors always claim, "Location, location, location!" Bierbauer lived in the offseason 100 miles due North in Erie, Pennsylvania. Yes, it is also the locale of your Sports Jersey and Pigskin Dispatch websites and podcasts.

So Allegheny's manager Ned Hanlon makes a beeline to Erie to start talking to Lou B. According to Sporting News founder Alfred Spink, in his 1910 book The National Game, Hanlon traveled to the Northwest corner of PA in the dead of winter. Take it from me; that is not a trip for the weary-hearted! Spinks says Hanlon had to cross a frozen harbor, which I will assume is Presque Isle Bay, and that Bierbauer may have lived on what is now Presque Isle State Park, an island at the time but has since been connected by a land bridge. The story says that Hanlon traveled to Bierbauer's shack during a bitter storm; the sought-after second baseman probably felt obliged to let the now-freezing NL manager into his how-to-warm by the fire. Hanlon was persistent with the opportunity and inked Bierbauer to his club before leaving.

The Philadelphia Athletics and the other members of the American Association were livid when they found out that they could not resign the star and accused Hanlon and the Alleghenys of utter "piracy" of their player. Probably to stick it to the A's a bit more, the Pittsburgh club adopted the moniker of the Pirates for the 1891 season and beyond. Quite a story indeed to get a nickname, and it had a lot to do with something I am pretty familiar with a winter storm in Erie, PA.