Coonelly: Phillies, Mets Should Play More in Pittsburgh

I don’t like being so far away from the rest of the division.

If it was up to me, we’d move to the East and that could be the six team division.

Charlie,

Living in Philly for most of the last 20 years, I always wanted to see the Phils and Pirates play more often, but a couple points you made don’t make a lot of sense to me.

The difference between the 3rd, 7th, and 11th vs the 3rd, 8th, and 13th payrolls is negligible at best.

Also, your point about “they’d have to beat out either the Mets or Phillies just to have a shot at the Wild Card.”….well, that’s true today, right?

That said, I agree with the point of the post and would love to see the schedule more balanced. Personally, I think it’s unfair that the teams in the Central have to beat out 5 other teams while the teams in the AL West only have to beat out 3 other teams. Obviously, it hasn’t come into play for the Pirates in a long time, but if I were the Brewers, Cards, or Cubs, I wouldn’t be thrilled with the current divisional alignment.

Come have a beer w/ my brother and I in Brooklyn, Charlie, and you won’t break out in hives; you’ll probably want to move here (not because of my brother and I, but because Brooklyn is so damn great).

One of the cool things about Pittsburgh is that it’s really neither midwest or east coast, but kind of a fascinating mixture of the two. Just a unique place, Pittsburgh. That said, and as much as I’d like the Bucs to be in the East so I could see them more in NY and Philly, I think we’re better off in the Central, at least until the economics of major league baseball is seriously restructured (by which I mean to say, until pigs fly). No matter how well NH and company turn things around, we’d always be facing an uphill slog against the Richie Riches (NY, Philly, Atlanta) of the world.

Make the team competitive and rivalries will develop regardless of whether the Pirates are playing the Phillies and Mets or Cards and Cubs.

To the AL West. That way, all 6 divisions would have 5 teams and, geographically, Houston is closer to the AL West (Rangers?) than any other team that could move. Competitive balance would be restored with the evening of the divisions and it would eliminate one of (if not the) longest trip the Pirates have as a member of the NL central.

I liked it before realignment and interleague play. Move Milwaukee back to the AL. I want to see more NL play. No more interleague. Four teams in the AL West makes no sense.

But here are my thoughts.

1. Putting the Bucs in the NL East would be a mistake. We have enough of an uphill battle as it is without needing to beat out the big fish in that division every year. Since we’re told that the goal is to win, let’s learn to win against the second division before we try to win against the first division.

2. As for the culture, I am much closer to Dejan than Charlie on this one. I have lived in Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, several Ohio towns including Columbus, Indiana, Minnesota & Idaho. I would suggest that Pittsburgh combines the regional passion and aggressiveness of the northeast with classic midwest values.

Frankly, I think that Pittsburgh is in many ways a combination of the best aspects of the two regions. And I strongly suspect that our natural rivals in Ohio are very similar.

The key difference is that when you go west of Ohio, the passion & learned devotion for regional subjects (primarily including sports) is markedly lower – the aw shucks attitude is far more prevalent – than when you look to the east. The percentage of Steelers/Bills/Browns fans that can name for you the back up left guard and who won’t go on vacation during football season is much higher than for Bears fans. (FYI, the Packers are an exception). I’m not saying its a good thing, just that the level of import that rust belt people assign to regional issues (a) blows away that of midwest people and (b) is far more similar to NE people. Thus, I lump Ohio (at least the central & NE part of the state) & western PA with northeastern cities.

Good day.

“Rust Belt” has no cache. “Rust belt” implies broken down old industrial towns. North Coast implies… aaap, several (usually failed) attempts at revitalization, blight that some pols have big grand plans for, plus everything in Uncle Nate’s #2. Our slogans, if we had them, would be something like, “We’ve not losing as many jobs and people as 20 years ago, it’s still cold in the winter, and we care about sports more than anything else.”

Pittsburgh is the best of both worlds (NE and Midwest). I wouldnt want to live anywhere else (except maybe Florida if insurance and taxes settle down).

Pittsburgh should be in the NL East like they were in the day. We had some fierce battles with the Mets in the late 80’s early 90’s. In addition, the Phillies were always our nemises.

I have often thought that since Pittsburgh is a ’tweener, that we could go in either direction. While I like playing the Cubs and Cards, I would trade it for a minute to have closer drives to watch the buccos in DC, Philly and NYC. The whole “playing in the league with bigger money” is crap. If we develop and do things right, we can compete. I mean look at the Mets over the past decade – they are always top 3 in payroll and have barely sniffed the playoffs. Take away the Phillies WS win this year and the only title to come from the NL East was the Marlins for goodness sake!

We can lose with the “second league” then we can lose with the big boys. Why not compete with the best! If you are going to be the best you have to beat the best.