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From: radio@spuxll.UUCP (Rick Farina)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: The view from Pittsburgh (Fire Sale)
Message-ID: <665@spuxll.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Jun-85 18:22:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: spuxll.665
Posted: Tue Jun  4 18:22:48 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 07:47:18 EDT
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Don't look for anything resembling a rebuilding program out of Pittsburgh
this year. I've heard that Joe Brown was hired with the explicit charter 
to unload some of their more costly overhead: Candalaria, Thompson, Hendrick.
The purpose is to make the Pirates franchise more attractive to any
potential buyers after this season.

The Pirate situation is not unlike that of the Mets in the late-1970's
when, after the death of long-time owner Joan Payson, a dismantling program
began, undertaken with brutal effectiveness by M. Donald Grant. 
By the end of that decade, the Mets talented, yet expensive, ball players
had been dispersed across both leagues, and the club was left with the 
lowest payroll in baseball. They performed accordingly. 
Attendence evaporated, and the club was put on the block.

Enter Doubleday to buy the franchise. He invested heavily in the farm system,
and while waiting for it to mature, spent some bucks for some stop-gap 
players (Foster, Kingman, Staub). Today the Mets have been restored 
to prominence, and their ripening farm system would seem to guarentee 
that position at least for the rest of this decade.

A good lesson for Pirates fans and the new owners of their club.