As the lease on PNC Park creeps toward expiration, a new black and gold billboard looms over Boulevard of the Allies at Grant Street with the rallying cry, “Abandon ship, Bob! Sell the team.”
The billboard and its three identical companions, located in the Strip, the West End, and Mount Washington, are part of a growing effort to compel Pittsburgh Pirates’ owner Bob Nutting to relinquish control of the team.
All four were “paid for by Zachary King,” a Pittsburgh native and Pirates fan who now lives in New York City.
“He’s [Nutting] just been the bane of our existence for so long. It’s been 30 years of nonsense,” King said.
The Pirates did not return inquiries seeking comment on Wednesday afternoon. WTAE reported that President Travis Williams issued a statement, reading in part: "We appreciate the passion of all of our fans and share in the disappointment with the way last season ended.”
While King’s campaign started as a joke between friends, it quickly grew into a movement that has captured the heart of hundreds of locals.
“Ticket boycotts and internet campaigns are simply not working, it’s time for embarrassment,” King said in his plea for billboard donations.
The billboard directs passersby to the website for Our Team Not His, a local campaign dedicated to ousting Nutting.
“We demand winning baseball return to Pittsburgh!” the site declares. They describe themselves as "a group of frustrated, passionate Pittsburgh Pirates fans tired of the endless losing baseball in our great City.”
In the past five weeks, King says he has raised more than $17,000 to campaign against Nutting, and is still accepting donations. They’re also urging people to attend the Dec. 12 Sports & Exhibition Authority meeting. The SEA owns PNC Park, leasing the taxpayer-financed stadium to the Pirates. The lease expires in 2030.
After years of losing seasons, fans like Gabe Mazefsky of Forest Hills decided enough is enough. He threw his support behind Our Team Not His.
Mazefsky, a lifelong Pirates fan, said he wants to see a winning, prosperous team return to Pittsburgh.
“All of my earliest memories of being alive are Pirates-related. Many of them are wonderful memories ... That’s why I’m asking you, earnestly, to sell the team. And I’m asking our public officials to push you to sell,” Mazefsky said in an open letter to Nutting last month that appeared in PublicSource. While the billboards may appear as a glorified publicity stunt, Mazefsky and his companions are dead-set on the Pirates’ success on the field and off.
“The on-field performance of the team affects the financial return to the taxpayers. A perpetually tanking team doesn’t generate the economic activity and revenue that a winner would,” he said in the letter.
For the past several months, Mazefsky has become a regular at meetings for the Sports & Exhibition Authority, the body that governs the major Pittsburgh sports venues.
On Friday, he appeared before the board, calling for an amendment to the Pirates’ next lease of PNC Park that would set attendance requirements for the venue.
Attendance for Pirates’ games has been on a notable decline since 2015, according to a report by the state’s Independent Fiscal Office, and Mazefsky said he worries the Pirates are becoming less of a financial asset to the city and more of an ongoing burden.
King said he plans to keep the billboards up through the end of the year, if he receives enough donations to sustain the campaign.
“The Pirates have always been my first love, and I just want them to be winning annually,” King said.
Colleen Hammond is a staff writer at Next Generation Newsroom, part of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University. Reach her at colleen.hammond@pointpark.edu. NGN is a regional news service that focuses on government and enterprise reporting in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Find out more information on foundation and corporate funders here.
