Will Bob Nutting Walk the Plank?

JK is upset. Taking the glass-is-half-full approach, at least he cares. The ardent fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates wants the current ownership to sell the team, citing recent trades of the club's two best players as proof they are not committed to winning.

He started an online petition to rally others to the cause—and they have responded. (Not that Pirate fans don't have reason to be touchy.)

When Barry Bonds left town after the 1992 season, the Pirates went to seed. Ownership either couldn't or wouldn't spend to maintain the talented team they had assembled, and twenty consecutive losing seasons were the result. 

That stands as a record-setting monument to ineptness among domestic professional sports franchises.

But six years after current owner Bob Nutting purchased the team in 2007, his tenure bore fruit. The Pirates won 94 games in 2013. After a second unsuccessful trip to the post-season in 2014, the light-hitting Pirates were re-booted and morphed into a 98-win powerhouse the following year.

But they lost a one-game play-off to the Chicago Cubs, and the Pirates post-season fortunes have been buried like their namesake's treasure ever since.

For JK, the tipping point arrived last season when the team attempted to unload stellar right-fielder Andrew McCutchen at the trade deadline. He correctly viewed it as management officially giving up on this collection, presumably to begin assembling a new one.

As a Cub fan, I can empathize—deeply. The Pirates are one of the sixteen original major league baseball teams, with a history as rich and as resonant as any. It wasn't too long ago they had an exciting young team that was the envy of baseball.

They have a gorgeous (and still relatively new) ballpark set against the glittering skyline of a renewed city that has successfully recast itself as a modern metropolis trading in education, medicine and technology.

And sadly, there is the post-season history that—at least since 1979—evokes strains of Mozart's Requiem.

Take heart, JK. These aren't the dark days of the Kevin McClatchy era, where you could rightly fear MLB invoking the English Premier (soccer) League's custom of dispatching underperforming clubs to a minor league until they got their act together.

Nutting has sunk capital into the franchise. He upgraded facilities and managed to put a winning team on the diamond at PNC Park. And after two decades that saw losing and austerity become entrenched like an ingrown toe nail, that is akin to turning around an oil tanker within the Panama Canal.

Kindly let me know which of these McClatchy could list on his resume.

Yes, it's painful to see talent like McCutchen and Gerrit Cole leave town. But one has only to look at my hometown Blackhawks to see the dangers of growing old with your talent—long after the window of opportunity has closed.

Now might be a good time to quote the great Branch Rickey, who after being asked for a raise by future Hall-of-Famer Ralph Kiner replied “We can finish last without you.”

Until there is evidence the team is being operated as a tax write-off, Bob Nutting deserves the benefit of the doubt. He's turned it around once—there's every chance he'll do so again.

And if you can bear one more quote, I would remind Mr. Nutting that it was no less than Oscar Wilde who observed that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Only 62 days until opening day, Pirate fans.