Letter to the Editor

For those of you who do not read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, allow me to share a letter to the editor from today's addition (easier than just re-writing the whole thing!):

Mark Belko's story on the economic impact that the upcoming Winter Classic will have on the city was of interest ("City to Reap Cold Cash from Classic," Dec. 19). No doubt, similar stories will be written if the Steelers play one or two home playoff games next month.

However, while reading the story, my mind went back to four days this past summer when the Philadelphia Phillies came to town for a four-game series with the Pirates. If you attended any of those games, you were no doubt impressed by the large numbers of fans who were at PNC Park wearing Phillies gear and cheering for their team. Maybe some of them were transplanted Philadelphians, but most of them were people who traveled from the Philadelphia region to Pittsburgh to see the ball games at PNC Park.
There were thousands of these people and they had to stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, buy souvenirs and probably visited other Pittsburgh attractions (Heinz History Center, the Warhol, the zoo, the science center, etc.) while they were here. The economic impact of those visitors during that four-day period had to have been significant.

If you regularly attend Pirates games, you know that this is not unusual. This past season alone, I saw fans -- lots and lots of fans -- from Milwaukee, Chicago, Atlanta and New York who came to Pittsburgh to see their teams play the Pirates.

The Pirates draw a lot of criticism, not unjustly, because of how they have fared on the playing field over the last 18 years, but no one seems to realize or comment upon what a civic and economic asset they are to the region. One-shot deals like the Winter Classic, U.S. Open and All-Star Game are great, but, while I concede that I am no economist, I am betting that the Pirates, playing 81 games a season, year after year, are worth more to the city and the region over the long haul.

BOB SPROULE
McCandless