How The Pirates Treat Their Paying Customers

On Saturday, July 11, my friend David Cicotello and I attended the 4:05 game between the Pirates and Brewers at PNC Park.  The Pirates won the game, which was nice, but that wasn't my biggest take away from the "ballpark experience" that day.  You can read about it in this letter that I will be sending to Pirates President Travis Williams.  I reproduce it for you below:

July 19, 2026

Mr. Travis Williams

President

Pittsburgh Pirates

115 Federal Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15212

Dear Mr. Williams,

On Saturday, July 19, I attended, along with over 29,000 other fans, the second game of the split double-header between the Pirates and Brewers.  We arrived on the north side early, around 2:30.  Realizing the logistics involved in emptying PNC Park after the first game of the double header, which concluded at about that time, we waited until about  3:00 to get into a line to enter the ball park.   We got into a line that began at the corner of Federal and General Robinson Streets, a line that would eventually lead to the left field gate where the Willie Stargell statue is located.

Eventually, the line started to move. Then it stopped moving.  Then it moved a couple of feet.  Then it stopped moving. You get the idea.  It soon became apparent that there was a strong likelihood that we would miss the beginning of the game (which, in fact, did happen).  After about thirty minutes or so, the Stargell statue came into view, and I could see that there was one gate open.  In a gate area with four portals for entry, there was ONE GATE OPEN.  We also could see that there was another line to get into that ONE OPEN GATE that was coming from the  other direction on Federal Street.  It was like trying to funnel the Mississippi River through a drinking straw.  

At some point a gentleman wearing a Pirates lanyard and ID badge, Ryan Niemeyer, your VP of tickets sales appeared, and I asked why was only one gate open?  To which he replied “we didn’t have sufficient security to open more that one gate”, and to that I replied “Why not?”  He had no answer for that.   This was a day where a huge crowd was expected because of the highly promoted (hyped?) Pirates Country Weekend, where there was a highly promoted give-away item involved, and the Pirates didn’t anticipate having sufficient security on hand to allow more than one gate to be open to ease the entrance of paying customers into the ball park?  Did the team learn nothing from last season’s Paul Skenes Bobblehead debacle?

There is a term in the military for this: “Cluster____.“ I will let you fill in the last syllable of this term.

It has become a cliche in Pittsburgh to say that “the Pirates are cheap” or “the Pirates can screw  up a one car funeral” or “do these guys have ANY idea of what they are doing”, but after being a part of that mess on July 11, what else can one think?

Let me say that I am not a casual fan.  I attend roughly 10-12 games a season.  I have come to accept that the actual part of the organization that, you know plays the games, operates with one hand tied behind its back due to Mr. Nutting’s, uh, shall we say, frugal way of operating the team, but still, I come to the ball park, buy the merch and the eight  dollar soft drinks, and watch the Pirates on TV.  I will be a fan until I die, but, WOW, considering how the organization treats its paying customers, as exemplified by what happened last Saturday, you folks don’t make it easy to be a Pirates fan.

I am anxious to hear your response.

Sincerely,

Bob Sproule

I shall let you know what response, if any, I receive from Mr. Williams.  By the way, here is a picture of the scene at PNC Park that day as we tried to get into the ballpark.