Recently it was pointed out to me that the Pittsburgh Pirates are closing in on their 18^th consecutive losing season, which—or so I am told—would be an all-time record for an American sports franchise.   A Pittsburgh sportswriter e-mailed me, asking me how I would compare this record of failure and frustration to others.

            Well, how would we?

            There are, in baseball history, many claimants to exceptional misery.   The Mets of the 1960s.   The St. Louis Browns.   The Cleveland Indians of the ’60s, ‘70s and 80s.   The Boston Braves and Philadelphia Phillies of the 1930s.   The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1920s, the Daffiness Boys.   The Washington Senators; First in War, First in Peace, Last in the American League.    The Cubbies.

            Everybody would prefer to win, but if you can’t win, you might as well claim to be the Biggest Loser, no?    We have a morbid attraction to suffering with baseball teams:  It’s not real suffering.   It’s annoying; it’s not really painful.   We enjoy kvetching about it—not as much as we would enjoy winning, true, but much more than we would enjoy spending the same number of years on Devils’ Island or trying to keep track of Lindsay Lohan.  But how do we sort out these competing claims, and decide who the Losing Leaders really are?

            The Pirates have had 18 straight losing seasons or are working on it, yes, and this is certainly one valid measure of a team’s level of futility.   It’s not the only one.   The Pirates have lost 100 games in that stretch only once, an even hundred then.  The Royals had a winning season in 2003, but they have also lost 100 games four times in recent years, and have lost 97 games or more seven times since 1999.   Who is to say which is worse?

            Let’s take it on.

            I figured a “Loser Score” for each franchise after each season, in this way.  If a team has a losing season, their Loser Score is

            Their total from the previous year, plus

            The number of games that they were under .500, plus

            The number of consecutive losing seasons for the franchise.

            The Pirates after the 2008 season were at 451.   In 2009 they finished 62-99, 37 games under .500, so we add 37 points for that.   This was their 17^th consecutive losing season, so we add another 17 points for that.   That makes 505. 

            If a team has a non-losing season (.500 or above), their Loser Score is

            Their total from the previous year, minus

            The number of games that they were above .500, if any, times

            .90 if it was the first in the series, .80 if it was the second, .70 if it was the third, etc.,  

            Converted into the nearest integer,

            But not less than zero,

            And all teams winning the World Series have a score of zero.

            The Detroit Tigers after the 2005 season had a Loser Score of 465—about where the Pirates were in 2008.   The Tigers had a great season in 2006 (95-67), which reduced their score to 391 (465, minus 10%, minus 28 because they were 28 games over .500).   They had another winning season in 2007 (88-74), which reduced their Loser Score to 299 (391, minus 20% because it was their second consecutive non-losing season, minus 14 because they were 14 games over .500).

            They reversed that record in 2008 (74-88), which moved them back up to 314 (299, plus 14, plus one for it being the first losing season of the sequence.)   But they got back on the good side of the ledger in 2009 (86-77), which reduced their score to 274 (314, minus 10%, minus 9.)    Their Loser Score heading into this season was 274. 

            Most teams have some Loser Score after every season; about 70% do.   All of the losing teams in a season have Loser Scores greater than zero, while about 40% of the non-losing teams do, as well, carrying forward the burdens of past seasons not yet expiated.    If the Tigers just have a losing season, a winning season, a losing season, a winning season, etc., their Loser Score will atrophy within a few years, as the declines will be larger than the increases.    A Loser Score of 274 is still high, and the team won’t stay at that level if they have even intermittent success. 

            OK, let’s go back to 1876 and trace the evolution of the Loser Leader Lists.  

The Early Years

            In the first years of baseball history the title of baseball’s biggest losers passed quickly from franchise to franchise, and, as these numbers weren’t really based on much of anything, we’ll pass over exactly who those were.   The minimum Loser Score that is really significant is 100, and the first team to reach that level was the Philadelphia Phillies in 1884, after their second year in the National League.   The Phillies finished 16-81 in 1883, which put them at 66, and then went 39-73 in 1884, which put them at 102.   They had a higher score than the teams which had preceded them only because the schedule was growing longer.

            In quick succession after that the Phillies were replaced by the Detroit Wolverines, the Baltimore Orioles, the Indianapolis Hoosiers, the Washington Statesmen and the Cleveland Spiders.    All of this happened by 1892, and the highest score posted by 1892 was just 187.

The Colonels

            Baseball’s first true down-and-out, perennial doormat was the Louisville Colonels of the National League.    The Colonels went 27-111 in 1889 and then, as most of the best players in the league left to start the Player’s League, won the same league in 1890, going 87-43.   That was a one-off, however, and the Colonels resumed their losing ways in 1891, finishing 30 games under.500 in 1891, 27 games in 1892, and 25 games in 1893.

            That was sufficient to put them atop the loser’s list by 1893, but with a total of just 157.  Then they started to lose in earnest, going 35-94 in 1894, 35-95 in 1895, and 38-93 in 1896.    By 1896 their Loser Score was up to 346, easily the highest in baseball history up to that time—and they were not finished.   They finished 52-79 in 1897, 70-81 in 1898, and 75-77 in 1899. 

            By 1899, with a loser score of 410, the National League decided to put them out of their misery.   The National League had 12 teams in 1899, but several of them were not competitive teams.   They were, in essence, “feeder” teams.    The League decided it was better off without them.

The Cardinals

            While the Colonels had been the biggest losers of the 1890s, there was a competition.    Close at their heels were the Washington Senators and the St. Louis Cardinals.    By 1899 these were the standings:

            The league eliminated the Colonels, the Senators and the Spiders, and this left the Cardinals as the game’s Big Losers.  (The “115” for the Spiders, by the way, was all based on the 1899 season.   The Spiders, who came into the 1899 season with a string of seven consecutive winning seasons, finished 114 games under .500, putting them at 115.)

            The Cardinals claimed the title by disqualification, but they held it on merit.   The Cardinals—who had gone 29-102 in 1897 and 39-111 in 1898—lost 94 games in 1903, 96 in 1905, 98 in 1907, 101 in 1907, 105 in 1908, 98 in 1909, 90 in 1910, 90 in 1912, 99 in 1913, and 93 in 1916.    Through all of this period, they kept a vice grip on the Biggest Loser title, expanding their lead throughout.

            The Cardinals didn’t merely lose; they embarrassed themselves, and embarrassed the city.   Owners fought and feuded in the newspapers with managers they had hired, and with the owners of other teams.   Owners fired managers for inane and improbable reasons.  They were a true Busch League operation. 

            The record score on the Stink-O-Meter had been 410, by the Colonels in 1899.   The Cardinals broke that record in 1906, reached 500 in 1907, reached 600 in 1909, and reached a peak of 663 in 1913.

            From 1915 on, the runners up for the title were the Cardinals’ roommate, the Browns.  

            By 1921 the Cardinals had been the Biggest Losers in baseball for more than twenty years—a very, very, long time.   After that, you know what happened to them.   It was Branch Rickey who finally managed the Cardinals out of the wilderness.   In the early 1920s Rickey moved from the manager’s job into the front office, invented the modern farm system, and lifted the Cardinals from the bottom of the National League to the top.    By 1925 the Cardinals had cut their Loser Score to 280—still a very significant number, but 40% of what it had once been.   They won the World Series in 1926, Alexander staggering out of the bullpen to strike out Lazzeri, and this wiped out their Loser Score, putting them at zero.

            From then until now, the Cardinals have never been big losers.    From 1926 until now, the highest Loser Score the Cardinal franchise has ever had was 39, in 1980—and 39 is nothing.   The Cardinals have been up; they’ve been down—but they’ve never really been down again.  

The Philadelphia A’s

            The Philadelphia Athletics, a championship operation up until 1914, sold off their stars to keep them in the American League, and lost 109 games in 1915, 117 in 1916.  They lost 100-plus in 1919, and moved onto the list of baseball’s biggest losers.   They lost 100+ again in 1920.  

            In 1921 the Cardinals won 87 games, the most they had won since 1889.   They followed this up with 85 more wins in 1922, Branch Rickey still in the manager’s seat.    The St. Louis Browns, with George Sisler and the all-time outfield of Baby Doll Jacobson, Jack Tobin and Ken Williams, had also moved into contention; they went 81-73, and 93-61 in 1922.     The Athletics lost 100+ games for the third straight year in 1921, and so it was the A’s, not the Browns, who descended to the title once the Cardinals finally vacated.   

            The A’s, however, had a fairly brief and undistinguished run at the bottom.    The A’s moved into the title seat in 1922 with a total of 447.  They upped that to 470 in 1923 and 490 in 1924, but Connie Mack was re-building.   Adding Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx and other stars, Mack had the A’s over .500 in 1925, and out of the hot seat in 1926.  

The Phillies, Part II

            Though never really a powerhouse, the Phillies—the Big Losers of 1884—had wiped clean their loser slate by 1888, and kept their count at zero most of the time from 1888 into the twentieth century.   A series of three bad seasons after the start of the century drove their Loser Score up to 116, but the arrival of Pete Alexander had returned them to zero by 1915.

            After the 1917 season the Phillies, in a deal that presaged the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees, sold Alex to the Cubs for $55,000 and three minor players.  The Phillies began now a run of the ugliest seasons in modern baseball history:  47-90 in 1919,  62-91 in 1920, 51-103 in 1922, 57-96 in1922, 50-104 in 1923, 55-96 in 1924, 58-93 in 1926, 51-103 in 1927, 43-109 in 1928, and 52-102 in 1930.

            Meanwhile, the history of the Boston Red Sox in this era was running parallel.  The sale of Babe Ruth by the Red Sox was, in reality, only one of a long, long series of sales of quality players to better teams, by the Red Sox, the Phillies and some other teams.    These teams, to be blunt, had quit on their fans.   They had no intention of winning anything, and they now entered a period of failure so dark that they considered farts to be echo location.   Sorry.   By 1926 these were the Loser Leaders:

            The Red Sox lost 103 games in 1927; the Braves lost 103 in 1928, and by 1928 these were the standings:

            That’s the Daffiness Boys in Brooklyn, Wilbert Robinson’s famed losers with Babe Herman, Rube Bressler, and the ancient Max Carey.   They were never really big losers; they were sort of Also-Ran Losers whose failings were exaggerated by the Damon Runyan press corps because New Yorkers always have to believe the have the best of everything, even Losers.  In 1930 the Phillies and Red Sox lost 102 games apiece, and by 1931 the standings were:

            The Phillies were now closing in on the historic levels of ineptitude mapped out by the Cardinals twenty years earlier.   The Cardinals had peaked at 663 in 1913.

            In 1932 the Phillies had a “good” year, a “winning” season.    With Chuck Klein winning the National League Triple Crown, the Phillies won 78 games, and lost only 76.    The Red Sox, meanwhile, went 43-111, and moved to the top of the list.

The Red Sox

            In February, 1933, however, Tom Yawkey bought the Red Sox.   Yawkey immediately began spending money to bring players to the Red Sox, rather than selling them off as had been the practice of Red Sox owners since 1918.    The Red Sox spent only one more year at the head of the list (1933), and then began to make progress on paying off their Loser Debt.   Their Loser Score was under 300 by 1938, under 100 by 1940, and was off the books by 1942. 

            The Red Sox didn’t become significant losers again until the post-Ted Williams years in the early 1960s, when their Loser Score reached as high as 165 in 1966.   They had cleaned that off again by 1972, and the Red Sox Loser Score has not been higher than 31 since 1972.

The Phillies, Part III

            After the one winning season in 1932, however, the Phillies resumed their pagan ways.    They lost 92 games in 1933, 93 in games in 1934.   In 1936 they were 54-100.

            The Phillies were still back there, where the Red Sox had been in the 1920s, selling off their best players.    Dolph Camilli hit .339 for them in 1937, had an OPS over 1.000 in ’36 and ’37.  They sold him to the Dodgers for $45,000, and he won an MVP Award for the Dodgers.   They picked up Bucky Walters, a failed infielder, as a pitcher.   He turned out to be a pretty fair pitcher, so they sold him to Cincinnati for $50,000, and he won an MVP Award for the Reds.   The Phillies went 45-105 in 1938, 45-106 in 1939, 50-103 in 1940, 43-111 in 1941, and 42-109 in 1942.  

            One of the central questions of this article is, “Which team really was the biggest loser in baseball history?”  Well, the Phillies of 1918-1948 were the biggest losers in baseball history—by far.   Nobody else is in the game with them.   The Pirates may have had 17 straight losing seasons, but the Phillies lost 14 straight, had one “winning” season (78-76) and then had 16 straight losing seasons after that; 30 losing seasons in 31 years, many of them absolutely awful.   They had five straight seasons (1938-1942) far worse than anything the Pirates have suffered in the last 17—those five, and many others.   They lost 108 games again in 1945.   This chart tracks the Phillies’ Loser Score from 1917 to 1948:

            The Phillies became the biggest losers in baseball history in 1935, when their Loser Score reached 664, breaking the record 663 set 22 years earlier by the Cardinals.   The Phillies’ score would grow to almost twice that number, 1366.   No other team in baseball history approaches that standard.    If the Pirates were to lose 100 games a year from now on, they wouldn’t match the Phillies’ misery until 2023.

            It is just a theory, but it may be these years, in which not only were the Phillies awful but the Philadelphia A’s often were racing them loss for loss. . .it may be this that shaped the character of the Philadelphia sports fans, who later became famous for booing Santa Claus.    The Philadelphia fans were notoriously negative, yes, but. . .you might be, too, if you had to watch 51 losing teams in 31 years (30 by the Phillies, 21 by the Athletics), with almost half of those teams losing 100 games.

            Bob Carpenter bought the Phillies in 1943, and, as Yawkey had done with the Red Sox ten years earlier, began to build them into a competitive franchise.   It took several years.   It was harder to get off the floor in 1943 than it had been in 1933; baseball was better organized.  By the 1940s teams had farm systems—the other teams did—and, as the Phillies were the last team to make a business out of selling their young players to their competitors, once they got out of the business, there was nobody left to buy from.     They had to build.   By 1946 the Phillies were getting better, in 1949 they actually had a winning record, and in 1950, of course, the Phillies won the National League.

            It would take a little longer for them to move out of the Big Loser chair.    There were the standings in 1935, in 1940, in 1945, and 1948:

It’s like being sprayed by a skunk.   The Phillies had been sprayed by the Great Skunk in the Sky so thoroughly and for so long that it would take several years of bathing in tomato juice to get rid of it.   But by 1952 these were the standings:

The Phillies won 83 games in 1953 (83-71), and, by 1953, the St. Louis Browns’ moment had finally arrived.

The Artists Once Known as the St. Louis Browns

The irony being, of course, that they were no longer the Browns.   The Browns lost 100 games in 1953, which wasn’t an unusual thing for them, but with the Phillies no longer reeking, the Browns were finally able to claim the title as baseball’s Biggest Losers:

That winter the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles.  We are regarding this here as one franchise.   We are carrying over the Loser Score of the St. Louis Browns to Baltimore, understanding of course that this is merely one option, and that it could have been done some other way. 

The Orioles lost 100 games in 1954, but, under the leadership of Paul Richards, they also began to make some progress, losing 97 games in 1955 but only 85 in 1956.   These were the standings post-1956:

The Phillies, playing about .500 ball, still carried some of the burdens of the dreadful era which had ended eight years earlier.   The Orioles had a .500 season in 1957, but then lost again in 1958 and 1959:

In “878” score rung down by the Browns/Orioles was, at that time, the second-highest figure in baseball history.    As was true for the Phillies, it would take a while to wash that away.   In 1960 the Orioles, with an almost all-rookie lineup, won 89 games—but held on to the top spot:

In 1961, however, the Orioles won 95 games, and shed the label as baseball’s Biggest Losers.   A series of good seasons followed.   Led by Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell, the Orioles by 1965 had cut their Loser Score to 219, escaping the list, and their 1966 World Series victory wiped out their debt, making the franchise Loser-Free literally for the first time ever.   The Browns had had a losing record in their first season, and until 1966 had never gotten all the way back to zero.

The Phillies, Part Four

The Phillies, meanwhile, had let their subscription to Winners Monthly expire, and had fallen back into their old ways.  They lost 85 games in 1958 (69-85), 90 games in 1959, and 95 in 1960.   There was a symmetry about it; one could see one hundred losses coming, but what came was much worse.   The Phillies, now managed by Gene Mauch, were 30-64 on July 28, on target for 100+ losses, but then they lost 23 straight games, dropping to 30-87.    They managed to win some games in August and September, but they still finished the 1961 season at 47-107 losses.   This put them back atop the Loser List:

But this time, the stay was mercifully brief.    The Phillies won 82 games in 1962, while their old partners in grime, the Athletics, continued to lose.   The Phillies under Gene Mauch, adding Dick Allen in 1964, began to win regularly, and by 1968 had reduced their Loser Score to a mere 3 points.   One more 82-80 season, and they’d have been free and clear. 

The Phillies’s history has remained rocky.   They have had more difficult periods.   Their Loser Score has gone as high as 222 (2000).   But they have also had periods of success, and their slate is clean at this writing. 

The Kansas City A’s

The Kansas City A’s, of course, were the team of my childhood.    As the Damon Runyan crowd liked to squawk about the Dodgers, as the New York media of the 1960s liked to squeal about the Mets, I take a perverse pride in moaning about the Kansas City A’s.   I survived Charlie Finley.   Do I get a T-Shirt or something?

            As the Baltimore Orioles had begun life with the debts of their fathers, the St. Louis Browns, so too the Kansas City A’s had been burdened with the sins of Connie Mack’s dotage. 

The Orioles, however, took on the challenge and made something of themselves.  The A’s picked up the bells and greasepaint of their ancestors, and became the laughingstock of baseball.

The A’s moved to Kansas City in 1954 with a Loser Score of 402.   In their thirteen years in Kansas City, they never came close to playing .500 baseball.   This chart tracks the Trail of Tears between Philadelphia and Oakland:

The 914 Loser Score compiled by the Kansas City A’s (1955-1967) was then and is now the second-highest such score to be found in baseball history.

There is, however, another way to look at the issue.  Of the 914 points we have credited to the Kansas City A’s, 512 were earned in Kansas City, but 402 were bequeathed to them by the sufferers of Philadelphia.   When the Washington Senators moved to Minnesota in 1961, the American League announced that the franchise records would stay with the team in Washington, with a new Washington Senators franchise.   Historians have largely ignored this edict, and with good reason.  We don’t work for those people.    They get to decide what they get to decide.   We do not and should not cede to them the decisions that are naturally ours.

However, it is as reasonable to regard the new Washington Senators as a continuation of the old as it is the other way.  The old Senators had a long losing tradition behind them, and the new Senators were pretty good Losers, themselves.    If we regarded the new Senators as a continuation of the old, the A’s would still outpoint them as the biggest losers of the era.  However, if we regarded the Senators as a continuation and the A’s as a new franchise beginning in 1955, then the Senators, not the A’s, would be atop these three lists:

            The Athletics, of course, are the yo-yos of baseball history.    Every twenty years or so, in Philadelphia and Oakland, the A’s have put together an awesome team.   Between these awesome moments, they generally couldn’t beat David Spade’s Celebrity All-Stars.

The Artists Once Known as the Washington Senators

            The very moment that the A’s left Kansas City they began to win again, which proves, I suppose, that it wasn’t them, it was us.    They had winning seasons in ’68, ’69 and ’70, but they had been 512 points ahead in the Loser Race, and also, look at the list above.  In second place were the Cubs, and in third place the Mets.   Both teams got much better about the same time the A’s did.   As the A’s tried to escape the Leading Loser Position, then, the two teams behind them melted away, unwilling to assume the crown.   By 1970 the A’s were nowhere near 912 points, but they were still in first place:

            In 1971, however, the A’s won 101 games, allowing the new Senators to slip into the first chair:

The Senators, of course, are like the St. Louis Browns; as soon as they reached the top of the Loser List, they skipped town.    From 1972 through 1976, the Texas Rangers ranked as the Biggest Losers in baseball:

            But you will note what has happened here.   In 1962 the Twins ranked as the fifth-biggest losers in baseball, at 421 points (based largely on their accomplishments when disguised as the Washington Senators.)   By the 1970s the 400s had disappeared, and 160 points would put you on the leaders list.    This was probably caused, in the main, by the Amateur Draft, which started in 1965.   The June Draft spread around the talent, a little, and allowed the worst teams to improve more rapidly, thus bringing about an era of comparatively good competitive balance.   The biggest losers post-1965 did not approach the standards of those pre-1965.

The Padres

            With better competitive balance the scores were lower, but the Padres still ruled the outhouse for seven years, 1977-1983. 

            In 1977 three of the top four spots were occupied by teams from the 1969 expansion—the Expos, Padres and Brewers.   By 1982 but the teams from the 1977 expansion were pushing toward the top:

            The Padres played .500 ball again in 1983, which did not cost them their spot on the list.   But in 1984, of course, the Padres were in the World Series, which did:

The Mariners

            OK, the Mariners were now the chiefs of Tribe Loser, but the score needed to keep them in that spot was now down to less than 300.   But the Mariners had losing records for the next six seasons, which gave them a much more impressive total:

            With Free Agency baseball was beginning—but just beginning—to re-segregate into winning and losing franchises.  “Winning” seasons by the Mariners in 1991 and 1993 did not get them off the top of the list; they went just 83-79 in 1991, 82-80 in 1993, and lost almost a hundred in 1992.   By 1996 the Mariners had been the Biggest Losers in baseball for 13 years, which actually is a very impressive accomplishment—one of the longest runs atop the Loser Board that any team has ever had.    But the Mariners were not really BIG losers; they were just never quite good enough to stop their friends from flashing the Loser sign behind their backs:

            The Mariners of 1996 were actually very much like the Tampa Bay Rays of today.   Years of bottom-dwelling had given them years of high draft picks, which they had used to pile up a truly impressive list of players:  Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner and Randy Johnson.   By 1996 these players were coming together, and in 1997, the Mariners dropped out of the Skunk Chair:

The Cubs

            In 1997 the Cubs were the Biggest Losers in baseball with a Loser Score of just 191—the lowest score for that title holder in more than 100 years.   The amateur draft, up to that point, was still doing a very effective job of stirring the pot, keeping the same teams from settling on the bottom for long periods of time.

            The Cubs are among baseball’s most famous Losers.  It is almost a word-association test; I say “Cubs”, you say “Lovable Losers.”   And yet, up until 1997, the Cubs had never ranked at the top of our list—and even then, it’s with a piddly-ass score of 191.  Should we be puzzled by this?

The Cubs up to 1945 were a strong franchise, with no losing tradition at all.  From 1947 to 1962 they had fifteen losing seasons in sixteen years, building up a Loser Score of 428, which is very high although it was only the fourth-highest in baseball at that moment.   It’s higher than where the Kansas City Royals are today, and I will tell you this:  that is not a fun territory.  

            By the late 1960s, however, the Durocher/Jenkins Cubs were whittling away at this monument, and—like Gene Mauch’s Phillies, but four years later—they would come very close to clearing the books.   By 1972 they had reduced their Loser Score to 9 points.  Since 1947, this is the Cubs’ Loser Score in three-year increments:

            The Cubs failures in the years 1947-1967, when those in my generation were gerbils, established the Cubbies as perpetual losers in our minds.    The Cubs have never been at the top of the list except one year, yes, and they have not equaled the Loss Logs of the Phillies or others, it is true.

            But a Loser Score over 100 is a significant score.    Usually twenty, twenty-five percent of the teams, at any moment, are over 100.   The Cubs have been over 100 almost continuously since 1950.    They’ve come close to squaring their accounts a couple of times, yes, but they haven’t done it.   They haven’t won a World Series.   Many teams have been able to clear their accounts without winning a World Series; the Cubs never have.    There is very good reason to think of the Cubs the way we do.  

The Tigers

            The Detroit Tigers began play in 1901.   In their first 50 years, and a little more, the Tigers had never had a Loser Score as high as 100.    After some poor seasons in the early 1950s (1951-54) their score reached up to 124, but they had cleared it off again by 1962.    They had a couple of bad years in the late 1970s, and their score went back to 100—exactly—for one moment (1977).   By 1983 they had cleaned off their account again.

            Beginning in 1989, however, the Tigers got themselves involved in some serious loss-related activity.   They lost 103 games in 1989, and 109 games in 1995.   In between they managed to have two winning seasons, but by 1998 they held the keys to the Port-A-Potty:

            And they were just getting warmed up:

            The Tigers by 2005 were at a level not seen since 1969.   This was not the first sign that baseball’s era of competitive balance had come to an end, and it would not be the last.    After the Tigers’ fine season in 2006, they were still the Big Losers:

            But the Pirates were ready to take over.

Pittsburgh Pirates

            The Pirates, like the Tigers, are the heirs to a proud legacy.   Ty Cobb; Honus Wagner.   Al Kaline; Roberto Clemente.   Mickey Lolich; Vern Law.   Charlie Gehringer; Bill Mazeroski.   Hank Greenberg; Willie Stargell.

            The team now known as the Pirates began play in 1887, and they were Losers in their early years.   They had a Loser Score of 152 in 1891, cleared that off by 1900, and never had a losing season until 1914.  A few subpar seasons then put them at 110 (1917), but they had cleared the books again by 1922.   Between 1922 and 1945, the Pirates never had a Loser Score as high as 20.

            Ralph Kiner joined the Pirates in 1946.    I am not blaming Ralph Kiner for this, but the Ralph Kiner years were not good years for the Pirates.   They lost 91 games in 1946, 96 games in 1950, 90 in 1951, 112 games in 1952, 104 games in 1953, 101 in 1954, 94 in 1955, and 92 in 1957.  Their Loser Score peaked at 423 in 1957.

            423 is a very significant Loser Score.   That was a bad period.    By 1959, however, the Pirates had cut their score to 292, and in 1960 they wiped it out by winning the World Series.   For twenty years after that (up until 1984) the Pirates’ Loser Score never reached as high as 20. 

            Some Pirates got caught up in the drug scandals of the 1980s, however, and by 1987 their Loser Score was up to 105.    By 1992, they had wiped it out once more.

            This is a generally noble history.   In one hundred plus years, the Pirates had had four periods of playing a Loser’s Role, three of them brief, peaking in 1891, 1917 and 1987.  They had had one period of very bad baseball, which we remember as the Ralph Kiner years.   Beginning in 1993, however, the Pirates entered the dismal period in which they are still trapped.   These are their won-lost records since 1993:

            And these are the Biggest Losers in baseball, post 2009:

            Have we entered a new era of Big Losers?

            Well. ..yes and no.   The Pirates’ Loser Score right now is the highest in baseball since 1969, but there were seven teams prior to 1969 that had higher scores.

            The economic environment in baseball in the years 2000 to 2005 was very difficult for small city teams.   Some small-city franchises—Minnesota, St. Louis, Denver—rose to that challenge.   Some small-city franchises, most notably Pittsburgh and Kansas City, did not.   They are the Big Losers in today’s baseball.    This, too, shall pass.