Each year, as spring training arrives, baseball fans across the nation gear up for another season. They look forward to another 162 hard-fought games, they get excited about summer nights in the ballpark, and they carry hope of a possible championship season, as every team starts with a clean slate.
Even here in Pittsburgh, a city that has endured 15 consecutive seasons of sub-.500 baseball, Pirates fans can still take solace in the fact that it’s a new year and the team has another chance to turn things around. Unfortunately, for local businesses that deal in Pirates merchandise, the outlook is not quite as bright.
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R.J. Kowalski, who owns Greentree Sports Cards, says that the Pirates were kings of the local sports card business when he began working in the field in 1992. Coincidentally, 1992 was the last year the Pirates fielded a winning team, and since then, business for baseball cards has dwindled much like the team’s winning percentage.
“They [the Pirates] have almost totally killed baseball sales for me,” says Kowalski, behind the counter of his Greentree shop. “When I started, baseball was my top seller, but now hockey and football are neck-to-neck, with baseball in a distant third.”
Kowalski says the decline in Pirates business for his store was gradual and began around 2000. While he admits that he does have a couple of lingering die-hard Pirates customers, he points out that Steelers and Penguins cards easily outsell the Pirates 50-to-1.
However, the decline in local baseball card sales does not seem to be a microcosm of the national scene. Even with professional football reigning as the nation’s most popular sport, by Kowalski’s estimation, baseball cards are in the same range as football in sports cards sales on a national level. Kowalski’s sales show the drastic effect the Pirates’ woes may be having on the local sports card scene.
The story is much the same at another local business, Hometowne Sports, which does most of its sales in clothing. According to general manager Mike Snyder, the Pirates have always been far behind the Steelers in sales for the local chain, whose first store opened in 1996.
Last year, the Steelers accounted for $2.7 million of Hometowne’s overall sales, or around 70%, said Snyder. The Pirates, in comparison, accounted for $210,000, or a little more than 6%. In fact, the Pirates have never come remotely close to the Steelers in sales, and the Penguins more than doubled the Pirates in sales at Hometowne last year as well, leaving the Pirates in last place of the three local professional teams.
Aside from the Pirates losing streak, Snyder offered other reasons why the team’s sales pale in comparison to the Steelers. Snyder says that while there are various chances to attend Pirates games throughout the summer, fans only get eight to ten Steelers games a year, and when they attend a game, they have no problem opening their wallets.
“People come from all over the nation, and the world, to see a Steelers game,” said Snyder. He adds that while these die-hard fans are here, they spend much more on the merchandise than Pirates fans. Snyder adds, “I think there always has been and always will be fans of the Pirates, but they’re not the big spenders [in our business].”
While Snyder also acknowledged the lack of variety in Pirates merchandise as a factor, he admitted that the team’s poor play certainly affects sales in a negative fashion. In fact, after going over these two businesses’ sales figures, there is no doubt that the downfall of baseball merchandise in the city has coincided with the Pirates losing streak. But can baseball make a triumphant comeback in this football and hockey-crazed town?
While he admits that a Pirates playoff run this season would definitely spike interest in baseball cards, Kowalski says that it would take a sustained run of a combination of winning seasons from the Pirates and losing efforts from the Steelers and Penguins to make the card market look like the early 90s.
Snyder, however, was less optimistic when asked if a streak of playoff appearances by the Pirates could close the gap between them and the Steelers in sales.
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