Has Pittsburgh Lost Its Championship Touch?
By Scott Robertson

Tracey Oliver is a transplanted Steelers' fan who, from his home in New Jersey, catches games each week via satellite. That is, when he's not making the 400-plus mile drive from his home to Heinz Field to watch them in person.

As a Pittsburgh sports fan in general and Steelers' fan in particular, he has felt the ecstasy and, more recently, the agony of their fortunes. He has lived, as many locals have, through a time when local teams who reached the pinnacles of their sports - the World Series, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup Final or national championship game - could not lose.

Now, he's living through a time when they can't seem to win on the big stage.

"It's payback for the '70s," said Oliver, who hails from Perryopolis but now lives in Dumont, N.J. "During the '70s, they always won. Now, they can't win. I don't understand it. Especially the Steelers. How can they lose three out of four championship games at home?"

In fact, there was a time before the '70s that, while something of a quirk of good fortune, was indicative of Pittsburgh's championship success. The 1927 Pirates lost the World Series that year to Babe Ruth's Murderer's Row New York Yankees. It took 33 years to get back, but from the time Bill Mazeroski's home run cleared the fence to beat the Yankees in the 1960 Fall Classic, a Pittsburgh team never lost its sport's ultimate title contest until the Steelers fell to Dallas in Super Bowl XXX in January, 1995.

That span covered the '60, '71 and '79 World Series' for the Pirates, Super Bowls IX, X, XIII and XIV for the Steelers, the 1976 national championship for Pitt's football team and the 1991 and '92 Stanley Cup titles for the Penguins.

Even the Pittsburgh Triangles won in their only championship appearance when they beat the San Francisco Golden Gaters for the 1974 World Team Tennis title. (The Pittsburgh Gladiators would have broken the string, by the way. They lost, at home in the Civic Arena, to the Denver Dynamite in the inaugural Arena Football League championship game in the mid-'80s. But that, according to the AFL itself, was the climax of a four-game exhibition season. So if it's an exhibition game, it doesn't really count, right?)

What Went Wrong?

The Steelers' loss in '95 actually is the midpoint of what have been horrible playoff results since then. But the Steelers are not the only culprits. The Penguins boasted of 11 straight Stanley Cup playoff appearances before this season. They won the Stanley Cup in two of the first three of those seasons. Since 1992, they have progressed to the conference final only twice.

The Pirates have endured nine straight losing seasons, but began the decade as one of baseball's best teams. Three straight division title winners, however, failed to get to the World Series.

The University of Pittsburgh's sports teams have fared no better. While neither the football nor men's basketball team has been considered a national title contender, they have failed when invited to the post-season with the exception of one bowl win by the football team.

So are these teams successful for getting to the brink of a championship, or unsuccessful for failing to cross the threshold?

"As players, you have a little different mindset," said Lloyd McClendon, now the Pirates' manager but in the early '90s, a key bench player on three division-winning Pirates clubs. "Some would consider three straight division titles to be successful seasons. But we were disappointed at the end of those seasons because we didn't get the job done. When we left spring training in those years, there were certain things we intended to do - winning the World Series was one of them. Unfortunately, we were unable to finish that job. So from that standpoint, as players, we felt we failed."

The Pirates of today are rebuilding. The Steelers are not. The Penguins are being forced to. In the case of the Steelers, going 13-3 in the regular season and advancing to the AFC title game earlier this year might strike some as a successful season. But losing in the title game, which they have done four times in five tries since their last Super Bowl win, left a sour taste in their mouths.

Rob Dibble was one of the Nasty Boys of the Cincinnati Reds bullpen in the early '90s. He pitched against McClendon's Pirates in 1990, helping the Reds to the World Series title against the heavily favored Oakland A's. Now an ESPN Radio sportscaster, Dibble believes teams are defined by their success on the big stage.

"I would say that the Steelers did not have a successful season," Dibble said. "I'm sure that when they went to training camp, they were focused on winning it all. When they came up short like they did, there is that aspect of not getting it done.

"But that's the beauty of football. It's one game and you're out. In every other sport, you have a seven-game series. But in football, it's all or nothing. They were successful up until that game. But now, I imagine that game is all they really see."

Dibble has seen the issue from both sides of the coin. His Reds teams finished second in their division four years in a row before a rash of injuries pushed them to fifth in 1989. They overcame the injuries, and the situation surrounding Pete Rose's dismissal from baseball at the time, to win the Series under Lou Piniella in 1990.

"We thought that (1990 National League Championship) series against the Pirates really was our World Series," Dibble said. "That series was such a dogfight, it really made it easier for us to beat Oakland. Had we lost that Series to Oakland, we might still have considered it a victory since no one gave us much of a chance to win. But you can be sure it would have left a bitter taste in our mouths."

These Guys Are Killing Me

Dibble instead experienced the sweet taste of victory by helping the Reds to a four-game sweep. It is a taste taken out of the mouths of Pittsburghers by the greats and the not-so-greats. Pittsburgh teams have been beaten by the likes of David Volek, Tom Fitzgerald, Garry Valk, Steve Avery, Francisco Cabrera, Dennis Gibson, John Elway, Troy Brown, Barry Goheen and Sage Rosenfels, to name a few.

Dr. Darren Treasure, associate professor in Sports Psychology at Arizona State University, said such close brushes with sports success have their impact not only on teams, but on the psyches of the cities in which they play. He cited a recent study in Psychology Today magazine that measured worker productivity in northern England. To simplify the study, it pointed out that worker productivity improved when the local soccer team won and declined when the team played poorly.

"I don't think it's any secret that people live and die based on the success and failure of their teams," said Treasure, a native of Bristol, England. "In Liverpool, they say football is not a matter of life and death, it's much more important than that. There is also research that looks at murder statistics and the success of the national team. When the national team does well, the whole community comes together. There is definitely a relationship there."

Measuring Success

The measurements of how successful teams are varies, sometimes within a season. Take Pitt football and basketball in 2001-02, for example. The football team started 1-5, clearly unsuccessful, but rebounded to win the Tangerine Bowl. So the season ended on a successful note, even though fans and some close the program were hoping for a more prestigious bowl appearance.

The men's basketball team had a successful season by any measurement. They surprised by winning 27 games and earning a spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade. But whether they are ultimately successful remains to be seen - no less an authority than Kansas Coach Roy Williams knows the measurement NCAA Tournament teams face.

Williams, after Kansas beat Missouri to go 16-0, thus becoming the first team to finish the Big 12 regular season undefeated, reflected thusly to The Sporting News: "I don't know that I'll ever enjoy the 16-0 part," Williams said, "because we've got other things coming up so quickly."

The Penguins, at press time, were in danger of seeing their streak of playoff berths end, clearly a mark of an unsuccessful run. The Steelers are gearing up for next season and another shot at the title. If they fail it will be seen again as unsuccessful.

The Pirates are in perhaps the best position to have success this season. Expectations are low coming off a 100-loss season.

"Everything has to be fair," McClendon said. "The bottom line is wins and losses. But I have to look at the big picture, with the talent on hand and the players that we have. I think I have to measure success and failure a little differently. We have to raise the bar, but we have to be fair to expectations. To say that this team will win the World Series is not fair, even though we all would like to do that. But we have to be fair - we have to set the bar higher and demand that players reach certain goals. If we do that, we will be successful."

Pirates' owner Kevin McClatchy has to measure success differently than the manager, keeping an eye on what happens with the bottom line as well as what happens between the lines.

"Some teams these days are successful with the wins and losses," McClatchy said, "but that doesn't necessarily translate to success on the bottom line or to the long-term success of the franchise."

"But if you don't win, and do well financially, that's not good, either. The bottom line is winning, but there has to be financial sanity at the same time." "More wins, period," he said. "The fans want to see this thing turned around and I don't blame them - so do I.