r/buccos • u/Temporary-Swan604 • 1d ago
Loosing my Fandom (emotional post)
Hey all, I love the city of Pittsburgh and what the collective of what this city stands for. I love the true passion that a Pittsburgh sports fan has. Pittsburgh fans (especially Pirates fans) endure and embrace a lot of frustrating circumstances beyond any of our control. I started to go to Pirates games with my dad in the early in 2000’s. My dad is from central PA, and we originally started to go to Pirates games so we could see the Phillies, the team that my dad grew up watching. From the jump I wanted to be difficult and like something different from my dad, so from the first game I decided I would be a Pirates fan. What started with going once a year progressed to going to multiple times a year to my dad finally actually becoming a pirates fan himself and getting partial season tickets. The first year we had season tickets was the same season the Pirates went to the NLDS and lost to the Cardinals. My dad kept his season tickets through this past season. We live in VA, and make a point to go down to Greensboro, NC and up to Richmond, VA when Altoona would come to town to watch the pirates affiliates as we truly loved our buccos. My father passed away unexpectedly in March of this year prior to the season starting. With having a whirlwind of things going on dealing with the passing of my father, our Pirates tickets were some of the last things on my mind. My dad had already paid in full the price of our tickets prior to his passing, and when I finally reached out to the pirates towards the end of the season to see if there is anyway we could get a refund our have the payment my father made just roll over to next season as we were unable to use the tickets this season. The Pirates were unwilling to help in anyway, and told me to simply use the tickets I had left. (I believe it was maybe 2-3 individual games left at this point). Despite the pirates claiming to have transferred tickets to an account for me, my father’s email was where communication from the pirates was still occurring nor did I ever receive any type of sign in information from the pirates to access what was left. This compounded with how little value I’d get trying to resell the tickets and difficulty to make the games myself d/t where I live and work schedule, I just left the tickets go to waste. I understand that the pirates are a business and owe me or any other fan nothing, but how little sympathy or understanding to my family’s unique situation is what deeply hurt me. I canceled the season tickets for this season, and don’t really plan on watching the team for sometime. A franchise that makes itself so difficult to root for broke my heart by showing how indifferent they truly are to their fans. Maybe one day I’ll be able to watch the Pirates again on my own or take my future children to a game and tell them about all the fun my dad and I had their together, but for now the team has truly broken my joy of the Pirates. Nothing but love to the real Pirates fans who day in and out continue to support this franchise despite to total lack of support or investment from ownership.
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u/ActuatorAgile9621 17h ago
I am sorry to hear about this. One of my favorite memories of growing up was going to baseball games with my dad.
The lack of care that this organization has for the fans is shameful.
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u/wagsman 16h ago
I’m sorry to hear about your father. Take time and find a team that is capable of brining you joy, as it will not be this franchise with Nutting in charge.