PITTSBURGH - The Pittsburgh Pirates' managing general partner Kevin McClatchy announced today that the team would stop "wringing its hands" over its fourteen consecutive losing seasons and "start celebrating who we are -- and we are losers. There can't be a winner unless there's a loser. Teams like the Pirates are indispensable." This Sunday the team will celebrate its losing heritage by bringing to town "recent history's most emblematic non-winners" in what the team is billing as a "Salute to the Losers." The Pirates had picked that day at the start of the season because the Detroit Tigers will be in town, and its coaching staff includes three former Pirate managers who left Pittsburgh as losers. "We had no idea Detroit would be having such a good year," said McClatchy.
Fans will receive a bobblehead of one of the following honored guests:
Hamilton Burger, the California prosecuting attorney who lost 748 straight cases to Perry Mason, but somehow wasn't fired;
Susan Lucci, the soap opera diva who lost out at the Emmy Awards for 18 consecutive years;
Harold Stassen, former one-term Minnesota Governor and perennial Presidential candidate who ran, and lost, nine times;
Pittsburgh's former Mayor Tom Murphy, who doled out sweetheart contracts to the fire fighters' union as well as free department stores to companies that didn't want to be in Pittsburgh. Those companies bolted at the first opportunity;
The New York Nationals, formerly known as the Washington Generals, personal patsies of the Harlem Globetrotters.
Joseph Hazlewood, captain of the Valdez, was to throw out the first pitch for the game, but he's been replaced by Steve Tello, general manager of FSN Pittsburgh, who fired popular Penguin announcer Mike Lange on Thursday. Milo Hamilton will return as broadcaster for this one day only.
None of the participants in this celebration have been told that the theme centers around losers. Instead they were told they were being honored for their lifetime accomplishments.
