Thursday, June 28, 2007

Pirates Behaving Badly

"Fans for Change" plan a walkout at the Pirates/Nationals game on Saturday night, after the third inning, to protest the pathetic management of the franchise over the last ten-plus-plus years.

The team, ever respectful of its fans (not!), has instructed broadcasters at FSN Pittsburgh not to show images of the walkout or refer to it on air. And the team has removed discussion of the walkout from the message board at pirates.com.

Tried to remove, I should say; it's hard to keep a board completely clean. And a poster this morning has already made the suggestion that I wanted to post here: Aux armes, cell phone, PDA, and mini-cam owners! Shoot photos and videos of the walkout yourselves, and upload the results to YouTube and Flikr. (Don't shoot images of the game being played, though.) Fans for Change can aggregate the links at a site of their own. The protest will automatically get a permanent archive -- and Pittsburghers around the world (diaspora check, here) can see what's happening locally.

Bob Smizik writes: "The protest is an attempt to draw national attention to the lack of success of the team, which is in the midst of a 15th consecutive losing season. That national attention might be difficult to obtain." Show Bob that he's wrong about national (and international) attention. The Pirates and the P-G are thinking in old media terms. Who needs FSN?

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