Pirates Fire Racing Pierogi for Disparaging Remarks About Team

If the Pittsburgh Pirates thought their 12-game losing streak didn't garner them enough bad press, they've woken up to a PR nightmare this morning as The Pittsburgh Post Gazette is reporting that the team has fired one of their racing pierogies for making disparaging comments about the team on Facebook. 

If you haven't been to PNC Park, the Great Pittsburgh Pierogi race takes place after the fifth inning of every home Pirate game when a bunch of people dressed as boiled dough stuffed with various fillings run across the warning track. It's quite similar to Milwaukee's sausage race and Washington's president race, only less well-known because it involves the Pirates. And so apparently one of the 18 people that rotate through the pierogi costumes expressed dismay at the news that the team had extended the contracts of manager John Russell and GM Neal Huntington in the offseason and was very quickly fired for it. 

The exact message left was, "Coonelly extended the contracts of Russell and Huntington through the 2011 season. That means a 19-straight losing streak. Way to go Pirates." The poster/ousted-pierogi was 24-year old Andrew Kurtz and apparently, he's not pleased with losing his job over the whole fiasco Since the PG ran with the story on their front page and waited until the about the bottom third of the article to give the team response, which was that while they don't comment on this sort of thing they would say that they had fired a part-time employee who was already suspended for violating team policy, it's a safe bet that they think Pirate fans will react accordingly.

But this isn't the first time that the employee of a major sports franchise in America has been canned for making a negative remark about his employers on Facebook. Just over a year ago, the Eagles fired a team employee for calling the team "retarted" on Facebook for not re-signing popular safety Brian Dawkins. Really, it's pretty much common knowledge in 2010; don't write something on Facebook that you don't want the world to see and don't ever, ever, ever post anything less than positive about your job on Facebook. If you do, you'll be fired for it. This happens all the time outside of the sports world with much less backlash. 

Of course, that fact doesn't keep the whole thing from being a PR fiasco about the Pirates. Fans are rightly frustrated with the team right now (again to reiterate: 12-game losing streak, zero winning seasons since 1992) and all they see is someone being fired by the club for sharing that opinion. After the club mishandled the extensions of Russell and Huntington (they were apparently given in the offseason, but the team didn't publicly acknowledge them until word leaked out about them this week) trust in the front office is at an all-time low. 

The Pirates have every right to fire someone for something like this, but they should've seen the storm that was going to ensue. Of course, that same storm is going to follow every move they make until they actually start winning some games. Until then, David Pinto's comment on the situation will hold true -- the pierogies are more interesting than the team.

Source: Fanhouse.com