Sep 9, 2025 8 min read

By John Sacco

For the Observer-Reporter

newsroom@observer-reporter.com

The team was full of unmotivated malcontents, has-beens and floundering players.

In 1985, the Pittsburgh Pirates were one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball.

The Pirates finished 57-104 and in last place in the National League East Division. The Pirates drew only 735,900 fans (12th out of 12 in the NL) and the second-lowest single-year attendance in the 30-year history of Three Rivers Stadium.

And you think the current season is bad.

Forty years ago, the franchise was shamed as the so-called Pittsburgh Drug Trials continued. The team’s longtime owners, the Galbreath family, were looking to sell.

The possibility that Pittsburgh would lose the Pirates to Denver, New Orleans or Tampa was real.

It was bleak.

General manager Harding Peterson’s response to the 1984 season, when the club went 75-87 and finished last in the NL East, was to trade for outfielders Steve Kemp and George Hendrick – the joggin’ George variety – and signed outfielder Sixto Lezcano, utilitymen Bill Almon and Jerry Dybzinski and pitchers Juan Eichelberger, John Henry Johnson and Rick Reuschel.

Only Reuschel performed well.

“There were a number of indicators (about the state of the team and franchise) and one was that we traveled commercial airlines, a good bit of the time in ’85,” said longtime “Voice of the Pirates” Lanny Frattare.

Professional teams almost exclusively travel by chartered airlines on road trips.

“The reason it stands out to me is because we had two trips to California that year, which was common, and both of those trips ended in San Francisco. The crazy thing about it was that they were both Sunday games that started at 12:30 and we didn’t fly out of San Francisco until the Red Eye at 11:30 at night.

“We were bussed back downtown to San Francisco and we had two rooms at the hotel – one was for the players and one was the staff. We had to kill five or six hours at the hotel. Old Candlestick Park was on the way to the airport. So, you’d go south out of San Francisco to go to Candlestick and then normally you’d come out of the park and go to the airport, continuing south.

“In our case, we went back north to downtown and then back south to catch the plane.”

It sounds like a scene straight out of the movie “Major League.”

That wasn’t the only thing that emphasized dread and darkness.

Several major league players were being called to testify regarding their relationships with local drug dealers who were being prosecuted.

Pirates players, both past and present, took the stand. Most notable was Dave Parker, who won the MVP award in 1978 and was now in Cincinnati. John Milner, a good left-handed hitter in the earlier part of the decade was summoned by the court. So was Dale Berra, the shortstop for the Pirates as recently as a year earlier with a famous bloodline – his father was the legendary Yankees catcher Yogi Berra. Rod Scurry, a left-handed pitcher on the ’85 Pirates’ also testified.

Manager Chuck Tanner, who led the team to a World Series championship in 1979, was going to lose his job, which he did at the end of the season. Peterson was dismissed during the season, succeeded by former GM Joe L. Brown.

All of it was a little much for Tracy Luppe, who was hired as a red-haired, young kid in 1985. He eventually served as a bat boy and in the Pirates clubhouse for several years. The Pirates pulled Luppe off the street to help with equipment.

“I finally get that job with the Pirates and then you keep hearing the team is for sale, they might be moving. I finally get in here and who knows if I’m going to have a job next summer.

“Some guys didn’t want to be there. People wondered if any more were going to be called into the trials to testify or who might get traded. I decided to just go in and do my job. I didn’t want it to be like ‘who is this kid?’ I can’t say they were one way with me. They were fine. Nobody was rude but most wanted out.”

Save the Pirates

The Galbreath family settled for significantly less than the $35 million that it was looking for – around $22 million – to help keep the Pirates in Pittsburgh.

A group of private and public investors reached an agreement in principle to buy the Pirates from the Galbreath family and Warner Communications.

The coalition was represented by the Pittsburgh mayor Richard Caliguiri, Westinghouse Electric Chairman Douglas Danforth, Carl Barger, managing partner of a Pittsburgh law firm, and the Malcolm Prine, chairman of Ryan Homes.

Prine became president and chief executive officer of the new ownership group.

“The franchise was fortunate that some really strong and good people were in that group,” said former Pittsburgh-based columnist, baseball writer and Pirates historian Bob Smizik. “They saved the team.”

The coalition formed a limited partnership of around 15 groups or individuals to provide the purchase price for the team and for the required capital to operate the club. About half of the funds came from the public sector.

The Galbreath family, which had been principal owner of the Pirates since 1946, put the team up for sale in November of 1984. Doug Galbreath clearly wanted to sell the team to someone who would keep it in Pittsburgh.

“The putting together of the deal with the local public/private coalition was phenomenal,” Frattare said. “What they would have done if there hadn’t been that deal? I’m not sure. I don’t know what their options were in that regard.”

Light amid darkness

As bad as the 1985 season was, Brown provided some light. He made trades in the second half of the season to bring in young talent that ultimately laid a foundation for the Pirates’ turnaround under general manager Syd Thrift and manager Jim Leyland and led to consecutive National League East Division championships in 1990, 1991 and 1992.

In August, Brown traded John Candelaria, Hendrick and Al Holland to California for Mike Brown, Pat Clemens and Bob Kipper. He also dealt Bill Madlock to the Los Angeles Dodgers for R.J. Reynolds, Cecil Espy and Sid Bream.

With the free-agent signing of Orlando Merced and the drafting of Barry Bonds in the first round (6th pick) of the 1985 draft, a foundation for the Pirates’ early 1990s team had been laid.

“It was a horrible year and it was a horrible team,” Reynolds said. “At the end of that year, they brought us in and gave us an opportunity. It was just kind of a raggedy situation. They had guys who used to be good but were at the end of their careers. They just didn’t have the fire anymore. I was blessed to have Willie Stargell and Grant Jackson as coaches.

“Pittsburgh didn’t have a fanbase then, there was the drug trials. So, I walked into a situation where I think we were there to prove that we were worthy of being on a major league team. We came to Pittsburgh and got to play for a whole month and I knew that I was part of the future.”

Like the current Pirates having pitcher Paul Skenes – recognized as one of the elite pitchers in the game – the team had Bonds, who would become one of the greatest players ever. The parallel is striking.

During the offseason, Thrift was hired as GM and he hired Leyland. They handled the baseball end of the rebirth of Pirates baseball.

“Syd and Jim got it rolling. I will forever be grateful for Pittsburgh because, and I get emotional about it, those guys and the city shaped me. We worked hard and we built a championship team,” Reynolds said.

Thrift drafted Moises Alou in the January draft – who helped him land Zane Smith at the trade deadline in 1990. He also traded for Bob Patterson, drafted Jeff King, who was the top pick of the June 1986 draft, and drafted Stan Belinda.

One of his best moves came before the trade deadline when he acquired Bobby Bonilla back from the Chicago White Sox. The Pirates lost him in the Rule 5 draft in December – a faux pas of the previous regime.

“Joe Brown initially reached out to my father (Syd) to explain the current situation with regard to the club, new ownership structure, the city’s involvement and so on,” said Jim Thrift, Syd’s son. “Joe explained his concern with the current state of the entire organization, from scouting to player development, Latin American scouting and development, and the financial condition of the club.”

The Pirates started their rebound from there.

John Sacco writes a column about local sports history for the Observer-Reporter.