Jim Rooker knows what you’re thinking. Yes, he’s glad Pittsburgh Pirates play-by-play announcer Greg Brown didn’t dare utter the words Friday night after a nine-run first inning against the Colorado Rockies.
“If we lose this game, I’ll walk back to Pittsburgh.”
The Philadelphia Phillies made Rooker regret making that statement on the KDKA Radio broadcast June 8, 1989, when they rallied from a 10-run first-inning deficit for a 15-11 comeback victory over the Pirates.
Where Rooker took his foot out of his mouth and put it to pavement with “Rook’s Unintentional Walk” — a 310-mile charitable trek from Veterans Stadium to Three Rivers Stadium — he knows Brown wouldn’t want to walk back from Denver after the Rockies rallied from a nine-run deficit for a 17-16 walk-off win.
“That would be a hell of a lot more difficult to do,” Rooker told TribLive by phone Saturday morning. “It’s just such a helpless place. All you could do was shake your head. I remember when we got off to that lead in Philly. By maybe the fourth inning, you just got that feeling: ‘This is not going to end well.’ You knew it. You’re hoping against it, but you can’t control it.”
In a season filled with fiascos from the start, this was a new low for the Pirates. The Rockies are far and away the worst team in baseball, entering Saturday’s game with a 29-80 record, yet scored 17 runs on 22 hits, including eight doubles and four home runs against the Pirates.
How low can they go?
The cruel irony is that a day after they traded two-time All-Star closer David Bednar to the New York Yankees for three prospects, Dennis Santana surrendered five runs in the ninth inning. Rooker was watching the Yankees-Miami Marlins game Friday night, wanting out of curiosity to see how Bednar fared in his debut for his new team.
Meantime, SportsNet Pittsburgh studio host Rob King was texting updates on the Pirates-Rockies game to Rooker all night. Even when a 15-6 lead was cut to 15-10 in the fifth inning, Rooker wasn’t worried.
“They were giving scores of other games, and it looked like the Pirates were in a comfort zone and should be able to hold on,” Rooker said. “The last one I got from Rob was ‘final score.’ That was it. It was too funny. I had to laugh.”
Pirates fans have had to laugh to keep from crying this season. On Opening Day, second baseman Nick Gonzales aggravated a fractured left ankle on his home run trot. The Pirates lost three of four games, all by walk-off, to a Marlins team that lost 100 games last year.
On April Fool’s Day, they optioned Bednar to Triple-A Indianapolis, demoting one of their most popular players and a three-time Roberto Clemente Award nominee for his charitable work.
Before the home opener, a plane with a banner that urged Pirates chairman Bob Nutting to sell the team flew over PNC Park and a sellout crowd started “Sell the team!” chants.
It only got worse when news broke that the Pirates dumped the Bucco Bricks at the home plate entrance in a recycling center without telling the fans who purchased them. They replaced a sign honoring franchise legend Roberto Clemente in right field with a Surfside can advertisement without informing the Hall of Famer’s family.
Even worse, a fan was seriously injured when he fell over the 21-foot Clemente Wall in the middle of play during a game. The Pirates fired manager Derek Shelton amid a seven-game losing streak and what would become an MLB record-tying string of 26 consecutive games without scoring more than four runs.
Even when the Pirates got it right with back-to-back sweeps of the New York Mets and St. Louis Cardinals — finishing the homestand with three consecutive shutouts — they followed it by getting swept in back-to-back series, with three consecutive shutouts at the Seattle Mariners and the Kansas City Royals.
Just when it looked like things couldn’t get worse, the Pirates were swept at home by the American League-worst Chicago White Sox. Not only did the Pirates drop three consecutive against a team that set an MLB-record 121 games in 2024, but they did so by a combined 27-7.
That appeared to be rock bottom, until Friday’s loss to the Rockies.
It’s all hard to fathom for the 82-year-old Rooker, a left-handed pitcher who started Game 5 of the 1979 World Series for the “We Are Family” Pirates and later became a broadcaster known for his candor. Rooker feels for the fans, who have to wonder, What’s coming next?
“We always had a phrase, ‘Once a Bucco, always a Bucco,’” Rooker said. “The fact that we won the World Series really bonded us guys together. To see the organization take such steps backwards — I’m not there, so somebody could say he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about — but to see some of the decision-making makes you scratch your head. … It’s a comedy of errors. Nothing will surprise me anymore.
“Yes, it’s rock bottom but something else will happen.”
Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.
