The Pittsburgh Pirates Have Many Hidden Heroes.
There are the men who play on the field every night, whose jerseys we wear, whose names we chant, whose triumphs we celebrate, whose losses we mourn. They are a special kind of hero – the ones on the baseball cards – they are members of an elite brotherhood just 750 strong who every year captivate our minds and our hearts playing a child’s game on a very grown-up stage. But for the Pittsburgh Pirates and every Major League Baseball team that takes the field each night, there is another team working behind the scenes to make sure every game goes off without a hitch – for the players and the fans. They are the Hidden Heroes of baseball – and these are their stories.
For Bradenton Mayor Wayne Poston, Lasting Partnerships are the Keys to Sustainable Growth
In the rule changes announced by MLB this week, adding cheerleaders to the game of baseball was NOT among the bullet points in the memo. But if it were, the Pittsburgh Pirates would not have to look far to find the head of their squad – Wayne Poston, Mayor of the Pirates Spring Training home, Bradenton, Florida. In his 17 years in office, he’s never missed a home Spring Training game. And he’s actively working to clear his desk in 2017 to make sure he can fit in the extra two added to this year’s schedule.
“The City of Bradenton and the Pirates have, I think, as good a relationship as there is in major league baseball,” Poston said. “Our relationship is just like the City of Bradenton itself. We look after each other, we care about each other and we respect each other.”
Poston, who began his fifth term as Mayor in January, first took office in 2000. He classifies himself as a “working Mayor.” As such, he puts a lot of effort into balancing relationship-building with local business and industry while fulfilling his number one duty – representing the residents of Bradenton.
In 2007, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the City of Bradenton signed an epic, 30-year leasing agreement. Poston was a member of the group who negotiated the arrangement.
“There were two other teams at that time who were negotiating a contract and they were like, 10 years. We were actually doing that too,” he recounted. “Then our conversations led us to say, ‘Hey, look, we want to do strategic planning, we want to plan for the future. You guys can make some investments, we’ll make some investments, so let’s set a time period that will really make sense for us to do that.'”
The agreement gave both parties some breathing room to more deeply explore the opportunities for growth and development in Manatee County and along Florida’s Gulf Coast.
“That set the standard for Spring Training baseball in the state of Florida,” Poston said proudly.
A Reds Fan, Converted
Like many people who end up in Florida, Poston explained, “we’re all from somewhere else.” For him, home started out a lot closer to Pittsburgh, in Athens, Ohio. A university town definitely located in Cincinnati Reds country.
“Growing up I was a Reds fan, and I’ll tell you why. On Saturdays when I was washing and drying my car and listening to the radio, the only radio network I could get was the Burger Beer Baseball Network that had the Cincinnati Reds,” he recalled. He also used to take day excursions on the train from Athens to Cincinnati to take in a game when he could. That’s a very Ohio tradition.
After graduating with a degree in Journalism from Ohio University, Poston joined the Air Force, where he served for four years. He then headed off to graduate school at the University of South Carolina, before fate led him to Bradenton.
All Roads Lead to Bradenton (and Back Again)
“A friend of mine actually had an interview at the Bradenton Herald for a city editor job. And he came and told me, ‘I’m gonna go to law school, so I’m going to have to tell them that I’m not coming to take the interview,'” Poston recalled. “I told him, ‘I’ll take your interview.’ So I just showed up. And it was all good. They hired me.”
He served as the managing editor for the paper for two years before taking a newspaper job in Roanoke, Virginia. Then his company purchased the Herald, and suddenly, he became the go-to guy for all sorts of operational inquiries.
“They finally said, ‘Why don’t you just come to Miami and interview for the job down here?’” he explained. “So, it’s December, and I’m in Virginia. How fast could I get there?” he asked, chuckling. This time, the move to Bradenton stuck.
Poston served as managing editor for the Herald again from 1974-1976. He was promoted to executive editor and vice president in 1976 and served in those roles until 1999 when he retired at 55.
“When you retire at 55 you discover you have no one to play with,” he said. “Everybody else is still working. So, what do you do?”
For a charismatic, energetic, no nonsense guy like Poston, the answer was public service.
A Partnership as Strong as Steel
While it’s easy to think that given the size of the Pirates’ investment, the $65 million the team and its High -A team the Bradenton Marauders pumped into the Bradenton economy in 2015 alone and the glamour of professional baseball, the team could really call the shots with the city. That’s just not true, Poston said. Throughout all the years that the Pirates have made Bradenton their home (since 1969), the owners have worked to develop a partnership with their southern locale.
To that end, Poston and a group of other delegates from Bradenton visit their counterparts in city government and management in Pittsburgh annually as part of a “sister city-type of alliance,” he said. The Pirates advertise Bradenton and the beautiful Anna Maria Island during broadcasts on Root Sports Pittsburgh and throughout PNC Park and even invite the Bradenton folks up to Pittsburgh for the annual Pirates Charities Golf Tournament. Poston boasts, they’ve won the tourney a few times. “In all fairness, we do get more opportunities to practice down here,” he said laughing.
There’s another reason the connection is so strong, he said. People.
“Because of the long-term relationship with the Pirates, we have a lot more people from Pittsburgh who are living here now,” he said. “They came down once, retired and decided, ‘Well if I’m gonna retire in Florida, I’m gonna go to where the Pirates are,’ so it has been beneficial to us – and to people from Pittsburgh, too.”
Some of those residents include retired Pirates, and some folks currently on the payroll, including former Bucco hurler and current announcer Steve Blass, as well as Pirates Manager Clint Hurdle. Hurdle owns a home on Anna Maria Island.
“He’s a teriffic guy. I can’t say enough about Clint,” Poston said starting to chuckle. “The only thing that man can’t do, is when he goes home to the island, he can’t get by the ice cream shop on Manatee Avenue without stopping. He’s always there!”
Fans For Life
While Poston obviously enjoys his post and the great relationship between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the City of Bradenton through Spring Training baseball, he never lets it get in the way of his commitment to the residents and visitors to the city. When he first lived in the city in the early 1970’s the average age was 69. Now, that number is 47.
“We’ve had a dramatic change and that’s because the town has grown. It’s because of partnerships like this. And I think we’ve done things the right way,” he said. “We work very hard on making sure we do that.”
Beyond being fan-friendly, it’s also smart business.
“They’re feeding the small businesses. The Pirates come down here for Spring Training and even for training and rehab and they’re doing rental properties, they’re doing the restaurants, they’re shopping in the stores,” he said. “It’s a pro sport and it’s fun and we love it. But it’s an economic development piece, as much as it is professional baseball,” he added.
Providing a fun environment for residents and visitors is something the city and the Pirates agreed on a long time ago, he said, and there are no plans to let up now. “We’re not changing this in a way that’s not fan-friendly, because that’s what it’s all about,” he added.
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