One of the longest playoff droughts in North American sports ended last week. The Pittsburgh Pirates earned one of the two wild card berths in MLB's National League, ending the team's 20-year playoff drought, as well as a record 20 years of finishing with a losing season.
The last time Pittsburgh made it to the postseason was 1992. It was a memorable postseason for the Pirates and their opponents, the Atlanta Braves.
Every Braves fan old enough to remember can recall when Atlanta rallied from a two-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth against the Pirates. Francisco Cabrera, with one of the most unforgettable pinch hits in MLB postseason history, and Sid Bream, with a game-winning slide, became heroes forever in Atlanta franchise history.
The 1992 National League Championship Series was notable in several ways. It featured two teams headed in very different directions.
First, the Braves: The team went on to play in its second World Series (losing to the Toronto Bluejays in six games), and Atlanta won its division for the next 12 years (in the West and East division).
The Braves won their division for 14 straight seasons. Atlanta won the National League pennant three more times (1995, 1995 and 1999) after 1992, and won the 1995 World Series.
You could make the case that Atlanta never reached its full potential, even in one of the most dominating stretches of MLB history—the team only winning one World Series title in that span.
On the other hand, Pittsburgh in 1992 was seeing the end of great Pirates' baseball—at least, for a long time. That year, the Pirates featured Barry Bonds (whose throw was late getting to home plate for the Braves' game winning score), Andy Van Slyke, Tim Wakefield, Doug Drabek and current Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland.
This was also the final baseball series to be played at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. The Pirates were already facing financial difficulties before the '92 NLCS, with Bonds and Drabek set to become free agents after the season ended.
For Pittsburgh, this was the last of three-straight Eastern Division titles (1990-92), but the team failed to reach the World Series. Bonds (who later played for the San Francisco Giants) and Drabek (who went to the Houston Astros) left after the '92 NLCS loss, and Leyland was gone after the 1996 season.
This year, the Pirates are wild-card participants in the 2013 MLB Playoffs. Pittsburgh will host the Cincinnati Reds in one game, winner-takes-all (and moves on in the playoffs). If the Pirates beat the Reds, they will face the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Division Series—a five game series.
The Braves are also in the postseason, starting against the Los Angeles Dodgers in a five-game series, known as the NLDS.
If Pittsburgh beats the Reds and the Cardinals, and the Braves beat the Dodgers, these two teams will meet in the NLCS for the first time since their legendary 1992 matchup.
I, for one, wouldn't mind for '92 to repeat itself again.
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