How The Pittsburgh Pirates Got Their Name

There was professional baseball in the area as long ago as April 15, 1876, when the Pittsburgh Alleghenys first played at Union Park. That club was named for Allegheny City, the former municipality across the Allegheny River from downtown Pittsburgh that’s now known as the city’s North Side.

Star second baseman Lou Bierbauer, who played for the Philadelphia Athletics in the American Association before spending a year with the Brooklyn Ward’s Wonders in the Players League, never signed a contract to return to Philadelphia. That effectively made him a free agent, and the Alleghenys pounced to sign him to a contract with Pittsburgh for the next season. The outcry among the lead was crazy and everyone said they were pirating this guy from the Philadelphia Athletics. Pittsburgh officially nicknamed itself the Pirates for the 1891 season and it stuck. It was actually a later influx of players, though, that turned the Pirates from a struggling team into a club that made two World Series appearances in the first decade of the 1900s.

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