Jim Bowden finally solves Pirates fandom by insulting everyone in Pittsburgh

Former MLB general manager Jim Bowden went on the Foul Territory podcast and bravely proposed the boldest idea in modern sports discourse: if your team stinks, simply stop being a fan.

Bowden's advice to fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates and other “bottom-15 markets”? If your team doesn’t win, just stop caring. Trade yourself to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Root for someone else. Watch them come into your city and beat your hometown team, and hey — at least you get to feel good.

That isn't just lazy analysis; it’s wildly tone deaf, insulting and completely disconnected from what sports fandom actually is. Because here’s the thing that Bowden — a former GM who’s been paid by the sport his entire adult life — seems to completely miss: fandom isn’t a streaming subscription you cancel when the content gets bad.

You don’t just “become a Dodgers fan” the same way you switch phone carriers. People are raised into this. It’s passed down. It’s grandparents and parents and summer nights and AM radio and cheap seats and heartbreaks that somehow still matter.

Most of us didn’t choose this. We were born into it. Raised into it. Dragged to Three Rivers or PNC Park by parents or grandparents who passed this thing down like a family heirloom — along with stories, heartbreak, and the faint hope that someday it would all be worth it. That bond matters. In fact, it's the whole point.

But apparently Bowden thinks none of that counts. Who cares about the memories of being a kid watching Andrew McCutchen's debut? Who cares about crying happy tears in your college dorm when the 2013 Pirates secured a winning record for the first time in your entire life? Who cares about your dad regaling you with stories of the Mazeroski homer or "We Are Family"? Who cares about the first time you walked across the Roberto Clemente Bridge and felt like this was yours?

Just grab a Dodgers hat and call it a day!

What a joke.

This is the same hollow logic that reduces sports to spreadsheets and championships alone, as if the only thing that makes fandom valid is a parade. By that standard, why should any fan suffer through a rebuild? Why should anyone invest emotionally in a team that isn’t already printing rings?

Because the payoff — if it ever comes — means something precisely because of the suffering. Pirates fans don’t want a borrowed trophy. We don’t want to piggyback on a superteam assembled by financial gravity. We want our moment. In our city. With our players. With decades of frustration finally released in one unforgettable night.

That feeling can’t be replicated by hopping onto a bandwagon that already knows it’ll be back next year anyway.

Jim Bowden's "Just become a Dodgers fan" is the most out-of-touch take in sports

When Bowden encourages Pirates fans to "retire" or "trade" themselves to the Dodgers, what he's really saying is this:

“The system is broken, and instead of fixing it, fans should emotionally adapt.”

How convenient. Because if fans follow that advice, ownership groups never feel pressure. Payroll disparity becomes normal. Competitive imbalance becomes “just the way it is.” And the sport quietly shrinks into a handful of superteams playing to half-empty parks everywhere else.

And let’s be honest — the whole point of sports is the payoff after the suffering. The Chicago Cubs don’t break a 108-year curse if everyone “trades themselves” to the New York Yankees in 1985. The Boston Red Sox don’t flip history in 2004 if their fans just say, “Eh, this is hard — go Dodgers.” The Houston Astros don’t rise from irrelevance. The Kansas City Royals don’t shock the world. The Detroit Tigers don’t make 2012 matter.

Those moments only hit because of the years that utterly sucked before them, but Bowden’s take spits directly on that idea. It says the journey doesn’t matter — only the ring count does. And if that’s the case, why even pretend baseball is a regional sport anymore? Just rebrand the league as the Dodgers Invitational and call it a day.

This is the same kind of thinking that wonders why attendance is down, why younger fans feel disconnected, why entire regions are apathetic. You don’t grow the sport by telling people their loyalty is stupid. You don’t sustain a league by encouraging fans to emotionally quit.

Rooting for your team — especially when it’s hard — isn’t a flaw. It’s the whole damn point.

Fans aren’t the problem. Loyalty isn’t the problem. Passion isn’t the problem. The problem is a system that tells small-market fans to either accept irrelevance or stop caring — and then acts surprised when people get angry.

So no, Jim. Pirates fans aren’t going to “trade ourselves to the Dodgers.” We’re not abandoning our city, our families, or our history just to feel included. We’ll stay. We’ll complain. We’ll hope. And yeah — we’ll demand better.

Because if fandom were that disposable, baseball wouldn’t be worth saving in the first place.