April Pickups

[z28jd]

Just a quick story on Bierbauer and the Pirates name, don't want to get the April pick-up thread off topic, so I'll leave it at this.

After signing Bierbauer and others, the Philadelphia owners did say they "pirated" players from other teams and a few out of town papers called them Pirates in 1891(Boston, Chicago and Cincinnati), but the local paper still referred to them either as the Alleghenys at the beginning of that season or as the Hanlons after manager Ned Hanlon. When Bill McGunnigle took over later in the season, he used a whistle during practices and the team then became known as the Pets. A name that was used quite often. Pirates was never used by the local papers.

The Pirates nickname didn't catch on until later and it may have more to do with the owner of the club at the time, William Kerr, who was called Captain Kerr and had a pet parrot in his office, that was an ill-mannered bird and quite famous.