For the Pittsburgh Pirates, it's become a trip to dread. Big time.
With its 6-5 loss to the Brewers last night, Pittsburgh now has lost 17 games in a row at Milwaukee's Miller Park. That probably isn't a record – the old St. Louis Browns seem to have gone through most of the 1930s without winning a game at the original Yankee Stadium – but it adds one more item to the Pirates' long list of negatives.
The team has an opportunity to end the streak this afternoon before returning home Friday. And even if the Pirates lose, they're still one game above .500. So that's good, at least.
Miller Park wasn't always an automatic defeat for Pittsburgh. The Pirates won the first game they ever played there, with Jason Schmidt and two relievers combining for a 3-0 shutout on May 11, 2001.
And the following year, the Pirates swept the Brewers in an early-season three-game series, immediately after which Milwaukee fired manager Davey Lopes. And on the next visit to Miller Park, in July 2002, Pittsburgh won the first three games of a four-game series.
On July 9, 2003, then-Pirate Randall Simon whacked one of the Brewers' sausage mascots with a bat in what he thought was a humorous gesture. He ended up being arrested, fined and suspended.
That incident doesn't seem to have jinxed the Pirates, at least not right away. The team's Miller Park record after that was a decent 12-13 through the end of 2006.
On May 3, 2007, Tom Gorzelanny outdueled Dave Bush in a 4-2 Pirates victory. The next day, the Brewers won, 10-0, starting a losing streak that persists to this day.
At least, it persisted through yesterday. We'll see if the Miller Park curse ends today.
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