Many of my friends, and myself include, refer to me as “the black cat” when it comes to our favorite sports teams. It dates back to the 1992 Pittsburgh Pirates season and the famous – or rather infamous – play where the Atlanta Braves’ Sid Bream stopped the Pirates from making the World Series and sent them on a 20-year run of baseball purgatory that no adjective can properly describe.

 

It was after watching Bream, perhaps the slowest man in baseball, beat out a throw by the pre-steroid yet already in love with himself Barry Bonds from left field that I began to wonder if I had anything to do with it.

 

After all, I had just  been a few years earlier I had been to my first NBA Finals in Detroit and somehow managed to watch the Pistons lose their only game of the finals. It was a few years prior to that where I was in Detroit for the NBA Eastern Conference finals against the Chicago Bulls to actually witness a bad game by Michael Jordan.

 

Maybe I was snake bit. Yet, the thought never entered my mind until after the game and after realizing that in the middle of the game I agreed to go to Game 1 of the World Series. Yes, I had tickets and only needed the Pirates to win.

 

They didn’t. And for two decades, they stunk so bad at times the vile smell made the occasional odor near the wastewater treatment plant along Interstate 79 seem like a walk through a fresh lilac patch.

 

Granted, for those 20 years of losing I was at Three Rivers Stadium and then PNC park on a regular basis. After all, the stands were usually empty and that meant the price was right for most ball games.

 

I made the trek every year until two years ago. It was the year after the Pirates had a historic collapse that stopped them from finishing above .500 and ending the worst losing skid in professional sports history.

 

So when the 2013 season started and the Pirates started playing lights out baseball, I decided not to go. They made the postseason.

 

When they started the 2014 season equally strong, I once again decided heading to a game may not be a good thing to do. They once again made the playoffs.

 

Now, I understand fully that my appearance at a game – in reality – has no impact on the outcome of a game or the success of a team’s season. Yet, reality and me as a sports fan just don’t mix.

 

This year, just a few weeks ago, I decided to go back to PNC as my nephew was celebrating his birthday and my wife purchased us tickets despite my not necessarily wanting to go. I’m glad we did, and not just because we had a great time before, during and after the game with friends and family.

 

I’m glad because the Pirates somehow won in the face of my presence. More importantly, they won thanks to a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning courtesy of the bat of Starling Marte. Incredibly, the Pirates had just four hits yet still won the game.

 

Maybe this curse thing was behind me.  And maybe, just maybe, I needed a way to celebrate my new joy.

 

What better way to do that than to have other Pirates fans from Bridgeport, Harrison County, West Virginia and beyond send in their favorite Pirates photos of themselves or even their pets to run in a Connect-Bridgeport gallery. It’s not the first time in the last few years I have done this, but it’s the first time I’ve done it with my own pictures involved.

 

Thanks to many of our readers, dozens of photos arrived via email and our included in the gallery below. Please take a second to see who you know.

 

And if you want to be included, please email photos to jeff@connect-bridgeport.com. The photos won’t begin to be added until Tuesday due to the Labor Day weekend, but I’ll include them. Just be sure to let me know who’s pictured.

 

After all, I want everyone to know that I no longer feel like a jinx or a curse. I actually feel kind of jolly.

 

Editor's Note: Top photo is yours truly, left, trying to look cool and failing miserably with a cigar as I'm joined by my nephew Willie Romano on a recent Saturday afternoon game in Pittsburgh.