PITTSBURGH – When you think of Pittsburgh’s sports teams, two phrases might come to mind: “City of Champions” and “Black and Gold”. The Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates all proudly wear black and gold in Pittsburgh, the only city in the United States that shares great professional teams
PITTSBURGH – When you think of Pittsburgh’s sports teams, two phrases might come to mind: “City of Champions” and “Black and Gold”. The Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates proudly wear black and gold in Pittsburgh, the only city in the United States where all major professional teams have the same basic colors.
It wasn’t always like this, however. The pirates once wore red and blue, not the modern colors of the city. Let’s take a quick look back at the history of how the three most iconic teams in the city of Pittsburgh, including the Pirates, wore black and gold.
It all starts with the Pittsburgh Pirates. No, not the Major League Baseball pirates. Not even the National Football League pirates, the name the Steelers first bore from 1933 to 1939. This is about the National Hockey League team known as the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1925 to 1930. Although it should be noted that the hockey pirates were actually named after the Pittsburgh baseball club, which also inspired the original football team name. (Do you have all of this?)
The NHL pirates wore black and gold uniforms that matched the colors of the city’s flag and seal. These colors in the city’s coat of arms come from the family crest of William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, and the city’s namesake. The ice hockey team eventually switched colors to black and orange, moved to Philadelphia and became the Quakers before folding.
But these short-lived pirates were the first team in Pittsburgh to wear black and gold, the colors that now serve as a source of civic pride, and their history in those uniforms would later help round out the trio of black and gold clad teams permanently 50 years after they left town.
The Steelers present a much simpler story. The city’s soccer team has worn black and gold since its inception in 1933. The only time the Steelers strayed from Pittsburgh’s colors was in 1943 when they temporarily merged with Philadelphia to form a team known as the “Steagles,” dressed in green and white, the colors of the eagles .
As for the town’s original pirates, is the baseball team now synonymous with black and gold? They wore red, white and blue in their early years. They started introducing black and gold in 1947, according to The Pittsburgh Press, and they first wore their current colors on their uniforms in 1948.
“General Manager Roy Hamey and Manager Billy Herman are not satisfied with redesigning Forbes Field, the front office and even the squad. They even worked out a new deal for the home and street uniforms,” said an article in the Pittsburgh Press January 21. 1947. “The colors of the pirates will now be gold and black, colors of the city of Pittsburgh itself, instead of red and blue, although the gold will not appear on the uniforms.”
The introduction of gold to uniforms is found in a handful of archived newspaper reports dated Jan. 4, 1948, though the news was overshadowed in two articles by the announcement that home games would begin on weekdays and double heads on Sunday at 1:30 p.m.
From the Pittsburgh Press: “There are some changes being made to the pirate uniforms for 1948. The word “pirates” is written in black block letters with a gold border on the shirts. The numbers on the back of the shirts are also black and bordered with gold. Each player will wear black stockings, with three gold ribbons surrounding the stockings. “
From the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph: “For years the pirates have been recognized as a well-tailored team. With this in mind, the owners decided to add a little bit of splash to the diamond finish. The colors black and gold of the city of Pittsburgh and the pirates will dominate in the new uniforms. “
The pirates have since worn black and gold. It was their success winning two world championships in those colors in the 1970s, along with the Steelers’ Super Bowl dominance that decade that eventually spurred the penguins to adopt the city’s unified color palette.
The Penguins wore blues and whites from 1967 to 1980, but in early January 1980 they wanted to coordinate more closely with the thriving pirates of Steel City (fresh from a 1979 World Series win and Steelers (weeks before their fourth Super Bowl). It was announced that the penguins would follow suit and switch to black and gold.
The team’s imminent color change was the source of such an inescapable speculative team that The Pittsburgh Press attempted – inaccurately – to shoot it down in the first paragraph of a story about the Penguins’ 5-3 victory over the Canadians on January 3rd. 1980: “The rumor that the penguins will transform into black and gold uniforms is not true. And last night they proved that the uniforms and their color are less important than the men in them. “
Four days later, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette stated, “No, [the Penguins] did not break out in black and gold uniforms. The rumor that they are switching to black and gold lives on. “
Three days later, the penguins announced that they would join the pirates and stealers by switching to black and gold uniforms. “Black and gold has become Pittsburgh,” Team Vice President Paul Martha told The Pittsburgh Press. “And the penguins are Pittsburgh.”
The Boston Bruins tried to prevent this, arguing that they owned black and gold, and protested the penguins’ change. However, NHL President John Ziegler rejected the Bruins’ request in part because black and gold had previously been worn by another ice hockey team in Pittsburgh’s history: the pirates.
Adam Berry has been reporting on The Pirates for MLB.com since 2015. Follow him on Twitter @adamdberry.
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