from Amazon
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Mario greatest in Pittsburgh history
Excellent interview, and I quite enjoyed this perspective from a Pittsburgh local:
DeMaro: He’s number one and it’s not close. Barry Bonds may be the greatest baseball player of all time and he was a Pirate. Clemente is a legend in the Latin community, and he may be more popular in Pittsburgh. The Steelers have had more all-time greats than any other franchise in NFL history. Yet none of those people did for their sport, their city, what Mario Lemieux did for hockey in Pittsburgh. He saved the floundering franchise with his talent in the mid-80’s. He won Stanley Cups in the early 90’s. He saved the franchise again in the late 90’s by—literally—buying the bankrupt team after converting owed salary (about $30 million) into equity. He then saved the team again a few years later, turning Jim Balsillie’s last-minute rescinded offer into an eventual agreement on a new arena. That arena deal, largely orchestrated by Lemieux, will keep the Pens in Pittsburgh for the next 30 years. So as historic as Bonds talent was, as graceful and important as Clemente was, as dominant as the Steelers talent has been for decades...no Pittsburgh sporting icon will likely ever touch Mario Lemieux’s impact.
It’s interesting. In Montreal, the icons would be Maurice Richard first and foremost, and then after that, Jean Beliveau, Guy Lafleur, Patrick Roy, then maybe Jacques Plante, Larry Robinson, Ken Dryden and a few others in their group. Now, suppose the Expos franchise were saved, and that somehow Larry Walker or Vladimir Guerrero or Pedro Martinez played a pivotal role. And a World Series followed. And 3 million fans attended every year. Whichever Expos great would have saved the franchise would still come in the third tier in the list above. Expos would have been beloved, but hockey is a fabric for the city.
DeMaro however is suggesting that hockey is pervasive enough in Pittsburgh that Mario Lemieux has reached the pinnacle in the sports landscape there, that Bonds, Clemente, Bradshaw come in the second tier. How accurate is DeMaro’s portrayal? I’d like to hear from people in Pittsburgh.
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