William Taggart

Lore & Background

The early Pirates were a team in constant flux—rosters turned over each spring, managers came and went, and the identity of the club was less a brand than a stubborn local pride. In that world, a player like Taggart was part of the everyday machinery: the glove work in the outfield, the routine double plays, the Tuesday-night games against a crowd that was still learning to fill the stands. There were no retired numbers, no Hall of Fame plaques yet; there was just the next game, the next at-bat, the next season where you might be gone.

What makes figures from this era resonate with modern Pirates fans is the sheer continuity. The same ballpark neighborhood, the same city's identity wrapped around the team, the same rivalry with Cincinnati that had been brewing since the 1880s. Taggart's name sits in that unbroken thread—a link between the rough-hewn beginnings and the polished, storied franchise that would eventually produce the 1971 and 1979 pennant teams.

In the oral tradition of Pittsburgh baseball, these early names are spoken of with a kind of fond, slightly confused respect. You know they were there. You know the team needed them. The details are hazy, the photographs grainy, but the fact that the club survived and grew because of players like that is part of the story every fan carries, even if they can't name the man.

In Their Own Story

The October air off the Monongahela had that particular bite that made the bench players pull their collars tight. Taggart sat on the end of the bench, glove in his lap, watching the last out fly toward the gap. The crowd was thinning—most had gone to the taverns on Fifth Street—but a few dozen stayed, the ones who'd been coming since the team was still figuring out whether it could hold a season together. He did not play in that game. He had not played in the last three. But he was there, in the threadbare cap, because that was the deal: you showed up, you waited, and if the season ran long enough, maybe the manager would look at you before the ninth. He laced his glove tighter, watched the umpire gather the bases, and thought about the train back to the hotel. The diamond was already dark. The lights they'd installed last summer flickered and held. Somewhere in the stands, a kid was holding a scorecard with the team's name on it, and Taggart thought that was enough. That was the whole job, really. Be there. Be part of the thing. Let the next guy remember the year the team made it, and know that the bench was warm because someone had sat in it.

Reader's Guide

The 1880s and 1890s were the Pirates' proving ground. The franchise, still young and still called by various local monikers, was wrestling with the raw economics of a minor-league-to-major-league transition. The team played in a ballpark that was more dirt lot than cathedral, and the roster was a patchwork of local talent and journeymen from other circuits. Key figures from this stretch were less about individual stardom and more about institutional survival: keeping the team solvent, keeping the rivalry with Cincinnati alive, and building the fanbase that would eventually fill the stands week after week. The arc of this era was one of slow, stubborn accumulation. There were no dramatic pennant races to point to; instead, the story was the team simply continuing to exist, to field a lineup on opening day, to send a pennant to the next season. Players like Taggart were part of that continuity—the human ballast that kept the franchise afloat through lean years. Today, when Pirates fans talk about the club's identity, they often reference the 1970s or the 2013 run. But the roots go deeper. The stubbornness, the blue-collar pride, the sense that the team belongs to the city and not the other way around—that was forged in these early, unglamorous decades. Taggart's name is a small thread in that weave, a reminder that the franchise's story did not begin with a highlight reel.

Did You Know?

• The Pittsburgh Pirates' rivalry with the Cincinnati Reds dates back to the 1880s, making it one of the oldest ongoing rivalries in professional baseball.
• In the franchise's earliest decades, the team played in ballparks that were significantly smaller and less developed than the modern PNC Park, with seating for only a few thousand fans.
• The Pirates' name and identity evolved over time; the 'Buccaneers' moniker that stuck was not the team's only designation in its formative years.
• Early Pirates rosters turned over heavily season to season, meaning a player could be a regular one year and gone the next—a reality that made individual legacies harder to preserve.