Pirates vs Cubs

Lore & Background

Long before the NL Central existed, the Pirates and Cubs were already trading wounds. In the 1960s and '70s, both clubs were defined by a style of baseball that fans and writers described as bitter—defensive, grinding, emotionally raw. The Pirates of the Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell era played with a ferocity that made opponents flinch, while the Cubs of Ernie Banks and Fergie Jenkins matched that intensity with a stubbornness that bordered on defiance. Head-to-head games in those decades carried an edge that transcended the box score; a stolen base, a diving catch, a walk-off single could ignite a rivalry that stretched across 700 miles of Pennsylvania and Illinois.

The 1994 realignment turned that simmering into a daily contest. Thirty games a year meant the same pitchers, the same ballpark quirks, the same fan-section hostility became routine. Wrigley Field's ivy-covered brick walls and the wind off the Monongahela at PNC Park (or, for three decades, the concrete bowl of Three Rivers) became stages for a rivalry that Pittsburgh fans describe as personal in a way that few others are. The Cubs' 2016 parade in Chicago—ending the longest active title drought in American professional sports—landed like a slap across the table, and the Pirates' own 2013 and 2014 World Series runs, though ultimately unsuccessful, kept the flame lit on both sides.

What makes this rivalry endure is not just the titles on the wall but the style. Both franchises have historically prized defense, pitching, and emotional intensity over raw power. The result is a rivalry that feels like two old neighbors who've been arguing over a property line for a hundred years—furious, familiar, and impossible to walk away from.

In Their Own Story

The August night air over Wrigley Field hung thick with the smell of cut grass and hot dogs, the ivy on the left-field wall catching the last amber light before the stadium lamps flickered on. A Pirates shortstop, glove still damp from a second-inning diving stop, squinted up at the scoreboard and felt the familiar knot in his stomach. Two outs. Bottom of the ninth. The Cubs' leadoff hitter stepped in, and the crack of the bat echoed off the brick like a gunshot. The ball sailed toward the ivy, and for three seconds the entire ballpark went silent. It landed on the wall. The runner trotted to first. The Pirates' pitcher stared at his glove, jaw tight, and the 40,000 voices around him turned to a low, grinding hum. He knew, the way you know a cold front coming off the lake, that this was the kind of night that would be replayed in Pittsburgh barbershops for a decade. He walked back to the mound, set his glove on the dirt, and muttered a curse that his catcher would swear he never heard. The rivalry, as always, did not need a trophy to be real. It lived in the dirt, the glove-taps, the 700 miles of interstate between two cities that refused to let the other one win easy.

Reader's Guide

The animosity is old—older than the division. Both clubs date to the 1880s, and for decades they met only twice a year as cross-league-style cross-country opponents. The bitterness was stylistic before it was structural: two teams that played defense-first, emotionally charged baseball and treated every at-bat like a personal slight. The 1994 NL Central realignment turned that simmer into a 30-game annual war, and the rivalry has never cooled.

The most memorable head-to-head moments tend to cluster around late-season divisional battles and postseason encounters. The Pirates' 2013 and 2014 World Series runs, and the Cubs' 2016 championship that ended a 108-year drought, bookend a stretch where every series felt like a referendum on who was the 'real' bitter ball of the National League.

For Pittsburgh fans, the rivalry is personal because the Cubs have a way of winning the games that matter most in the most infuriating fashion—a walk-off, a defensive gem, a bullpen that refuses to crack. It's the neighbor who always mows his lawn at 6 a.m. on a Sunday. It's the team that makes you feel like you're one bad pitch away from a season's worth of regret.

The trash talk that captures it: 'You can have your ivy and your 108 years of waiting. We'll take the five rings and the right to tell you about it for the next century.'

Did You Know?

• The Cubs hold the record for the most World Series championships in MLB history with 18 titles, while the Pirates have won 5.
• The NL Central was created in the 1994 realignment, placing the Pirates and Cubs in the same division for the first time in their long histories.
• Wrigley Field, the Cubs' home since 1916, is the oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball and one of only two remaining with a hand-painted scoreboard.
• The Pirates played at Three Rivers Stadium from 1970 to 2000, a concrete multi-purpose arena that fans on both sides of the rivalry often cite as a defining (and divisive) chapter in the rivalry's atmosphere.