Pirates vs Reds

Lore & Background

The animosity is older than any single player. In the 1890s and early 1900s, the Pirates and Reds were both small-market, working-class clubs whose fans filled the stands with factory workers, dockhands, and riverboat crews. The identity was local and physical: you were a Pirate or a Red, and the other city was the next town down the river. There was no national television, no national narrative—just the scorecard in the local paper and the argument at the bar on the next street over.

The rivalry sharpened in the 1970s, when both clubs were contenders. The Reds' Big Red Machine era—Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, Johnny Bench—produced back-to-back World Series titles in 1975 and 1976, and the Pirates, led by Willie Stargell and the 1971 championship core, were never far behind. Head-to-head series in that decade carried the weight of divisional supremacy, and the fan bases on both sides of the river treated every loss as a personal slight. The Pirates' 1979 title and the Reds' 1990 championship bookended a stretch where neither city could fully dominate the other.

Today the rivalry lives in the NL Central schedule, in the shared broadcast packages, and in the small, persistent details: the way a Reds fan in Cincinnati will point at the river and say, 'That's our water,' and the way a Pirate in Pittsburgh will answer, 'You're just the next stop.' It is not the loudest rivalry in baseball, but it is one of the most continuous, and that continuity is its own kind of legend.

In Their Own Story

October, 1971. Three Rivers Stadium is a cauldron of noise, the kind of sound that you feel in your molars before you hear it. The Pirates are one win from the World Series, and the Reds are in the dugout across the diamond, watching. You can see the bench: the red caps, the white pinstripes, the quiet tension of men who know the next out could end a season. A ground ball rolls toward second base, and the whole stadium holds its breath. The ball stops. The runner slides. The umpire's hand goes up. The Pirates' bench erupts. In the Reds' dugout, a catcher pulls his mask off, stares at the dirt, and says nothing. He doesn't need to. Everyone in that stadium knows what just happened, and everyone in Cincinnati will know by morning. The river will carry the story downstream, the way it always does.

Reader's Guide

The origin of the animosity is geography and class. Pittsburgh and Cincinnati are two heavy-industry cities on the same river, and their baseball clubs were built by the same kind of people: steelworkers, coal miners, dockhands. The rivalry was never about glamour or market size. It was about who got to call the river their own, and that question has never been fully settled.

The most memorable head-to-head stretch is the 1970s, when both clubs were perennial contenders and the NL East (later NL Central) schedule forced them into repeated, high-stakes series. The Reds' Big Red Machine and the Pirates' 1971 and 1979 championship teams turned every meeting into a referendum on which river town had the better ballclub. The 1975 and 1976 Reds titles stung Pittsburgh; the 1979 Pirates title stung Cincinnati. Neither side let the other forget it.

What makes the rivalry personal for Pittsburgh fans is the proximity. This is not a cross-country rivalry you can distance yourself from. The Reds are the next city on the map, the next name on the schedule, the next voice on the radio. A loss to Cincinnati feels like a neighbor's dog got into your garden. It is small, specific, and deeply felt.

The one line of trash talk that captures the feeling: 'You're just the next stop on the river, and we're not stopping for you.'

Did You Know?

• Pete Rose, the all-time Major League hits leader with 4,256 career hits, spent the majority of his career (1969–1986) as the Reds' leadoff hitter, making him the single most recognizable face of the Cincinnati half of th
• The Pirates and Reds have both been National League members since the 1880s, meaning their head-to-head record spans well over 130 seasons—longer than most nations have been independent.
• The NL Central division, which made the Pirates and Reds direct divisional rivals every season, was created in 1994 as part of a broader MLB realignment.
• Roberto Clemente, the Pirates' Hall of Fame outfielder who played 18 seasons with Pittsburgh, was a fixture in this rivalry during the 1960s, when the Reds were a consistent NL East competitor.