Video: Official Theme Song of 1990 Pittsburgh Pirates

Cease your typically ceaseless toil, America, and/or put all those crying babies down: Andy Smith of Bugs and Cranks has excavated from the fossil-rich soil of the internet this YouTube Viewing Event.

What you’re watching when you watch this video is a seven-minute segment from Inside Pirates Baseball, circa 1990 — documenting the invention of the team’s official theme song, “You Gotta Believe” and a music video for the song itself.

Among the many splendors, you can expect to find:

• Men with comically Italian surnames (see: Pontieri, Ernie; Falotico, Frank and Ray).
• Men with comical other things, too (see: hair, facial and otherwise).
• A version of the world in which the Pirates are not terrible.

Furthermore, if you’re the sort of person who’s shaken and/or stirred by coincidences, then this one might appeal to you: just minutes before notice of the video came across my gold-embroidered RSS feed, I read these exact words from Bill James’ Baseball Book 1992:

The Pirates over the next decade can be seen as engaged in a war between the field level management, which is superb, and the ownership, which is out to lunch. The shortcomings of the Pirate ownership group are certain to manifest themselves in the performance of the front office, and will ultimately undermine the ballclub. So it’s kind of an interesting study, to see how long good talent management can stave off the effects of incompetent financial management.

In fact, it wasn’t that long, at all. Looking at the Pirates’ Baseball Reference page, one will notice that 1992 was, in fact, the team’s last season above .500.

H/T: WHYGAVS