So it's official: The Pittsburgh Pirates have set the unwanted North American professional sports record of 17 consecutive losing seasons. They have replaced the Philadelphia Phillies of 1933-48 who, prior to the 2008 season, stood alone on the top shelf of the futility trophy case with 16 consecutive losing campaigns.

Diehard Pirates fans and players from the Pirates' championship seasons of 1960, 1971 and 1979 are feeling sad or, perhaps, angry that the team has plummeted to such a depth. After all, Pittsburgh enthusiastically regards itself as the City of Champions, after having won the Super Bowl and Stanley Cup in a span of just over four months this year.

That City of Champions label was initially claimed in 1979 after the Pirates won what would be their last World Series — 14 years before the start of the Bucs' current stretch of sports mediocrity — and the Steelers won their third Super Bowl.

Pittsburgh, despite some lackluster years recorded by all of its professional sports teams since 1979, has been reluctant to relinquish that "City of Champions" claim to fame.

On the flip side, others have chosen to mock the Pirates, such as the young man at Monday's game — the game at which the Pirates assured themselves of the "Unwanted 17" — who held high a sign that read, "I wish I was a Detroit Lions fan."

That was a bitter slap at this storied Steel City sports franchise. In case some people have forgotten, the 2008 Detroit Lions became the first team in National Football League history to compile an 0-16 record, the Motor City franchise never has played in the Super Bowl, and the team last won an NFL championship in 1957, quarterbacked for much of the season by eventual Steeler Bobby Layne.

Many Pirates fans realized on 2009 Opening Day that the prospects for this season weren't pretty and that the "Ugly 17" was a strong possibility. But actually beating theirs and the Phillies' identical records of 16 consecutive losing seasons? Even many of the Pirates' most pessimistic supporters were clinging to a shred of hope that the Bucs wouldn't actually take over the distinction of topping the list of losing North American franchises.

Not only have the Pirates assured themselves of their 17th consecutive losing season, but they still are on track for 100 or more losses in the current 162-game schedule.

The frustration and abject disgust over the Pirates' lack of success for so long — so long that young men and women who graduated from college this spring aren't old enough to remember when the Bucs had a winning team — is understandable. This 123-year-old franchise is steeped with tradition.

Blame the players — of course. But more so, blame the field managers and upper team management for being unable to assemble a franchise that can allow the team to return to a semblance of its winning past.

It is upper management that deserves the blame for trading away talented prospects and established contributors — and for refusing to spend the money to acquire the talent to help make the team a true competitor once again. It is upper management that ultimately is to blame for the failures and shortcomings in the team's minor league system over the past 17 years.

It's also upper management that's to blame for hiring field managers that have been much less than what the team has needed to win consistently.

Pittsburgh needs a manager of the caliber of the Los Angeles Dodgers' Joe Torre, not current manager John Russell and a couple of his predecessors.

In 1958, when Layne was traded to the Steelers, he reportedly said the Lions would "not win for 50 years." What some people regard as "The Curse of Bobby Layne" came to pass at the end of the Lions' pitiful 2008 season.

Meanwhile, over those 50 years, the Lions have accumulated the worst winning percentage of any team in the NFL.

No one has attributed the Pirates' ongoing losing ways to a curse, although the Pirates' management over the team's 17 consecutive losing seasons has been a curse to revival of the franchise's glory days.

While there might not have been a curse, there's also no sure solution in sight for the Bucs' woes — although some glimmers of optimism do exist, such as with fleet Andrew McCutchen, if he isn't traded.

A couple hundred miles away, in Baltimore, Md., reside the Orioles, who have just clinched their 12th consecutive losing season. For Pirates fans, the hope is that the Orioles — the Pirates' opponent in the 1971 and 1979 World Series — continue their losing ways for at least another six seasons and that the Bucs find a way to end their dubious streak in 2010.

The Pirates need a miracle next year. It's long past due for Pittsburgh fans to again experience the joy in their baseball team that they and other Pittsburghers have experienced in the Steelers' and Penguins' successes.

It's time for another October like 1960, 1971 and 1979.