I suppose this is the column where I tell you with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 20th consecutive losing season — a record for all four major North American sports leagues — that in 1992, a postage stamp cost 29 cents, a dozen eggs were 93 cents, a gallon of regular gas was $1.13 and a gallon of milk was $2.98.

No, that’s too cliché — although those prices are true, however — but with two decades of futility, the reality just hits you.

Twenty years.

It was one thing when the streak was in the teens. Realistically, there doesn’t seem to be a big difference between 15 and 18 or 19. It’s still in the teens.

But, when it hit 20, that’s a number that really grabs your attention, much like the 29-year-old hitting 30 or the 39-year-old hitting 40 and so on.

You don’t think about that number until you round it up. And 20 is definitely rounded up.

What I was really thinking about Monday was the idea of hope, not for next year, necessarily, but back in those early 1990s.

Following the Pittsburgh drug trials of baseball of the mid 1980s, the team had an up-and-coming manager in Jim Leyland and a general manager, Syd Thrift, who put the pieces together of returning the franchise to its winning ways of the 1970s.

The Pirates had to start defeating the New York Mets, who became one of the top teams in the National League East. By 1990, it was the Pirates who began to establish themselves as one of the best teams in the National League.

The Bucs won the NL East three consecutive years from 1990-92.

First came the hope they would become this type of team, which they did. Then, after losing to the eventual World Series champion Cincinnati Reds, in the NLCS, the hope was the team would be back next year.

They were, but blew a 3-games-to-2 lead against the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS. Watching Game 7 at Three Rivers was devastating to us back then, especially to a young upstart team like the Braves.

Fast forward to 1992, when the team won Game 6 against the Braves and led 2-0 in the ninth inning of Game 7 before watching it all implode.

Little did we realize then that would be the end of something special.

Barry Bonds left, the team suffered some injuries and the team faltered to a 75-87 record in 1993 and things have never been the same since.

Those days of 95-plus wins would never show its face again for another 20 years and counting. The best was a 79-83 record in 1997 and 78-83 in 1999, a brief notion that things would be turning around.

But no. Two full decades of losing. No one could have fathomed that.

Fortunately, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Penguins have won two Super Bowls and two Stanley Cup championships, respectively with the Steelers reaching the title game two other times and the Penguins once. Without them, this stretch of losing would have mired the area much the way Cleveland — and until recently, Philadelphia — did.

I hold out hope that those early 1990s will return. We’ve seen brief glimpses the past two seasons, but not enough to sustain us for next year.

So, for the 2013 Bucs, we’ll have to try this all over again.

Sam Tallarico is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.