Sports in Pittsburgh

Sports in Pittsburgh have been played dating back to the American Civil War. Baseball, hockey, and the first professional American football game had been played in the city by 1892. Pittsburgh was first dubbed the "City of Champions" when the Pittsburgh Pirates, Pittsburgh Panthers football team, and Pittsburgh Steelers won multiple championships in the 1970s. Today, the city has three major professional sports franchises, the Pirates, Steelers, and Penguins; while the University of Pittsburgh Panthers compete in a Division I Power Five conference, the highest level of collegiate athletics in the United States, in both football and basketball. Local universities Duquesne and Robert Morris also field Division I teams in men's and women's basketball and Division I FCS teams in football. Robert Morris also fields Division I men's and women's ice hockey teams.

Pittsburgh's major teams have seen great success, with the MLB's Pirates winning 5 World Series titles, the NHL's Penguins winning 5 Stanley Cups, and the NFL's Steelers winning a tied league record 6 Super Bowls. The Pittsburgh Panthers have also been successful in the NCAA with 9 national championships in football and 2 in basketball.

The flag of Pittsburgh is colored with black and gold, based on the colors of William Pitt's coat of arms; Pittsburgh is the only city in the United States in which all professional sporting teams share the same colors. The city's first National Hockey League (NHL) franchise, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and that team's non-NHL predecessor, the Pittsburgh Yellow Jackets, wore black and gold as their colors in the 1920s. The colors were adopted by the founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Art Rooney, in 1933. In 1948, the Pittsburgh baseball Pirates switched their colors from red and blue to black and gold. Pittsburgh's second NHL franchise, the Pittsburgh Penguins, wore blue and white, due to then-general manager Jack Riley's upbringing in Ontario. In 1979, after the Steelers and Pirates had each won their respective league championships, the Penguins altered their color scheme to match, despite objections from the Boston Bruins, who have used the black and gold combination since the 1935–36 NHL season.

In 1975, late Steelers radio broadcaster Myron Cope invented the Terrible Towel, which has become "arguably the best-known fan symbol of any major pro sports team." Cope was one of multiple sports figures born in Pittsburgh and its surrounding area; others include golfer Arnold Palmer, Olympian and retired professional wrestler Kurt Angle, and basketball player Jack Twyman. Pittsburgh is also sometimes called the "Cradle of Quarterbacks" due to the number of prominent players of that position who hail from the area, including NFL greats Jim Kelly, George Blanda, Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Dan Marino, and Joe Montana.

The city of Pittsburgh has had various professional sports franchises throughout its history and today is home to three teams competing at the highest professional level in their respective sports: the Pittsburgh Pirates of the MLB, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL, and the Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL.

We had 'em all the way

Prior to 1876, there were three amateur Pittsburgh baseball teams — the Enterprise, the Xanthas, and the Olympics — playing most often at Recreation Park. On April 15, 1876, Recreation Park was the site of a game between the Xanthas and the Pittsburgh Alleghenies (alternately spelled "Alleghenys"), an unrelated forerunner to the "Alleghenys" team which would later be renamed the Pirates. The Alleghenies won the game 7–3. The 1877 squad was the most successful yet, finishing within 1 game of the pennant in the International Association; only a Canadian team had a better record, allowing the city potential bragging rights for being the best American team that season.

1882 marked the first "major league" and fully professional season for the Pittsburgh Alleghenies (Pirates) and in 1887, the Alleghenies moved from American Association to the National League after owner William Nimick became frustrated over a contract dispute. The Pirates were purchased in 1900 by Barney Dreyfuss, who would go down in history as the "Father of the modern World Series" and its precursor, the Chronicle-Telegraph Cup, both of which saw the Pirates participate in the inaugural series. He recruited Hall of Famers Fred Clarke and Pittsburgh native Honus Wagner and built the first concrete and steel (first "modern") baseball stadium, Forbes Field. Under Dreyfuss, the Pirates won pre-World Series world titles in 1901 and 1902, National League pennants from 1901–1903, 1909, 1925 and 1927 and World Series in 1909 and 1925. The 1902 squad set major league records for winning percentage and even today is the second most winning team ever fielded in the sport. The franchise won the World Series three more times— in 1960, 1971, and 1979. In 1960, the team became the first to win a World Series on a walk-off home run, hit by Bill Mazeroski, and they remain the only team to win on a walk-off homer in the decisive seventh game. In 1979, the Pirates repeated the accomplishment of their own 1925 World Series team, coming back from a three-games-to-one deficit, winning three games in a row when facing elimination, for the title. Thus the Pirates became (and they currently remain) the only franchise in the history of all sports to win world titles more than once when coming back from a 3-1 deficit. The 1979 Pirates also are unique in that they are the only team in all sports to have players who captured all four MVP awards: Seasonal (Willie Stargell, co-MVP with Keith Hernandez), All Star Game (Dave Parker), NLCS (Willie Stargell), and World Series (Willie Stargell) within a single season. Since 1970 the team has won their division and qualified for the playoffs nine times: six in the 1970s, and three times in a row from 1990 to 1992. Pirate players have won the league MVP award in 1960 (Dick Groat), 1966 (Roberto Clemente), 1978 (Dave Parker), 1979 (Willie Stargell), 1990 (Barry Bonds), 1992 (Barry Bonds), and 2013 (Andrew McCutchen) and the Cy Young Award in 1960 (Vernon Law) and 1990 (Doug Drabek). In 2001, the team opened PNC Park on the city's North Shore, regularly ranked as one of the top three baseball parks in the country.