Perrotto: The Turnpike Trophy Surely Wouldn’t Be Left Behind

About 10 years ago, I was in the visitor’s clubhouse at Progressive Field in Cleveland.

Sitting on a table in the middle of the room was a trophy. It seemed odd for a trophy to be awarded during the regular season.

I asked one of the clubhouse attendants about the trophy. He said it was the Ohio Cup and belonged to the Cincinnati Reds.

The Ohio Cup is presented to the season series winner between the Reds and Cleveland Guardians, designated as interleague “natural rivals” by Major League Baseball. The Reds were so underwhelmed with winning the Ohio Cup that they forgot to take it with them when they left Cleveland the night before.

That’s why MLB has it wrong.

The Pirates and Guardians should be natural rivals and play twice a year instead of once. They are separated by a stretch of 125 miles of turnpike. Thus, the season series winner would be awarded the Turnpike Trophy.

Instead, the Pirates’ natural interleague rival is the Detroit Tigers. Pittsburgh and Detroit are 285 miles apart and have little baseball connection beyond playing each other in the 1909 World Series that pitted two of the greatest players in the Pirates’ Honus Wagner and the Tigers’ Ty Cobb.

That was 115 years ago. Nobody except historians and devout baseball fans understand that connection. A matchup between Bryan Reynolds and Riley Greene doesn’t hold the same cache of Wagner-Cobb.

The Pirates and Guardians completed a weekend series Sunday at Progressive Field with the home team winning two of the three games. The Pirates still lead the all-time series 17-14.

That the Pirates and Guardians have met just 31 times since interleague play was instituted in 1997 isn’t enough. The games have traditionally drawn well in both cities because fans need to drive just about two honors to see their favorite team play on the road.

I covered Friday night’s game, and the attendance was 32,123, about 2,500 short of capacity.

There were plenty of Guardians fans, which was to be expected because Cleveland is in first place in the American League Central and has the best home record in the major leagues.

Many vehicles in the adjacent parking garage had Pennsylvania license plates. While this is not a scientific observation, I spotted Pirates fans in rest areas on the Ohio Turnpike before and after the game. When the Pirates did something good, there were sizable cheers from the crowd.

I asked Pirates manager Derek Shelton before the start of the series if he liked the idea of his team and the Guardians being natural rivals. He was all for it, though he acknowledged the Guardians-Reds rivalry.

Shelton has been on both sides as he was Cleveland’s hitting coach for five seasons from 2005-09 and has been the Pirates manager since 2020. Like others, Shelton believes Pirates-Guardians would be a good spinoff of the rivalry between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns in the NFL.

Now I’m not saying Pirates-Guardians would reach the level of interest and intensity as Steelers-Browns. However, it would be more interesting than Pirates-Tigers or Guardians-Reds.

And maybe the winning team wouldn’t leave the Turnpike Trophy behind.