A Pirates' Bucco Brick owner is offering to buy the bricks to get them back to their owners
The fallout continues over the Bucco Bricks not returning to the sidewalk outside the Pirates' PNC Park. As we first reported, the messages and names will be part of a new display, but the recycling of the bricks still has people upset.
The bricks were sold in 1999 before the opening of PNC Park and fans often visited the sidewalk as a personal memory when the stadium was built.
One of the brick owners who had a brick outside the park is tossing around the idea of buying the bricks from the recycling company and getting them back to the people who had them outside PNC Park.
Brian Carothers had two bricks: one for his dad and one for his grandfather.
"Those two guys put in me the love of baseball that I put in my kids, and I did it to honor them," Carothers said.
His story is like those of many people we have spoken to over the past few days. Their legacies are etched in the sidewalks, gone. Dan Betten helped in the construction of the park and had a brick right by the home plate entrance.
"My brick was positioned right near the Honus Wagner Statue, there, along with all the other people who participated in the construction there.
Michelle Shields and her husband got one from a friend as a wedding gift. Her husband always loved and followed the Pirates.
"It was the perfect wedding gift because he was such a big fan," Shields said over Zoom.
It became a memorial for their family after his death in recent years. To see the images of the bricks in a pile at a recycling center was heartbreaking. A stone that meant so much was treated like trash.
"It just seems like they took away a part of the history of people that helped build it," Betten said.
That's why Carothers wants to reconnect the bricks with the people who bought them. He runs the oneBURGH social media page that has more than 440,000 followers, including sponsors who could get the bricks and distribute them.
"These are just people who want to get in touch with the memories they have about baseball. The ones who helped them fall in love with baseball, and we can facilitate it," Carothers said.
We reached out to where the bricks would be recycled, and the company deferred questions to the Pirates, but is asking people not to show up and try to get their brick. Due to safety issues, people can't walk around the grounds.
The Pirates sent this statement on Wednesday on the matter:
"It is important to let folks know that if there was a way of accurately distributing the bricks, we would have done it.
We understand how meaningful these messages are, which is why we paid to have them replaced two times already.
When the program was set-up, fans submitted their messages and payment directly to the company facilitating the engravings. All we received and all we have 25 years later is a listing of the message and location where it was placed.
What that means is 1: there was no way to directly contact these fans and 2: even if we laid out 10,000 bricks to be claimed, if someone walked up and claimed a brick as their own, we would have no way of verifying.
There is no doubt that we needed to handle the communication better. That is on us, and we apologize for that. These fans should know that we are 100% committed to ensuring their messages and tributes will live on at PNC Park in a manner that is easy to see, easy to read and worthy of their personal meaning."
"Do what you can; I want my brick. We were part of PNC Park," Shields said.
Once a new display is planned and unveiled, we will keep you posted.
