Pirates in Sports
Because pirate ships connote fearsomeness, loyalty and teamwork, many professional and amateur sports teams are named "Pirates". The most famous of these in the United States is the Pittsburgh Pirates, a Major League Baseball team that has used the nickname since 1891.
Teams:
- Professional
- American football
- Oakland Raiders – National Football League
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers – National Football League
- Association football
- Bristol Rovers FC – Football League One, England
- FC St. Pauli – 2. Fußball-Bundesliga, Germany
- Orlando Pirates – Premier Soccer League, South Africa
- Tampa Bay Mutiny – Major League Soccer
- Baseball
- Amsterdam Pirates – Dutch Baseball League
- Pittsburgh Pirates – Major League Baseball
- Basketball
- Wörthersee Piraten – Österreichische Basketball Bundesliga, Austria
- Ice hockey
- Portland Pirates – American Hockey League
- Rugby League
- Canberra Raiders – National Rugby League, Australia
- American football
- Collegiate
- Barry University Buccaneers - Sunshine State Conference
- East Carolina Pirates – Conference USA
- East Tennessee State Buccaneers – Southern Conference
- Mass Maritime Buccaneers – Massachusetts State College Athletic Conference
- Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders – Sun Belt Conference
- Mount Union Purple Raiders – Ohio Athletic Conference
- Seton Hall Pirates – Big East Conference
- UMass Dartmouth Corsairs – Little East Conference
- New Orleans Privateers – Sun Belt Conference
- Minor
- Hockey
- Nepean Raiders – Central Junior Hockey League
- Prince Albert Raiders – Western Hockey League
- Richmond Renegades – Southern Professional Hockey League
- Rochester Raiders – Great Lakes Indoor Football League
- Tottenville Pirates
- Rugby Union
- Cornish Pirates
- Hockey
Today:
Pirates are becoming part of the mainstream once again with the increasing media coverage of modern day pirate attacks, especially those coming off the coast of Somalia. A U.S. ship was attacked in April 2009 and received substantial media coverage across the globe.
Read more about this topic: Pirate Books
Famous quotes containing the words pirates and/or sports:
“Power first, or no leading class. In politics and trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behaviour, attire, grace, learning and all their words aimeth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)