Gulf Coast League Pirates

Gulf Coast League Pirates

The Gulf Coast Pirates or GCL Pirates are the North Division Gulf Coast League Rookie Level minor league affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The team plays in Bradenton, Florida, at Pirate City Complex. Established in 1978, the team is composed mainly of players who are in their first year of professional baseball either as draftees or non-drafted free agents from the United States, Canada, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and other countries. The team won division championships in 2002, 2003 and in 2008. The team's current manager is Tom Prince. In 2012, the team won its first GCL Championship in team history.

The 2009 GCL Pirates had nine players each from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, with the United States a distant third at six. There were the two highly publicized, pioneering Indian pitchers, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, who became the first Indian-born players to sign professional baseball contracts in the United States, a second baseman named Henry Henry from Colombia, two players from Puerto Rico, and one each from Mexico, Panama, Australia, Canada and one of the first three players ever signed out of South Africa, Gift Ngoepe, while one of the Americans, Chris Aure, is from Alaska. "We eat together in the cafeteria, but sometimes we try each other's foods," Ngoepe says. "I listen to the Indians' music when I go past their rooms, and they listen to my music from Africa. We tell each other stories about our home countries. We do everything together." "Everybody's the same here, like family," Venezuelan infielder Elevys Gonzalez says.