Raise the Jolly Roger!

We interrupt your regularly scheduled baseball-less October in Philadelphia to bring you a brief history of the Jolly Roger. No, not the Jolly Rogers, the midwest's favorite pirate-themed Renaissance folk group with such hits as "Beer, Beer, Beer" and "Your Pirate Dad" (though I'm sure most Yinzers and Pittsburgh dads would be into them). The Jolly Roger! That flag Buccos fans raise with a can of IC Light after every win.

While the origins of the term "Jolly Roger" have been lost or are still just hiding from Wikipedia under an X somewhere, two possible explanations are given. The first is that pirates originally used a red flag called "Joli Rouge", meaning "pretty red" in French, but the term was corrupted by English speakers into its more fun form. Another possibility, more in line with the whole skull and crossbones thing, suggests that Jolly Roger comes from the term"Old Roger" for the Devil and probably "pirate flag". According to some old text, "It had in it the Portraiture of Death, with an Hour-Glass in one Hand, and a Dart in the other, striking into a Heart, and three Drops of Blood delineated as falling from it. This Flag they called Old Roger, and us'd to say, They would live and die under it."

As for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who have impressively died under it in the regular season for over two decades, the origins of the team's catchphrase "Raise the Jolly Roger!" are less elusive thanks to the aptly titled Pirates blog, Raise the Jolly Roger. Play-by-play announcer, Greg Brown started saying it after Bob Walk told him he needed a good call in the rare chance the Pirates did something great. Brown said that he wanted to party like it was 1909, the year Pittsburgh won its first World Series, "I told him I didn’t want anything silly or meaningless and that maybe if it involved something related to 'Pirates' that I’d consider it."

The result of Greg Brown's serious desire to celebrate like a pirate: the wonderful "Raise the Jolly Roger!" as well as "Clear the deck, cannonball coming!" every time a Pirate smacks one into the river. (BTW, a big "Cheers to you, matey!" to Pedro Alvarez for breaking up Monday's no-no with that 428-foot cannonball.)
 
Thanks to to Cutch and the gang finally bringing the Pirates over .500 and into the postseason, "Raise the Jolly Roger!" has really taken off. The Buccos started raising an actual Jolly Roger after every win. The dad rock group, Johnny Angel and the Halos, released a "Raise the Jolly Roger!" song. Even Alex Trebek has been in the know!

Maybe all this pirate-themed excitement is due to the fact that Pittsburgh got to raise the Jolly Roger a rare 97 times this year or that this video plays on the Jumbotron before each home game. Either way, thinking the pirate life's for Scoring Position this October has been a lot more fun than whining about the recent Phillies and hating on squirrels. After all, the Buccos are underdogs with a similarly rich history of being losers. Plus, it's really fun to shout "It's grilled cheese time!" whenever Jason Grilli comes in to close.

Only time will tell if the Buccos will get to raise that Jolly Roger once more in a sea of Cardinal red or if they'll be drowning their postseason sorrows in beer, beer, beer.