Pittsburgh Spirit
End of this Pittsburgh Week.
But not the end of doing research and stuff in Pittsburgh. Yes I’m generally this immersive into a region whenever I travel. I could do a whole week about my love of Baltimore after traveling there as a kid. Alas I digress. This is going to be a shorter one, it’s finally nice enough in Buffalo to not melt when you go outside.
We are talking about the Pittsburgh Spirit, who were one of the original six franchises of the Major Indoor Soccer League during the winter of 1978-79. During their first year, the Spirit were at the bottom of the table with a 6-18 record. They had the worst attendance in the league with 2,801 per a 12 match home calendar.
In late summer 1979, Pittsburgh beer distributor Frank Fuhrer bought the club. He was already well known in the sports loving sect of the town for being the owner of the defunct World Team Tennis League’s Pittsburgh Triangles. Fuhrer only ran the Spirit for a season, shutting them down at the end of the 1979-80 season. The MISL allowed the club to shut for a year to re-organize themselves, hence them missing the 1980-81 season.
They came back in 1981 under Pittsburgh Penguins owner Edward DeBartolo Sr. This made him the owner of the three big teams in Pittsburgh, the Penguins, the Spirit, and the Maulers of the USFL. The Spirit had a greatest season under DeBartolo and his second in command Paul Martha. In 1983-84 the Spirit had a 32-16 record, and had higher average attendance 8,278 per match than the NHL’s Penguins 6,839. The greatest player in Spirit history was Polish striker Stan Terlecki, who was the co-MVP of MISL during the 1981-82 with 74 goals in 43 matches. He played in Pittsburgh from 1981-83, and 1984-86.
Like with any club, despite the interest, the club was a money loser at the box office. They never advanced beyond the quarterfinals of the MISL playoffs. DeBartolo threatened to close the club in 1985 to extract concessions from the Civic Arena. Ironically, the club played their final season in the winter of 1985-86. The end came when in the spring of 1986 Paul Martha announced the closure of the club, due to 9 million losses.
Indoor soccer came back a decade later in 1994, with the Pittsburgh Stinger of the Continental Indoor Soccer League. they were coached by former Spirit Star Paul Child. Child also in the past ten years (2020s) has been a part of the Pittsburgh Riverhounds of the USL.