Wait Till Next Year

One of my favorite sports documentaries (and I’ve seen a lot of ‘em) is Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush, released by HBO in 2007. While many movies of that ilk attempt to tell the story of the team and the fanbase, The Ghosts of Flatbush does the job uniquely well, especially for a movie that came out 50 years after the Dodgers had left Brooklyn.

You know the broad strokes of the story: this is the team that broke baseball’s color barrier with Jackie Robinson, became legendary as The Boys of Summer, and finally won the World Series in 1955, two years before moving to Los Angeles. The joy of the movie comes from its interviews with Brooklyn natives that include Larry King, Louis Gossett Jr., comedian Pat Cooper and author Bette Bao Lord1.

They and others regale us with tales of rushing out of school to listen to Dodgers games and illustrate how even a winning team can torture its fans. From Robinson’s rookie season in 1947 until its final one in Brooklyn in 1957, averaged 94 wins per season and won 6 out of 11 National League pennants. You’d think, what a time to be a fan!

But over and over again, there was crushing disappointment. The Boys of Summer made it to four World Series in Robinson’s first seven seasons, and they proceeded to lose all four to the New York Yankees.

It’s taking until the fifth paragraph to get to my point: in rooting for a team like Pitt Volleyball that has risen to extraordinary heights, the falls come from a very high place indeed. I thought about those Brooklyn Dodgers’ fans after watching the Panthers fall in the National Semifinal for the fourth straight year. I have felt like I’m living in some annual Groundhog Day: every December, travel to some big arena I’ve never been to before only to watch Pitt lose to a team in red — Nebraska in odd years, Louisville in even years. Not exactly the most relaxing way to use PTO at the end of the year, eh?

Those Dodgers fans felt similarly, losing to the Yankees in the World Series over and over again. And a year they didn’t make the World Series was perhaps the most gutting of all: the 1951 Dodgers blew a 13 1⁄2-game lead to the New York Giants, who then beat the Dodgers on Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”2 You need not watch the whole 13-minute clip below, but it’s illustrative of the despair for Brooklyn fans.

Now, I wouldn’t pretend that the University of Pittsburgh Volleyball Team engenders the levels of devotion in our city that the legendary Dodgers did for the borough of Brooklyn. But you’re reading a Substack about them right now, so I’m going to assume some level of buy-in from you, the reader. And in each one of these four Final Four seasons, I’ve watched more fans literally “buy in” — to season tickets, to merchandise, to donations, to trips for the final rounds.

The silver lining from Pitt’s trip to Louisville came at the AVCA Banquet: Olivia Babcock won the honor of Division I Player of the Year, the first player in Pitt history to do so and the first sophomore from any school since Stanford’s Kathryn Plummer in 2017.

Pitt loses a lot from this team, its best ever, with the most significant loss being first-team All-America setter Rachel Fairbanks. This team won’t be the same without her, nor will it be the same without the impact of Valeria Vazquez Gomez, Emmy Klika and Cat Flood, so much of the glue that has held this team.

But it will still be a lineup loaded with weapons. The Panthers return three players who are either the best at their position or can stake a claim to it (Babcock, outside hitter Torrey Stafford and middle blocker Bre Kelley). When you start with that, you’re a National Championship contender in any season.

Imagine the hype around the Pitt men’s basketball team if they had just made the Final Four with the Naismith Award winner, plus one of the nation’s best scorers, plus one of the nation’s best forwards all set to return (barring some calamity). You have to replace a fantastic point guard and other veterans, but all of the other pieces are in place to make a run at a title.3

I don’t write all that to be some purveyor of toxic positivity. Thursday’s loss was a true disappointment, probably more than any of the other tournament defeats. The National Championship was there for the taking, and Pitt dropped the ball.

They’ll take a step back from what they were this season: the #1 team from the second week until the second-to-last day of competition. But when I compare Pitt’s roster to other title contenders, I see a team that will once again be likely to finish in the Top 4 and secure home court through the Elite Eight. That’s the regular-season goal once again, and it’s more than achievable.

Back to the baseball metaphor: when the Brooklyn Dodgers finally broke through and won the World Series in 1955 (as the climax of The Ghosts of Flatbush chronicles), capped by an exhilarating Game 7 in which the Dodgers held on to a 2-0 lead to win the World Championship at Yankee Stadium, the fans were euphoric. I don’t know if the baseball team I root for will ever give me that feeling, but it seems more in reach for the volleyball team.

The motto of Brooklyn fans during their long string of letdowns was “Wait Till Next Year” until Next Year finally came, and so it must be for us Pitt Volleyball fans. I don’t know for sure how many more Final Four opportunities we’ll get, but we’re on the ride now, and it’s still a good ride.

The Known Unknown

What Dodgers fans didn’t know in 1955 was that owner Walter O’Malley had put the franchise on a course that would ultimately put them in California.

The same could be true for Pitt head coach Dan Fisher and the California-based job of “Head Coach, Women's National Team.”

What if Dan Fisher leaves Pitt to coach the U.S. Women's National Team?

Hello! I was delighted to join Ryan Nanni on the We’re Not All Like This podcast to talk about Pitt fandom, joined by the much more intelligent answers of Jonny Gamble and Obnoxious Pitt Girl.

Bandwagoner's Guide to Pitt VolleyballJames Santelli

Not much has changed since I wrote that piece. Even the job listing is still up on usavolleyball.org. But Fisher’s future employment was the topic of many whispered conversations among Pitt fans in Louisville.

I don’t have any firm information that I would feel confident reporting here, other than to say: Nothing is set in stone until we hear about either (A) an extension at Pitt that would take Fisher beyond his current final season of 2027 or (B) an announcement from USA Volleyball on the next coach of the Women’s National Team. And I don’t expect to see either of those things before Christmas.

Addendum

Okay, that concludes the 2024 edition of the Bandwagoner’s Guide to Pitt Volleyball. I honestly don’t know how well this newsletter functioned as a guide for people who got on the bandwagon this season, but I was glad to have the readers. Good teams don’t just have reporters covering them, they have fan blogs like the Bandwagoner’s Guide — and this has been a fun outlet for my many thoughts about the team, Pitt Athletics, and the rise of college volleyball.

I don’t expect to continue this newsletter in the offseason, though as the saying in television goes, “when news breaks out, we’ll break in.” Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours.