Black and Gold Define Pittsburgh

Few cities have such a color designation as Pittsburgh. The identity of the Western Pennsylvania steel and coal town has bled itself from those two industries. Those colors, of course, are black and gold. The black (coal and iron ore) brings the gold (wealth from the mining and foundries).

I've decided to go with the Jerseys for the main teams, mostly because they show the black and gold the best considering the background color of this blog (black--see the Belgium post for perception difficulties).

The first is the oldest and currently longest suffering team, the major league baseball franchise, the Pirates:

The caps are black with a gold "P", and the home outfits are white--like all home kits in baseball--but the letters and numbers are black with gold trim.

The colors come through with a little more authority with the city's NFL team, the Steelers:

The home jerseys rock the black shirt and gold pants, and haven't really changed in thirty or forty years.

The Steelers have been one of the most respected and well run teams in American sports, despite their dirty rapist quarterback.

Another successful team in Pittsburgh is their hockey franchise, the Penguins:

The Pens have one of the most exciting players, Sidney Crosby, deliverer of the Hockey Gold Medal in Vancouver (the only medal that really any Canadian gave two shits about), even though they haven't won the Stanley Cup for a while. Their gold has been toned down recently, but it still counts.

Next up is the major sporting university, Pitt. Better known for their Big East basketball, here's the Pitt football helmet:

Now, if you have a keen eye, you can see that they don't use black, they actually use navy blue and gold, but
the similarities aren't accidental.

Well, to drive home the point, here's the flag for the city of Pittsburgh. It'll probably look a little weird with the black background, but it's a vertical triband (black-gold-black) with the Pitt's, the city's namesake, family crest centered:

The black and gold even found it's way onto their arena football team, the Power:

The abundance of Scottish folks working the mines led many historians to conjecture that the original pronunciation, or at least how it was pronounced by the people living there, was "Pitts-burra", like Edinburgh being pronounced "Edin-burra". At some point, though, it switched to what it is today.