Paul Zeise: The Pirates front office should just shut up for a while

Marty Blake, the witty late former NBA scout, was once the general manager of the Pittsburgh Condors, one of several failed attempts to make pro basketball work in Pittsburgh. I once asked him why it was so hard to sell tickets. He answered: “You can make a big thing bigger. You can sell tickets to a lot of things in this world. But you can’t promote a funeral,” he answered.

If the Pirates aren’t careful, they may soon find this to be true. In fact, they may be finding this out already, as fan anger has turned to fan apathy. Owner Bob Nutting has quickly become public enemy No. 1 and the face of the Pirates’ penny-pinching ways.

The biggest problem isn’t the Pirates spending habits, their…