Boston vs. Pittsburgh: City showdown

The Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins will put civic pride on the line when they begin their Stanley Cup playoff series Saturday night in Pittsburgh. Both cities are fiercely proud. They’re insular, loyal to their own and wary of outsiders. They’ve each contributed greatly to America’s cultural identity, from seafood and sandwiches to Revolutionary War heroes and robber barons. What happens on the ice over the next week or two will add to that story (though Patrice Bergeron has a long way to go to reach Paul Revere status). We compare the cities in the slides ahead.

Star quarterbacks

Boston has the “Golden Boy” Tom Brady and Pittsburgh has “Big Ben” Roethlisberger. Each player has won a Super Bowl. Roethlisberger is perpetually hurt and has a history of bad decisions, but he is unquestionably a gamer, playing through injuries.

Brady is easier on the eyes. He’s also a notch above his counterpart in terms of talent, a Hall of Fame lock and one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game.
Edge: Boston

Food institutions

Primanti Bros., of Travel Channel “Man vs. Food” fame, is known for sandwiches topped with french fries and cole slaw. Clark bars and Klondike bars also got their start in Pittsburgh. The Union Oyster House is Boston’s oldest restaurant. Boston cream pie really was invented here, at the Parker House, and clam chowder and lobster are local staples.

Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” Boston show was tributary romp through seafood and Guiness joints in Southie and Eastie. Bourdain has never done a Pittsburgh show.
Edge: Boston

Washed-up relievers

This is a battle between Mark Melancon, who the Red Sox couldn’t wait to get rid of, and Joel Hanrahan, who was supposed to be Boston’s closer this season. The Sox traded a “washed up” Melancon, Jerry Sands, Ivan DeJesus , and Stolmy Pimentel to Pittsburgh for Hanrahan and Brock Holt.

The only problem is that Melancon still had plenty left in the tank. In 28 games with the Pirates he has a 0.98 ERA, 28 strikeouts, and just two walks. Hanrahan appeared in nine games for the Red Sox and posted a 9.82 ERA. He’s out for the season with an injury.
Edge: Pittsburgh

Love of print

Both Pittsburgh and Boston are two-newspaper towns, a rarity these days. We’ll abstain from commenting on our very own Boston Globe, but the Herald has a killer sports section despite the “Best Team Ever” headline they ran before the start of the last Red Sox season.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review both offer intensive coverage of the Pirates, Penguins, and Steelers.
Edge: Even

Ballparks

The Pirates won the Hanrahan trade, and they also have one of the nicer new ballparks in baseball (top) in PNC Park. The Red Sox have rickety old Fenway, a monument to the game and a product of a different era.

There have been many improvements to the park in recent years, including the Green Monster seats (pictured, bottom) that may be the best seats in all of baseball.

Both parks are destinations, though in Pittsburgh you’re likely to be more pleased with what you see beyond the outfield walls than on the field. The Pirates haven’t had a winning season since 1992.
Edge: Boston

Big-time hockey star

The Penguins’ Sidney Crosby (right) is arguably the best player in the world, and there really isn’t much of an argument. The Bruins’ biggest star, Zdeno Chara (left), is a hulking Slovakian known for being steady, not flashy. Their second-best player, Patrice Bergeron (middle), is best known for faceoffs.

Pittsburgh and Boston are both known as gritty, working class cities, but the Bruins are the team that truly represents that on the ice. That being said, they can’t match the Penguins’ star power.
Edge: Pittsburgh

Beer

A Pittsburgh bar has announced it will not be selling Boston beer during the Bruins-Penguins series. They specifically mean Sam Adams. Fun fact: The bulk of Samuel Adams beer actually used to be produced under contract by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, whose current beers do not rate very highly among beer geeks.

Visitors to Pittsburgh will have much better luck at The Church Brew Works. Try the Celestial Gold, a German Pilsener. Boston has a large selection of local craft options, including stalwart Harpoon and relative newcomers Night Shift, Pretty Things, Idle Hands, Mystic, Trillium, and others.
Edge: Boston

New old guy

Jaromir Jagr (left) and Jarome Iginla (right) joined the Bruins and Penguins respectively through trades late in the season. Iginla spurned the Bruins to play with Pittsburgh, thinking they had a better chance at a title.

In 11 playoff games Iginla has 12 points, so he may have been onto something. Jagr, on the other hand, has just four points in the playoffs and hasn’t scored a goal. He’s best known for skating around in shorts well into the night after the games.
Edge: Pittsburgh

Authors

Gertrude Stein (right) might be Pittsburgh’s best-known author. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” is credited for starting the environmental movement. Other famous authors with Pittsburgh connections include Augusten Burroughs, Michael Chabon, and Lee Gutkind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (left), Nathanial Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Dennis Lehane are the best-known authors with Boston connections. David Foster Wallace’s masterwork “Infinite Jest” is loosely based in Boston proper.
Edge: Boston

Season series

The Bruins lost three games to the Penguins during the regular season by a total of three goals. On Thursday, GM Peter Chiarelli told The Sports Hub’s “Toucher and Rich” show that he was happy with six of the nine periods his team played during the regular season.

Does the regular season translate over to the playoffs? We’ll see.
Edge: Pittsburgh

Star-turned-team executive

Mario Lemieux (left) played parts of 17 seasons with the Penguins from 1984 to 2006. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame after his first retirement in 1997. In 1999 he bought the Penguins and is currently the team’s principal owner and chairman.

Cam Neely (right) played for the Bruins from 1986 to 1996. A hit by Pittsburgh’s Ulf Samuelsson in 1991 kept Neely on the bench for most of the next two seasons. Neely is now Boston’s team president.
Edge: Even

City nicknames

The most famous nicknames for each city are “The Steel City” for Pittsburgh and “Beantown” for Boston. Both nicknames make sense. Pittsburgh’s steel production was the foundation for the industrial revolution.

Early New England settlers really did make beans on Saturdays in strict observance of the Sabbath, which meant no cooking on Sundays. Both nicknames are outdated, and no one from Boston calls it “Beantown.”

I’m not from Pittsburgh, but I can’t imagine “Steel City” gets thrown around a ton, either.
Edge: Pittsburgh

Goons

Boston’s Shawn Thornton (left) was recently named the NHL’s second-best fighter by the Hockey News. When he’s not bashing people’s faces in, he’s a big player on Boston’s charity scene. He’s been known to sneak over to Spaulding Rehab to cheer folks up, then sneak back out to keep a low profile.

Pittsburgh’s Matt Cooke is a different kind of tough guy. He’s known for cheap shots, including a hit in 2010 that pretty much ended Marc Savard’s career. Cooke isn’t much of a hitter or fighter anymore, but he does get plenty of ice time for the Penguins.
Edge: Bruins

Appetite for college sports

Boston is a college town without much of an appetite for college sports. Sure there’s the Beanpot (there’s that word again), but unless you went to BC or BU, you aren’t likely to show much interest in Eagles football or Terrier hockey respectively.

The University of Pittsburgh’s football team perpetually disappoints considering the wealth of talent in that state. The games are a bigger deal down there, but the ACC-bound school is left searching for new rivals. BC fans are still clinging to Doug Flutie.
Edge: Pittsburgh

Claim to Emmanuel Sanders

The Patriots put in a one-year, $2.5 million offer sheet to the Steelers’ wide receiver this offseason but Pittsburgh matched it, keeping the player. The 26-year-old caught 44 passes in 2012.
Edge: Pittsburgh

Steelers-Patriots rings

The Steelers have won six Super Bowls to New England’s four, meaning Pittsburgh’s rooters can annoyingly say “One for the thumb” and back it up. The Steelers last won it all in 2008, which is also more recent than New England’s last title in 2004.

The Patriots have been more consistent in the playoffs in recent seasons.
Edge: Steelers

Bruins-Penguins playoff history

This will be the fifth meeting between the Penguins and Bruins in the Stanley Cup playoffs and the first since 1992, when the Penguins swept the Bruins in four games. Pittsburgh repeated as Stanley Cup champions that year. Ray Bourque (pictured) was Boston’s leading scorer during the regular season but was a -10 in the playoffs, the worst on the team.Edge: Penguins

Rivers

Pittsburgh has three – the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio. Boston has the Charles, home of the world’s most famous regatta. There’s a movie named after the Mystic River (the Chelsea River gets criminally overlooked). Pittsburgh’s rivers were used to lead the nation into prosperity. There’s a famous song about how dirty the Charles used to be.
Edge: Pittsburgh

Contribution to American history

Speaking of water power, industrialists like Andrew Carnegie (left) led the production of steel that transformed this country. Carnegie built Pittsburgh Steel, which he sold to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $480 million. He then went on to a life in philanthropy. Much of the country’s late 19th and early 20th-century infrastructure came via Pittsburgh.

None of this would have been possible, of course, without Boston’s role in the American Revolution in the 18th century. From Paul Revere (pictured in statue form) to the patriot Sameul Adams, many of the key players in this country’s independence hailed from Boston
Edge: Even