Fan who pulled Paul Skenes card was exactly right to shoot down Bob Nutting's offer

Things are already not great for the Pittsburgh Pirates right now. Sure, they have one of the best young talents in recent baseball history in righty Paul Skenes, but the team just finished up its sixth straight losing season, and as long as Bob Nutting remains in charge, it's hard to see that changing any time soon.

This offseason has been more of the same, for the most part, with Nutting cheaping out on doing much of anything to supplement his young core — the most prominent rumors surrounding the team had to do with them trading young talent like pitchers Jared Jones and Mitch Keller. But there was at least one silver lining, one hope for at the very least some good publicity: At the start of the offseason, Topps announced it would produce a 1/1 Paul Skenes debut card, and both the pitcher and the Pirates were willing to offer a haul in return for it, from a meet-and-greet with Skenes and girlfriend Livvy Dunne to two season tickets behind home plate at PNC Park for next 30 years.

The good news: The card was finally found this week, opened up by an 11-year-old collector. The bad news: He would apparently much rather sell the card at auction than have to watch three decades of Pirates baseball.

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11-year-old would rather sell Paul Skenes card than watch Pirates baseball

And really, could you blame him? This is an extremely rare collectible, one with an estimated $1 million value at auction. That's life-changing money, and the Pirates are asking him to give it up for ... the chance to watch a team that hasn't been concerned with winning for decades now?

Meeting Skenes and Dunne is great and all, but that only lasts an hour or two at most; making seven figures from a baseball card can set you up for life, and that hardly seems like a fair trade. So good for him for sticking to his guns and doing what's best for both himself and his family. And if Nutting and the Pirates are frustrated by it, there's a simple solution: make attending your games worth a little more in the future. Of course, if Nutting were worried about bringing fans to PNC Park, he'd do a lot of things differently.