It was the spring of 1991, I believe. The Pirates (a professional baseball team located in the same city as your Pittsburgh Steelers) were about to begin Year 2 of a three-year run of division-championship success that would always leave me in painful agony at the end (although, the first bout of painful agony at the conclusion of Year 1 had not yet trained me to be afraid of Buctober).
Anyway, due to the growing disparity between large and small-market Major League Baseball teams, there was real concern that the Pirates would quickly lose all of the key pieces to what had become a legitimate World Series contender.