At the risk of stating the obvious: It is funny because the game was awkwardly titled: "Sid Meier's Pirates!" and this phrase was all over the place.
Yep - Pirates is "the first game to be called Sid Meier's Something or Other" - almost all of his subsequent games used that title scheme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier#Games
Yep - Pirates is "the first game to be called Sid Meier's Something or Other" - almost all of his subsequent games used that title scheme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier#Games