82!!!!!!!!

During Spring Training, Clint Hurdle was asked how many games the 2013 Pirates would win.

“95,” he said.  I howled and picked 70 like I always do.  I felt optimistic picking 70 because in eleven of the last twenty years, they did not reach 70 wins.

I wished every year I could pick 82 but I never saw 82 wins in any iteration in the last twenty years.  The closest they came was 79 wins.  They did that twice.  Once last year, but I can’t think about that death spiral again and once in 1997, where they were actually in contention in the NL Central until the final week, only because the Astros and Cardinals sucked so badly that year.

Can you imagine how much bad baseball I have seen since 1992?  Unless you’re a Pirates fan, you can’t.

A list of some of my favorite lowlights:

**In 2006, local-guy-done-good Michael Keaton came home to throw out the first pitch on Opening Day.  In a pregame interview, he decimated the front office, saying, “At some point, you have to write a check.”  All true, and good advice, but there is nothing like being reminded of how much your team is going to suck on Opening Day.

**They dumped Aramis Ramirez, who could still be the third baseman here, for Bobby Hill.  Bobby Effing Hill.

**John Van Benschoten was the leader in homers in Division I college ball in 2001.  The Bucs drafted him and decided to turn him into a pitcher, because that’s just they way they roll.  He has a lifetime 9.20 ERA.

**Chad Hermansen was drafted in the first round in 1995, back when the Bucs were stupid enough to draft high school boys.  His scouting report in the minors was “can walk on water.”  When he got to the majors, it didn’t take long for the fans to notice he could not walk on major league water.  It took the Bucs a few years longer.

**Derek Bell.  Derek showed up at spring training of 2002 and found out he was competing for his job.  This did not sit well with Mr. Bell, who said he would go into “Operation Shutdown.”  This from a guy who hit .173 the year before.  He was out of baseball before the season started, and the Pirates had to pay him four and a half million dollars not to play for them.

**Jim Tracy, manager from 2006-07, went 135–189 and said when he was fired,” It’s not my fault.  It’s everyone else’s.”  What a maroon.

**In 2001, the year PNC Park opened, the Bucs lost 100 games.  The front office proceeded to raise ticket prices.

**Jason Schmidt, who goes down in twenty years of dreck for me as the worst player I ever wasted a cheer on.  When he got to San Francisco, he told the media he did not even try to pitch well in Pittsburgh.  Look at the difference in his numbers as a Giant and as a Pirate.  I’ll make you puke.  God, I hate him.

**Jason Christiansen used to greet new teammates by saying, “Welcome to Hell.”  STFU, Jason, you were only here five years.  I had to do twenty.  And wasted five of them cheering for losers like you.

**Randall Simon got arrested during a game in Milwaukee after hitting the Italian Sausage girl with a bat during the race.

** Raul Mondesi, Matt Morris, Brian Bullington, Jeromy Burnitz, Pat Meares, the hits just keep on coming.

**My favorite was when India had a game show called Million Dollar Arm, and the grand prize was a contract in baseball.  You guessed it, there is only one team stupid enough to be drawn into that.  The local media followed them all over.  We all knew who Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel were.  They were so cute and optimistic, you’d allowed yourself to forget India is not exactly a hotbed for MLB studs and neither of them had even heard of baseball until the game show.

That’s how bad Pirates’ baseball has been; anything to distract from the level of play on the field.

I texted Kelly when the news about Justin Morneau broke.  I remember using the phrase, “Just like a real team!”  And before the game the other night night, the announcers told us what the Bucs Magic Number was.  Magic Number!?!  Are you kidding me?  They have a Magic Number?  Who’d have thought?  The things fans of other teams take from granted, Pirates’ fans never do.

Roberto Clemente’s son told the 2013 team it has to be them to end twenty years of losing because 21 is a magical number in Pittsburgh and we can’t have it stretching that far.

2013 it is.  Here are the guys who did it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDKYaIwequ8

Goodbye, Hockey

I am so glad I don’t have to watch hockey anymore.  If this were football or baseball, I’d keep watching the post season after my team has been eliminated but no way in hell I’d do that for hockey.

I watched every game the Penguins were in in the post season.  And that’s after watching none of the games during the regular season.  I only watched them because my youngest loves hockey and she is working long hours and didn’t have time to watch them herself.  I texted her the updates; the who, the when.  It wasn’t until the final game when the Pens got eliminated that I figured out how to do it right.

Aside to Pens fans:  Yes, I am sure that was very hard.  Sports can break your heart.  But really, you had to see this coming during Game 2 against the Bruins.  By Game 3, it was almost set in stone, and by Game 4 it was a fait accompli.  We had the better part of a week to read the writing on the wall.  It’s much harder to lose in a Game 7.  It adds salt to the wound that the Pens bet so much on a 2013 Cup, and gave up so much of the future to assure it, only to fail so completely.  The Steelers are going to suck too, so enjoy the Pirates while it lasts.  Let Gerrit Cole steal your heart,

I learned during my many periods of hockey, that the announcers never talk in a normal human voice.  They scream their way through three periods, until there is a big flurry around the net, and then they start shrieking (shrieking is a word I spell incorrectly every time when I write it initially.)  I knew they were going to lose, and felt no need to pay perfect attention anymore.  I turned the sound down very low, low enough to be able to read a book during the game and knew that the shrieking would pull my attention when it had to.

In baseball and football, you can anticipate the score.  Not always.  Sometimes the D scores and sometimes you get a homerun, but usually, you can see the scoring opportunity open in front of you.  Not so in hockey, which I assume is why they scream all the time.  There is no time to go to the bathroom because you never know when anyone is going to score.  I’ll take the savoring of baseball any day.

I have a friend who always goes on to root for the team that eliminated his, figuring it is better to  lose to the eventual winner.  I do not get that logic.  Fuck the Bruins.

Call Me Melville

I finished The Art of Fielding.  Again.  It’s a lovely first book by a great writer, Chad Harbach.  It’s the story of a small Wisconsin liberal arts college called Westish, and the guys on its baseball team.  The school has a love affair with Herman Melville, who gave a speech there one night in the 1880’s.  They built a statue of him overlooking Lake Michigan and renamed the teams the Harpooners.  They refer to Moby Dick as “The Book.”  The students walk around campus wearing sweatshirts that say Westish on the front and “Our dick is bigger than yours” printed on the back.

While I was reading it the first time, I kept wondering if I’d get more out of it if I had ever read Moby Dick.  I luckily managed to avoid that one in my schooling.  I never had any desire to tackle it.  700-plus pages about a whale.  Yawn.  I know it’s considered one of the Great American Novels, and I love most of the others on that list, but, damn.  A whale?

It became an obsession and I had to read it.  I can see why some people love Moby Dick, but I can see more easily why so many people hate it.  It was like homework for most of the read and I had to force myself to continue.  There are entire chapters about the whale’s phsyiognomy, from his head (many, many, many chapters about whale heads), skull. spout, tail, and cock.  I just wanted to cry reading all this.

I’m glad I met Ishmael, Starbuck, Queegueg and mostly, Ahab, a rough tough sailor who talks like Hamlet.  I’m happy to be able to say I’ve read it, but my mark of a good book is, “Do I want to read it again?”  No. No.  Never.  You could get away with reading the last twenty pages where all the good stuff happens, since the whale doesn’t show up until the final chapter.  To get through Moby Dick, you have to be as single-minded and obsessed as Ahab.  And in the end, it did not help with my reading of The Art of Fielding.  Sigh.

I loved The Art of Fielding until I got to the end (Major spoilers ahead-you’ve been warned.)  I don’t like baseball stories where every pitch, throw, hit and catch in the championship game is perfect.  I felt like I stepped into a Disney story by the end. Every character did not need a happily ever after.  That’s why I love The Bad News Bears.  They lose to the Damn Yankees.

The infield is in

I never paid any attention to baseball when I was a kid.  My mother took my brothers to Forbes Field, but she never thought to include me and I never thought to mind.  All I knew about the Pirates when I was little was that they stunk.  They really didn’t, but that’s all I ever heard about them from my father, life-long New Yorker and Yankees’ fan who got transferred to Pittsburgh and never, ever, ever forgave Bill Mazeroski.

I didn’t attend my first game until I was a teenager, and by then, Forbes Field had given way to Three Rivers Stadium.  All I took away from that game was that it was great to be skipping school.

When I started dating the man who would become my husband, baseball became a big part of my life because he was such a junkie.  Baseball was always on TV, and we went to a lot of games, but I saw it as a chance to socialize with friends, and, oh yeah, there was that baseball game thing going on when there was a temporary lull in the conversation.  I once complained so much about still being in the park in the late innings on a very cold night that I actually got him to leave early. (A first, and only.)  We found out later that Dave Parker hit a game-winning home run.  (Lesson taught to me that night, but not learned until years later: if you always leave a blowout, you’ll never see a great come-from-behind win.)  Did I ever hear about that one, but just because it was his passion was no reason to make it my passion.

The guys I went to games with were insane.  They’d bring Bill James Abstract books to the games to look up stats.   Who does that?  I once told them if they’d used that brain power they waste on baseball, they could be speaking Latin by now.  They didn’t seem interested in learning Latin.

The Pirates were good – very good – in the early nineties.  (You can look it up if the thought of the Bucs being good is too hard for you to imagine.)  But just as Stargell, Parker and Tekulve didn’t turn me into a baseball junkie, neither did Bonds, Bonilla and Van Slyke.

Everything changed for me in 1995.  The Pirates were in their third year of what would turn into twenty years of crap, but I didn’t know that then.  If I had recognized at the time how pivotal that game would be to me, I would have remembered it better, but I don’t even remember who they were playing.  What I do remember is someone saying, “The infield is in.”  I thought that was a nonsensical thing to say.  Of course, the infield was in.  They’re infielders.  Where else would they be?  But they told me why the infield was in and for some reason, that fascinated me.  And it was all it took.

I never knew there were actual things going on in  a game.  I thought it was something you waited around for until a ball was hit.  Who knew there was so much more?

Once I allowed baseball to get to me, it got to me hard.  I bet I asked a million questions in 1995, what this and why that, and did a lefty want to face a righty or the other way around?  (Opposites attract hits.)  I had no idea how pathetic the Pirates really were.  I looked at the standings once, saw how many games they were behind, knew we had many more games than that left, and surmised they could easily overcome that twenty-six game deficit they had in mid-August.  Ah, to be young, stupid and idealistic like that again.

It wasn’t just the game.  I’m a big reader and spent the off season reading what I could get my hands on.  (I realized much later that reading too much Roger Angell turns you into a major baseball romantic.)  PBS reran Ken Burns’ Baseball and Oh my stars, what a baseball sucker I became.

It took me a few more years to pay any attention to stats, because, really?  Math?  I overcame my aversion to stats just as I’ve overcome my aversion to interleague play.  OK, I still hate IL play but we’re stuck with it now.  EVERY DAY!!

As the Pirates continued to suck over the years, I tell myself it was okay because if I followed any semblance of a real team, I would have been more swayed by the easy wins.  (and would not have been in the ballpark on the wrong side of a 17-4 game against the Cardinals, a game I remember fondly nonetheless because I saw the Bucs’ backup catcher pitch.  He had hit a homerun in the half inning before, then gave up a homer in the half innings he pitched.  Fans of good teams don’t see junk like that.)

I have the Steelers for easy wins, and would have the Pens for another if I ever watched hockey, but right now, I am listening to the Reds/Bucs game on the radio because they are showing the Pens on the station they share.  I am probably one of the few people in Pittsburgh who is annoyed about this.  (3-1 Bucs in the 8th; Cutch is an 0-fer but the Reds have stranded a hilarious number of runners.)

When I became a single mom, I was lucky to have people I could call, or email or IM when I still had questions.  I don’t have questions anymore.  (OK, sometimes I do.  Mind if I text you?)  One of my fondest memories is my youngest coming home from school one day in tenth grade, telling me she was talking to the boys in homeroom about the game last night and they said, “Wow, your dad really taught you a lot about baseball.”

She said, “It wasn’t my Dad.  It was my Mom.”

I’ve seen Fenway, Wrigley, Comiskey, whatever that one in Toronto is called, Jacobs Field, old Tiger Stadium, Camden Yards, not to mention the astounding PNC.  I’ve seen two inside-the-park homeruns in one game, a no-hitter, the Bucs erasing an 8-2 deficit in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, only to win it 9-8 on a walk-off grand slam but my all time favorite memory is my daughter saying “It was my Mom.”

And that’s your ballgame.  You can put it on the boards….YES!!!  One under five hundred now!  Four out of the last five! Hope springs!

Hope doesn’t really spring but I need to delude myself.  You can’t be a fan of the worst team among all four major sports without deluding yourself.  In twenty years, the Bucs have had three flirtations with making the playoffs.  They would have been promptly swept out of them, but fans of good teams can’t even possibly imagine how wonderful those three flirtations felt.  Sleepless nights and a reason to scoreboard-watch.  It was heaven.

I know I am doomed to watch terrible baseball for the rest of my life, because the Pirates are not only poor, they’re stupid, which is a lethal combination in what is an intrinsically unfair sport to begin with.  But that’s the way it goes.  “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  F. Scott was not a Pirates fan, but he understood us.  I don’t understand front runners; I can’t imagine what satisfaction they get in switching teams every year.  or pretending they have legitimate reasons to root for the Yankees.

I didn’t mean to get so long-winded.  If anyone read all of this, you must be a serious baseball junkie, too.  I hope your team did well today.  But seriously, we could all be speaking Latin by now.