Pirates Baseball

It has been months since Sherman on sports released a blog post, so here, after 6 weeks of field school, I have a free moment.

For the first time in my entire life I am paying close attention to Pittsburgh baseball past May.  I admitt fair-weather fandom, but the depressiong of watching losing seasons my entire life just left me without passion for the Pirates. In my younger days I followed my grandfathers lead in being a Yankee fan to the bone, but as I grew older the Pirates just spoke to more of what I saw in the other sports franchises I saw.  Black and gold, down to earth players, small market, small salaries, well things that were just un-Yankees.  Plus the idea of a team buying any sort of player just didn't fit the Pens or Steelers, so I slowly moved the Pirates above the Yankees around 10th grade.  For good.

And for the next five years they totured me with some of the worst baseball of all time.  Coming into this season, the best I dared imagine was something like fourth in the division, ten games below .500. and I thought I was too optimistic.

Little did I know Clint Hurdle would suddenly turn a pitching staff of rejects and underachievers into respectable status. That guys like Presley and d'Arnaud would come in for Cedeno and Alvarez and keep a scorching team going. That my Pirates could win a series from Boston and Philadelphia. Well we always seem to beat Philly.  To top the suprising four games above five hundred first half, my Pirates, whose last winning season came when I was two and a half and just left Virginia, are in the midst of a playoff hunt. Playoffs?

Who are these guys? Hanrahan? Tabata (once he returns from DL)? Correia? Karstens? And is that Charlie Morton with a 3.80 ERA? Morton of the 28 ERA infamy?

The best thing about this early success is it comes with the offense underperforming.  McCutcheon and Garrett Jones came on only in June, Tabata cooled off as of late pre-injury. Alvarez who drew comparisons to a better Aramis Ramirez orignially, has been just plain bad pre-DL. Overbay was almost out of the lineup recently. If this group ever matches the pitching watch out.

We just might be talking playoffs in Pittsburgh, for a third sport. Baseball.