After the publisher had gone back downstairs to his air-conditioned office after good-naturedly (I think) trying to convince us it really wasn’t that hot in the sweltering newsroom, my colleague Mike Sawyers and I no longer had to pretend we weren’t doing anything (although in fairness to me, it was my day off) and started doing what we normally do in our spare time and talk baseball.
I enjoy talking baseball with the Saw Man. He’s a baseball lifer, the son of a baseball lifer and the father of three baseball lifers, one of whom is the pitching coach at Purdue University. That would be Ryan. Jake is the oldest son, and I miss seeing him around because he’s fun to belly up and argue with about the game we both love. Seth is simply on another intellectual plane than most of us are, so I just leave him alone and listen. But I can handle the old man. Probably because he claims he’s a Pirates and a Red Sox fan, and I still don’t know if his rooting for two teams at once or rooting for the Red Sox at all is what annoys me the most. But it’s an all-in-good-fun annoyance either way.
“What will you do if the Red Sox and the Pirates meet in the World Series?” his sons once asked him.
“Depends on who’s gone the longest without one,” Dad said at a time when the Pirates were maybe 10 years removed from their last World Series and the Red Sox were around 70. “But we’ll cover that bridge when we come to it.”
Right now that would appear to be a bridge too far, although the Sawx ... icchhhh! ... appear to be as good a bet as anybody to reach the Series again this season. The Pirates? Well, they’re the Pirates, of course. In fact, my friend Mr. Graham sent me a hilarious e-mail the other day (well, I thought it was hilarious) showing a beautiful panoramic shot of the city of Pittsburgh with a green traffic sign photoshopped in at the left base that read, “WELCOME TO PITTSBURGH: CITY OF CHAMPIONS ... And the Pirates.”
Ouch! But, oh, so true.
Actually, the Pirates have played the Red Sox in the World Series before, and the Pirates won it in eight games. That would have been the first World Series ever played, 106 years ago, the same number of years it’s been since the Pirates have had a winning season. Oh, wait, didn’t see that zero. Make that 16 years, with this year making 17.
Being an Orioles fan, I could take great delight in this as being an Orioles fan in Cumberland, 2 Hours From Everything, has been a touchy thing when it comes to the Pirates. In fact, the other night I was sitting at a bar next to my friend Rich, who for some reason was screaming into my left ear, “71 and 79! 71 and 79!”
For a frustrated O’s fan, this can mean just one thing, and I was about to tell Rich in my own colorful way of my displeasure in being reminded of two of the darkest moments of my life as a baseball fan, when the Pirates beat the Orioles in two seven-game World Series. Thankfully, before I could open mouth and insert foot, I noticed Rich was playing Keno. And son of a gun if 71 and 79 didn’t come up and I got a free drink for my troubles. But you get the idea. For an Orioles fan, 71, 79 and, for that matter, 69, are not numbers that evoke the warm and fuzzies. Although I’d glady accept a seven-game loss to anybody in a World Series before my time here is up.
Despite my trauma from 1971 and 1979, I do enjoy watching the Pirates, and if I go to a game in Pittsburgh, unless they’re playing the Orioles or the Indians, I root for them against the advice of my attorney friend Jamie, who is also a scarred Orioles fan and says, “When they’re down, kick dirt on them and keep them down.” (Now that’s the kind of compassion I like to see in a courtroom.) So as I revisited the Nate McLouth trade with Sawyers on Friday, a trade I criticized in this space a few weeks ago, he referred me to an article written by DJ Gallo on Page 2 of espn.go.com, “Arrgh! you ready for some Pirates facts?”
Gallo’s five Pirates facts are: .500 is not a goal. And 82-80 is not the promised land; Nate McLouth is not a star; The Pirates would not be good if they had kept their “core” in place; The Pirates’ front office actually knows what it’s doing; and There is legitimate reason for hope in the very near future.
Gallo says there is hope because, “... the current management is trying to do it the right way. They are breaking the team down. Completely. And then they're going to build it back up. Gone are the days of partial demolishments abandoned halfway through and patched together with some leftovers pulled off a trailer home.”
It made sense. And when you see what’s taking place in the Pirates outfield and with their young starting pitching, you do feel the same sense of hope you feel when you look at the Orioles outfield and young starting pitching.
The Orioles might currently be a step closer than the Pirates, although the vacancy in the manager’s office must be addressed at some point. The truth is, there is legitimate hope in both Pittsburgh and in Baltimore because both rebuilds are being done in the proper fashion.
I like watching both clubs, and I like the directions both clubs are finally headed.
So will the Pirates and the Orioles soon meet again in the World Series? I’ll have to talk to my friend Rich about that. Hopefully, he has Keno numbers over 10 and below 15.
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.
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