It's Over!

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about - the streak, or, rather, The Streak, the twenty year Longest-Losing-Streak-in-the-History-of-Professional-Sports-in-North-America, is now, finally, officially over. With the Pirates' 1-0 victory over the Texas Rangers last night, The Streak has now been relegated to ignominious history.

  

And how about that game. The pitching match-up between Texas' Yu Darvish and the Bucs' Gerrit Cole was one for the ages (or it would be if this game had taken place in, say, the World Series, or a Sunday Night ESPN Yankees-Red Sox game).  Darvish was almost unhittable, allowing only one hit in the first six innings, but Cole matched him....

....and gave Pirates fans a glimpse as to why he was selected #1 overall in the 2011 Draft. He was magnificent in his start last night, and what you saw makes you almost giddy with excitement as to what he might have in store for the Pirates and their fans in the years ahead.

And how about that other #1 pick, Pedro Alvarez going to the opposite field for a double that drove in the Pirates only run and won the game against Darvish and the Rangers.

More importantly, the win ended a four game losing streak and brought the Pirates within one game of the first place Cardinals, and put them a game ahead of the third place Reds.

In the post game interview on TV, Andrew McCutchen said all the right things about understanding what the 82nd win means to the fans, but that there are bigger goals to be reached, and on and on, but look at his face and the faces of his fellow outfielders at the top if this post.  You can't tell me that this game was just another win for the team.

Now, let's win 12 or 13 (or even 10 or 11) of the nineteen games left and have a deep run into October!

We need not refer to The Streak ever again, except as we might talk about some ne'er-do-well member of the family tree who is now deceased.  And with that in mind, a word about Sid Bream and Barry Bonds....

It is one of those unimportant things in life that has bothered me, like a stone in your shoe, that people, especially this summer as it became fairly clear that the team would have a winning season, to refer to "The Curse of Sid Bream" or "The Curse of Barry Bonds" because of Game Seven of the 1992 NLCS.  Can we please stop with that?  Sid Bream was a solid if unspectacular ball player, whose career included six fairly solid seasons with the Pirates, I might add, who was just doing his job that night.  Bonds was the Pirates best player and the NL MVP in 1992, whose throw to the plate was not quite perfect.  It happens.

There are lots of reasons not to like Barry Bonds, but that throw to the plate that didn't quite get Bream isn't one of them.  And there are lots of reason to like Bream, who has chosen to live in the Pittsburgh area long after his playing career has ended.  Neither Bream nor Bonds "caused" the twenty year losing streak.  Twenty years of lousy players, and lousier management decisions, caused The Streak.  Non-existent "curses" did not.

The BBWA Throws a Shutout

The big baseball news today, of course, is that the Baseball Writers of America elected no one into Baseball's Hall of Fame for this 2013 class.  This is the first time that this has happened since 1996, and it is most noteworthy today because this is the first year of HOF eligibility for noted PED users Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa.  These men, who have racked up some mind-boggling statistics in their careers finished with, respectively 206 (36.2%), 214 (37.6%), and 71 (12.5%) of the votes.  As you no doubt know, 75% of the vote is needed to gain induction.

(As an aside, I will once again quote my friend Fred Shugars who today postulated that many of these same BBWA members who have shunned Barry Bonds today, no doubt took part in voting him seven MVP Awards over the course of his career, and in many of those MVP seasons, the whispers of Bonds possible PED use were well known.  I would like to hear some of those writers explain those MVP votes of several years back today.)

I am not sure where I stand on this issue.  Part of me says, Yeah, no way that these cheaters should ever go into the Hall of Fame.  Another part of me buys the argument that says, Hey, we'll never really know who was dirty and who wasn't in the PED era, so let's forget the pretense and vote these guys in if we think that they are worthy.   Even the Hall of Fame itself seems to be unsure how to go, as this picture of some label copy that I took on my last visit to Cooperstown in 2011 attests:

Keep in mind that the institution in Cooperstown is called the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.  Personally, I am glad that the Museum part of the institution (as opposed to the Hall of Fame where the plaques are displayed) recognizes all historic and noteworthy players.  Thus, when you visit there  you will see that Pete Rose is the all-time leader in hits, and that Joe Jackson has the third highest batting average of all-time, just as you will see that Barry Bonds has the most career home runs.  I am glad that no asterisks are attached, and that no attempt has been made to vacate these records.  As the sign above says, only the perspective of time - and that may be 50 years from now - will enable us to really see the big picture of this era.

I also know from having visited Cooperstown five times that the Hall of Fame is the economic engine that drives this charming little village, and no weekend is as important to the Village of Cooperstown than Induction Weekend.  This year there will only be three inductees voted in by the Veteran's Committee (or whatever they are calling that committee these days): Umpire Hank O'Day, Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, and 19th century player Deacon White, all of whom are dead.  I can't imagine that the Hall of Fame as a business enterprise can be happy about the fact that only three dead guys are going to be honored at their big party this summer, and that guys who do get elected in the future will only be guys who may get in there by default only because somebody has to go in there.  That can't be good for business.

And in a side comment, many of us Pirates fans have to be disappointed that in his first year of eligibility, Jose Mesa received not a single vote and will now forever be removed from the ballot.  Those of us who recall the glory days of 2004-05 (aka, Years 12 and 13 of the Losing Streak) and those 70 saves that Jose racked up for the Bucs have to be bitterly disappointed.  Cleveland Indians fans, no doubt will have a different perspective on Mesa's shunning by the BBWA.

Roberto Clemente vs. Barry Bonds

Here is a very brief excerpt from the ESPN the Magazine article alluded to in my previous post.  Author Kevin Guilfoile. who interned in the Pirates PR Department in the early days of Barry Bonds' career, made the following observation in the article.  I hope that you take the time to read the entire article, but this part is too good not to highlight on it's own:

When you're as talented and famous as Barry Bonds or Roberto Clemente, too much is going to be expected of you. The demands on you will never end. And you can react to those demands in a number of different ways. Barry Bonds decided that he would just never give anybody anything, because he knew if he gave them one thing today, they would ask for three things tomorrow. And he was probably right about that, as wrong as it must have been for his soul.

Roberto decided to do the opposite. If you asked him for one thing, he gave you four. He worked hard to become one of the best who ever played the game, then he gave away the trophies that proved it.

He gave as much as he could. He gave more than he could.

On the day of one of his biggest triumphs, he might have told three different friends he was giving them the same historic baseball bat.

He never stopped giving.

He gave right up until the day that giving literally killed him.