Does Bob Smizik Read "The Grandstander"?

This is a Cut-n-Paste from Bob Smizik's blog on post-gazette.com this morning:

For the longest time, the Pitt-Duquesne basketball game was No. 1 on my Pittsburgh regular-season sports calendar -- ahead of anything the Steelers, Pirates or Penguins could offer. I cherish the memories of that bitter rivalry. But the game has lost almost everything -- except, most notably, a media buzz it doesn’t deserve. They can dress it up with a title -- The City Game, which was stolen from the New York City hoops culture -- but it’s almost always bad, boring, one-sided basketball. This year’s game had a spark of competitiveness but to suggest there is anything special about this contest -- or that there is anything special about this rivalry -- is pretty much a lie.

Obviously, Smiz has been reading The Grandstander.  Page back and see my entries of 12/8/12 and 12/3/13 if you don't believe me.

I take this as a compliment!

Twenty Straight

I plan to offer up my final thoughts on the 2012 Pirates with a lengthy post later this week when the season finally, mercifully, concludes, but I can't let the day on which they officially clinched their 20th consecutive losing season (say it after me now, "the longest losing streak in North American sports history") without noting this milestone, or should I say "millstone".

And when it actually comes right down to it, what can I say?  As I mentioned on Facebook a few days back, the Pirates and their play in the month of September, combined with their front office follies, have left me speechless.  So I will leave it to Bloggin' Bob Smizik who led his blog entry tonight with this great paragraph:

Forty years to the day after Roberto Clemente gloriously walked into baseball history with his 3,000 hit, the team he once so proudly represented slunk into baseball ignominy with a 20th straight losing season.

That, my friends, is a good piece of writing.

On Neil Walker

In his Post-Gazette blog yesterday, Bob Smizik offered a post wherein he asked questions pertaining to the performance - the "declining performance" as he put it - of Pirate second baseman Neil Walker.  Smizik included the numbers to back up his assertion.  I found the article of interest because the very night before, while attending the Pirates - Reds game, Len Martin, Dan Bonk, and I had the very same conversation.  "Have we seen the best that Neil Walker has to offer?" was the way we framed the conversation.  I copied Smizik's post and posted it on the "Pirate Chat" Facebook page.


Well, that Facebook post created a mini-storm of comments, most of which fell in the "Smizik's-a-jaggoff-so-where-does-he-come-off-criticizing-Neil-Walker" school of thought.  However, here are the numbers for Walker thus far in 2012:


.254 BA
.648 OPS
2 HR
17 RBI
Only 10 extra base hits


On a team of under performing offensive players, Walker has certainly been one of them.


Now, I am not giving up on Walker.  I think that he can be a solid performer, but that means hitting in the .270 to .280 range, 12-15 home runs and 75 or so RBI's, and he is not performing at that level this year, and you could point out that this decline began in the latter half of the 2011 season.


Perhaps there is a reason that the Pirates have not sought to sign him to a long term deal, as they did with Andrew McCutchen.


Here's hoping that he can turn things around.  I like the kid.  He's hustles, has a great attitude, and he is playing a nice second base.  He would be a nice player to have on a good ball club.


Oh, and did I mention that he is from Pittsburgh.  Would the criticism of Walker be heightened (and the criticism of Smizik lessened) if Walker had been born and raised in, say, Peoria, Illinois instead of Gibsonia, PA? 


Just askin'.