Whinery

Gene Collier sheds some tears for the Pirates and their low payroll.

I'd be down with a salary cap; it has been good for football. But don't tell me you can't field a respectable baseball team on forty million dollars.

The part I most resent about this line of reasoning is that it exaggerates the gap between the Pirates and the rest of the league. In the recent Sports Illustrated sports atlas, they showed that our rust belt region tunes into less baseball than any other part of the country. Since our teams are the Tigers, the Brewers, the Reds, the Indians, and the Pirates, that can't be surprising.

The Bucs have fallen into a vicious cycle. They have a losing season. Fans and sportswriters get disgusted and stop paying as much attention. They have another losing season. Everyone pays less attention. Year after year, the level and accuracy of the discussion of the team sinks a little lower and a little lower. Fewer and fewer people know what's going on. Collier's review of the state of the team reminds me of a book review by someone who hasn't read the book carefully. All this crap about we don't have as much money amounts to little more than an elaborate rationalization to not pay attention to the team.

There's definitely some real-world, reality-based reasons so many people in Pittsburgh frame the state of the baseball team in these terms. But let's keep the political arguments off the field, OK? Stop crapping so near the well. Pirate fans who really want to hate on our Gilded-Age distribution of wealth should redirect their energy into support of their local unions. It would be much more effective and satisfying in that arena.

There were stretches in 2004 when the Pirates were as good as any team in the big leagues. Maybe they weren't as good on paper, but I remember, for example, a stretch last summer during which the Cardinals came to PNC and got swept. If you win seventeen or eighteen games out of twenty-one, that's as good as it gets. And that's what I live for. Sure it sucks that the team hasn't made the playoffs since they cut Tim Wakefield. But on any given summer evening, it's hard to think about the playoffs when there's a game on the field. Collier may think he's doing the team a service by calling attention to the fact that the Yankees have a bigger payroll. But who doesn't know that? We've heard about it ad nauseam.

I look forward to seeing the Bucs win in Yankee stadium. How sweet would a sweep be?