Rise and rant

The inimitable John Perrotto writes about Ben Grieve.

Grieve said the reputation [of not "being hungry"] is unjust.

"I think a lot of it is my body language," Grieve said. "I'm not the type of person who gets very excited or upset. I try to stay on an even keel."

Speaking of body language, Bryan from Against the Grain commented, right after the signing, that Grieve checks his fly before every at-bat. I'm all about the Ben Grieve signing. It was smart, smart, smart I say.

Perrotto also reports what we were already guessing for ourselves ... Kearns is not on the block.

There were a couple of editorials over the weekend with the basic theme of "Pirates are losers." Will the season please start already? Anyway, here they are. Bruce Weber says no one in Pittsburgh cares about baseball once the Steelers begin play. We already knew that. Sam Ross Jr. says it will hard for the Bucs to win. Hey, it's hard for any team to win. John Mehno writes that it will be hard for the Bucs to win. I'm yawning as I write that. Tell me something we don't already know.

I honestly do think that simply pissing on the team - ripping the owner, the GM, the manager, the politicians who raided the public treasuries, Pirate-style, to fund the stadium - is the easiest thing in the world to write. It's not that I don't think there's some merit to those arguments. It's just that the good versions - the good essays with that theme - are few are far between. They are awash in a sea of bad essays, rants, bulletin board manifestos, etc., with that theme. It's the equivalent of writing "Paris Hilton is a skanky ho." Well, duh. I'll try to be patient as I follow that line of thought for the 1,000th time. If I get pissed off, though, I'll admit I was a jackass if you'll admit that you weren't being original.

That said, plain ripping on the team, while it is a big category of Bucco writing and speechifying, does not always include the plain dumping on the Pirates' chances. There's that whole genre of Pirate writing too. The "they don't really have a chance to win anything this year" genre. That's equally lazy and unoriginal, especially when payroll is cited as if it's all the evidence needed to win the case.

One could counter my line of rant there by saying, "Would you get upset if I wrote that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? When I write the truth, how can you blame me, or criticize me for 'being unoriginal'"

My answer to that would be, "When is the last time you read, in the paper, that the sun was going to rise in the east tomorrow?" We don't write up the obvious. The point of writing is contributing to knowledge and thus spreading knowledge with the means of producing it. In other words, bring the fish and some tips on how to catch them.

If the Bucs aren't going to win anything this year, why is that? Give me editorials that say "Jason Bay is just another Jeff Conine and This is Why He'll Fail as a #3 Hitter." Or, "Jose Mesa will blow all of his saves and Mike Gonzalez will be a disaster." Or, "Kip Wells will never be healthy again." Tell me why the Pirates have no chance to win anything. "Pirate fans are sadly deluded if they believe Jose Castillo will improve as a hitter." Wrote those editorials. "The owner is a hypocrate, the GM is a jackass, the manager is a moron, and the team won't score any runs"--that doesn't cut it. It's invective masquerading as serious thought. I will ridicule it every time.

Dejan wrote that the payroll would be low. He also reports that Will Carroll wrote with new information about the measure of the team's ability to prevent pitching effectiveness. I'm not sure what that number means, but it's out there for your consideration.

Finally, on the general subject of Pirate life and Pirate culture, here are two items you might enjoy a little more than the link to the NPR story about the old Pirate poem.