Bitter old man

Dejan Kovacevic devotes more than half the Q & A to going over the contract hullabaloo and coaching us on how to respond to it. I'm more and more of the opinion that this was none of our business. Players and owners poison the well when they go to the fans with their problems. Don't ask us to help you accomplish your business goals. This isn't politics, and neither the players nor the owners serve themselves by going to the fans like we have some responsibility to write to our Congressman and get so-and-so a raise or so-and-so a new CBA.

Baseball is an escape for the fans. We go to the park or tune into the game to get away, mometarily, from the duties and responsibilities and circumstances of our lives. We may be perfectly happy people with full lives; everyone needs that downtime in the stadium. Ask the fans to shoulder some responsibility for the labor problems or the payroll disparity and you accomplish nothing. It's like asking families to pick up garbage at the State Park before they enjoy their own picnic. It won't happen and it drives the fans away.

This has to be fun or it doesn't work.

The final paragraph of Kovacevic's column shows the letters are wearing on him. Send the man some jokes. His patience has worn thin. If he didn't have such high expectations of us, perhaps he wouldn't be so disappointed.

Not everyone has the time or the inclination to revise their rants so they are not so hyperbolic or bitter. And besides, if you watch much television or listen to much talk radio - even sports talk radio - then you can understand why most people would think that hyperbolic and bitter sounds smart and impressive.

My guess is that the problem he's experiencing with the fans is not one that has much of anything to do with the Pirates. Rather he's seeing how the average person writes about a subject he cherishes but never has enough time to enjoy properly. I bet if DK talked to other beat writers doing regular Q & A assignments, he'd find that fans everywhere are pretty much the same.

I'm not buying his line of argument, which he often repeats, that Pirate fans are especially bitter or angry, in part because he seems to mention that like it's a shot across the bow of management. It's true they are on thin ice. It's true that all the enthusiasm the team appeared to be building a month or two ago could disappear overnight. But I don't think there's anything unusual in the fact that most letters from fans adopt an exaggerated sarcasm or striking bitterness. That's the level of public discourse these days, on almost all matters.