Words From Another Well Spoken Somerset Man

76-80, hmmm.  Ok, it will take 6-0 to get to 82, but wait, only 5-1 to get to 81!  We can live with 81, right?  Are we all thinking this on a Friday morning in late September?  No, WE'RE not, only crazies like me are still beating this drum, and drinking this Kool Aid.  I ponder back to my freshman level psych days on this.  Didn't someone smart, say, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (thanks Wikipedia!), invent a pyramid that outlined the stages of recovering from emotional grief?  Well, I think I'm still stuck somewhere in between stages 2 and 4 - Anger and Depression.  Ok, listen, if we can just win tonight, it'll only mean 4 wins to go,...yes, I probably need help.

Well, today's post isn't about me or the Bucs, or our respective ailments or abnormalities.  I'd like to plug in a shout to a most entertaining article I stumbled across in the Post-Gazette today.  Jason Zemcik, a fellow Somerset County man, composed a well worded article on the culture of winning in the 'Burgh, expanding a bit on the Battlins' constant role of the underachieving son who resides in a household of overachievers.  We can all rant, with pitch forks and torches held high, that the Nutting regime is a penny pinching, short sighted, carpet-bagging machine, whose sole intention is the fleecing of the innocent, upstanding season ticket holder.   We can loiter in Dr. Kubler-Ross's Anger section for as long as we wish - assign blame for a second consecutive collapse, this one greater and more soul crushing than the last.  We can cry foul over the trade deadline failures.  Certainly Shane Victorino or the great Hunter Pence would have prevented this.  We can find boundless levels of fault with Halfway Hurdle and his perceived blind loyalty to veteran players who failed to make the grade. If he only chewed out his players with the same canine tenacity that he gnaws on that bubble gum with.

Yeah, what about those players and their failures?  Those strikeouts?  How many inning ending, called strike three's can one team have in a night?  Oddly and simultaneously from a team that displayed record breaking levels of poor plate discipline.  How about the basepaths? Should we go there, offensive or defensive - they're both equally appalling. We can go all day with this...

The reality is that after all the anger, denial, bargaining, and depression; the acceptance eventually sets in. Another reality, even more sobering, is that this team, once again, and for whatever reason, failed to execute on the field with enough regularity to produce a winning season. In short, the 2012 Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team was below average by conventional gradings.  Report card would read "C minus", I suppose.  Sure, it would be a much easier pill to swallow had this been only the fifth or sixth straight season of losing.  The magnitude of two decades of futility certainly amps the frustration to unbearable levels, but in the end, 2012 will simply be carved in the record books as a fourth place finish with a win total most likely in the high 70's...basically just a slightly below average baseball team.

The team moved forward in many ways, however.  There was a time, not long ago, that slightly below average would have been a real good thing. There was a time when 75 wins seemed like a pipe dream.  Times have, in fact, changed, despite the end results. There are now bona fide players, actually stars, on this roster.  There is now an ace on the staff, and a true bull in the bullpen.  All this aside, in the end, the Bucs again just weren't quite good enough.  After all this is accepted, we remind ourselves that this is our team, and that we are fans.  April of 2013 is just a few calendar flips away.

Mr. Zemcik's article will not expose any smoking guns, nor will it pull back the curtain and reveal a witless tyrant spinning wheels and lifting levers while keeping us all in a hazy smokescreen.  It won't break any curses, or exercise any demons that Sid Bream has contracted for our torture. The essay will, however, remind me that at 7:05 tonight, I'll be tuned in, hoping to hear Greg Brown call for the colors to be hoisted for the 77th time.

And that would mean only 4 more...

EDITOR'S NOTE: as a Boswell man now living just north of Philadelphia, I must insist that Mr. Zemcik's  black and gold "fan card" is valid and in no jeopardy of being revoked.