Another Shining Example of a Well-Built Team

The Pittsburgh Pirates are the first team to reach 50 wins in 2013 and though they have a ludicrously long streak of finishing seasons under .500, this is surely the year it will be washed out. The Pirates are in this position in part from smart team and franchise management from Neal Huntington. Since he’s […]

Next?

John Russell offered a quiet presence and a patience that is either good or bad for a baseball team depending on the personnel.  Three years after thinking it would be the right approach, the Bucs’ front office may have decided a different direction is needed to continue the rebuilding process letting Russell go with one […]

Rattled in the Clinches: Manager Pie Traynor and the Epic Collapse of the 1938 Pirates

On the evening of September 29, 1938, inside the funereal visitors’ clubhouse at Wrigley Field, a despondent Pie Traynor leaned back, fired up a cigarette, and prepared to lie through his teeth. His Pittsburgh Pirates had just lost three crushing games to the Chicago Cubs thanks to Gabby Hartnett’s famous “Homer in the Gloamin’” and […]

Reminiscing As Pirates Lose Two Ties To Golden Era In The Past Week

As a kid growing up in rural western Pennsylvania there was always stuff to do to stay busy.  The range of options was pretty expansive with everything from lounging under a tree to spending hours in the sun harvesting crops, but once the sun started to go down everything was put aside to catch the […]

All-Star Game Showcases Eastern League’s Best and Harrisburg’s New Digs

The last time that I was in Harrisburg, home of the Eastern League AA Senators, was in 2004 to watch them play the Reading Phillies. Two things from that game still stand out to me; watching a kid by the name of Ryan Howard crush the ball all over the field and, to be frank […]

They Belong to the Ages: The 2010 Pittsburgh Pirates

Sometimes we notice incompetence only when it assumes its most spectacular forms.  The chemist who blows up her lab.   The surgeon who amputates the wrong leg.  The mechanic who fills your radiator with wiper fluid. But often we overlook the grinding, day-to-day manifestations of ineptitude, the kind you live with and suffer through until one […]

It Ain’t Easy Raising the Dead: The Labors of Pirates’ GM Neal Huntington

In the 1980s, Pirate general manager Syd Thrift, an old Southern gentleman with a dry wit, looked at the rebuilding task in front of him and moaned, “It ain’t easy raising the dead.” Relatively speaking, Thrift’s task was a breeze.  He took over a team that had a winning record two seasons earlier, and was […]