The New Texas Rangers

I'm an expert on losing. Watching 15 straight years of it will do that to you. You might think that after 1,324 losses in those 15 years, I'd get kind of numb, and wouldn't be able to differentiate one style of losing from another. Same thing with Jenna Jameson and sex, in theory.

Well, this year's Succos, who are only 3 games under .500, have managed to infuriate me in a new and creative way. For years, the primary problem with the team was an astounding lack of offense. To put it bluntly, there were no good power hitters, no good contact hitters, there weren't even guys that could at least look good striking out. The team would usually have a good pitcher or two, and would play (to my eye) half-decent defense, but they couldn't hit. Eventually, they stopped pitching and fielding passably and decided to suck uniformly around the board. Somewhat disappointing, yes, but it was entertaining in the way that a fiery car wreck involving a bus full of nuns and small children is entertaining.

This year, though, this year it's different and troubling. I don't like change, dammit, and I want my team to lose in predictably heart-breaking ways. It's easy to bitch about them when they don't score runs and lose games 6 to 1, 8 to 2, et cetera. However, this year's team is giving me pains in places I didn't know I could feel by scoring tons of runs (5th in all of baseball going into tonight's action) and yet not being able to crack the mystical (and stupefyingly important to Pirate fans) .500 barrier.

I came to the conclusion tonight that the Pirates are the new Texas Rangers. If this is what life is like being a Rangers fan, albeit with less guns, more mullets, and roughly the same percentage of heart disease among the fanbases, give me back my Pirates of old. I don't like having false hopes. I don't want to believe that my team's offense gives it a chance to win most every game, when I know deep down that my team's pitching staff would get knocked around by Little Sisters of the Poor. I literally can't fucking take watching another Pirates starter throw batting practice for a few innings, fall behind by 4 runs, only to see the Pirates tie it, and then proceed to hemorrhage six or seven more tallies to make the deficit insurmountable. Ian Snell and a few relievers did it tonight, squandering two separate leads on the way to a 16-5 loss that will surely go down in this season's history books as one of the most pathetic in recent memory.

Seriously, it's actually quite easy and often fun to root for a team that doesn't score many runs. You can go to a game thinking, "Maybe this'll be the night they put five or six up and maybe even hit a home run." Even if they don't, there's still a chance they'll string together a good inning or two and win by fluke, if nothing else. Not this year's Pirates. Now, patrons attending home games rightfully expect to see a homer or three and about 5 or 6 runs, and anything less is a disappointment. Luckily for them, the offense usually holds up their end of the bargain. The pitching, on the other hand, usually resembles a little league game, if the little leaguers were getting paid millions of dollars to fall behind in every count and then serve up flat fastballs that yours truly could probably yank out of the yard down the line.

So consider this my plea, Pirates. Please, from the bottom of my heart, I implore you to stop scoring runs. Go back to your no-hit, no-field, barely-pitch days. Take all batting lessons from Adam LaRoche, do something. But above all, stop scoring runs and trying to make me think you're a legitimate baseball team comprised of people that don't have a disability of some kind. It's a little disconcerting to look out on the field and see hitters making contact, and I don't think I like it one bit.