Reminder

The Pirates are 7-6. Fuck yeah.

End transmission.

Pirates Prospect's Wife a Threat to Steal at Any Time

As is typical with the Pirates, they're making news for all the wrong reasons, even if the player mentioned did absolutely nothing wrong and could reasonably be assumed to have no knowledge whatsoever of what took place.

Jose Tabata, an outfielder acquired from the Yankees last summer as part of the Xavier Nady deal, and one of the top 3 prospects in the system, has a crazy wife, apparently. She's also 43. Forty-three, as in more than twice his age (He's 20). She's accused of generally being one crazy bitch, and trying to steal a baby.

Allegedly, the lovely Mrs. Tabata, Amalia Tabata Pereira, of Crazyville, pop. 1, posed as an immigration official and threatened the two-month old infant's mother with deportation, before offering to help her dodge the authorities. She did, however, say she had to take the baby as part of the plan.

Mrs. Tabata has a nice rap sheet that includes fraud and theft convictions (ambitious!) and has no listed hometown because her large amount of aliases makes it impossible to track everything down.

Jose Tabata is thriving for the Pirates this spring training. His strong play, coupled with good spring showings by Pedro Alvarez and Andrew McCutchen, has made Pirates fans borderline optimistic about the team in the years ahead. The only question about Tabata has been his maturity, which essentially is the reason he got put on the trading block by the Yankees. He'd been a model citizen during his time with the Pirates, but methinks maybe this wife of his was the source of all the craziness. Time to cut her loose, Jose, this is a career with the Pirates that's on the line, not just any shitty major league team.

Pittsburgh Pie-Rats Position Preview: First Base

The first of many exercises in self-flagellation, this is your look at the first basemen that will attempt to lead the Pittsburgh Pirates to the promised land that is 81-81. Like virtually every other position on the Pirates, first base is woefully manned. In theory, the Bucs have a competent starter in Adam LaRoche, but then again, in theory I'm a prestigious venture capitalist with a fleet of gold-plated Lamborghinis and a gaggle of specially bred Chinese fighting geese.

Typical

The Pirates don't really have anyone behind LaRoche. This actually isn't a huge problem from June 1 onward, as LaRoche straps on his spandex tights and mask that grant him powers of competency. April and May are a different story. You look at LaRoche’s stats overall and you see a guy hitting around .270 or .275, giving you about 22-25 homers, and knocking in 80-90 runs. You’d look at that and think, “Oh, this guy’s not so bad, he’s a decent first baseman.”

Wrong.

In April and May I’d rather have AIDS playing first base than Adam LaRoche. He hits in the low .100s with pretty much no power during these months. What’s worse, he usually doesn’t even make contact, and if he manages to not strike out, he rolls over a grounder to first base. The coaches say it’s all mental, and that they expect him to break through in the early season sooner or later. I say, “BULLSHIT.” Adam LaRoche is a major-league baseball player, and even resembles one for four months of the year, so I’m going to go ahead and remove “mental hurdles” as a possible cause of him being worse than a blind four-year-old for the other two months.

See me bitching like I just did? That’s the Pirates first base situation. What does it say about them that they don’t even have another player worth mentioning at this position?

Sigh.

Scott Boras is a Shitbag

Scott Boras on A-Rod's positive test for two different anabolic steroids in 2003 (by the way, Boras said he had heard of no positive tests):

"In a worst-case scenario, if that were true, it was one season and since then Alex has gotten the Good Housekeeping seal the last 5 years."

If you've just killed three small children just for kicks, then hacked them up and dumped them in the ocean, and you want to feel good about yourself, just dig up a record of Scott Boras' best quotes. I promise you'll feel better in no time.

Bye-bye, Shit Bag

There are few athletes in the world, maybe none, that I despise more than Ronny Paulino. That is why I am very pleased to announce, after first taking two days to celebrate nonstop, that Ronny Paulino is no longer a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Thanks to a genius trade, he is now the Phillies' problem, and oh, what a problem he is. (Oh, by the way Phillies fans, a sack of used baseballs would have been a fair price for this pile of excrement, you didn't have to give us an actual player.)

You would think that a professional baseball player, even a minor league guy, would know one of the golden rules of hitting: Don't step in the bucket. As in, don't step towards third base if you're a right-handed hitter, or towards first base if you're a lefty. You would also think that a major league player wouldn't be a fat and utterly worthless sack lymph and grease. Ronny Paulino was both ignorant of this golden rule and a fat sack of lymph and grease. He also might have been the single laziest player in Major League Baseball. I can't honestly remember him running hard on any ball he put in play. He could ground into a double play on a hard-hit ball to the outfield, if the fielder was ambitious enough. I find it miraculous that he didn't get thrown out at least once by a rocket-armed right fielder on a grounder through the hole.

Paulino was arrogant, stupid, wanted a trade, and essentially worthless. He was almost as bad as Derek Bell, which is staggering to say, but quite true. If I never ever hear anything about Ronny Paulino again, it will be a great day in the neighborhood. Adios, motherfucker, you won't be missed.

This'll Calm the Taxpayers

The New York Yankees simultaneously found a cure for cancer, AIDS, blindness, world hunger, tuberculosis and SARS, or so ESPN would have you believe judging by their coverage signed C.C. Sabathia today. They'll be paying him the mere pittance of $160 million over the course of seven years. This is very out of character for the Yankees, who are typically used to building their team from within, and relying on talented homegrown prospects to lead them to the promised land. In another stunning departure, the Yankees are reported to be looking at signing starting pitchers Derek Lowe, A.J. Burnett, Ben Sheets, Whitey Ford, Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan and Dennis Eckersley, though they plan on using Eckersley only in a long relief role, as the front office brass thinks he may have "lost a little bit off his heater."

The Yanks are also cautiously optimistic that they will be able to acquire Ty Cobb to shore up the line-up and provide much needed toughness and racism to a squad devoid of both. GM Brian Cashman was hopeful that the team would sign Cobb, saying, "Well, the challenge with Ty is successfully reanimating his corpse, but we feel strong that the same tactics used in the past with Mr. Steinbrenner can be applied to Mr. Cobb, with great results."

Again, this represents a change from the norm for the Bombers, who in the past turned to farm talent like Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams and...Shane Spencer to populate the line-up, while Andy Pettite, Mariano Rivera and...Brian Boehringer anchored the pitching staff as valuable contributors.

More on this breaking story as it develops, as we hear that the Yankees are in talks to sign the entire Pittsburgh Pirates team in free agency, just "for kicks", as one insider put it.

Pirates Outsource Their Pitching Needs

Today's news to be depressed about comes from your Pittsburgh Pirates. The Bucs, in their quest to creatively mine for talent to compete with bigger spending teams, have signed two pitchers from India. Please re-read that sentence and refrain from moving out onto a ledge. The story has already been reported by several other blogs, including Walkoff Walk, Deadspin, Mondesi's House, and also the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Here's some fun nuggets about Rinku Singh and Dinesh Kumar Patel, the first-ever Indian athletes to sign pro sports contracts outside the country.

--They've been playing baseball for about six months
--When they came to the U.S. for training they did not know how to play catch
--They were the winner and runner up, respectively, in a talent contest
--They're from fucking India
--Did I mention they're from India

Now, all senseless bashing aside, if it turns out that these guys can pitch and can help my Buccos, I don't care if they're from Antarctica. It just seems to me that if no one else was really mining India for talent, then the Pirates might not be on to something here. Even GM Neal Huntington admitted as much, remarking that in 25 years, the two players might be seen as a blip on the radar or as pioneers. Somehow, I'm willing to bet the latter.

The signing of Singh and Patel (who, with his low 90s fastball and smallish build, should remind Pirates fans of an Indian Ian Snell) adds to the list of players the Pirates have signed that are from odd locales, to say the least. They've also signed Mpho Ngoepe, an 18-year-old South African shortstop, and Christopher Aure, a pitcher from North Pole High School in Alaska. This is not encouraging.

There's about a 1% chance that the Pirates struck gold here. And in this case, one of these guys making the majors in under 4 years would qualify as striking gold. So, while the Yankees and other big market teams are looking to improve by throwing the GNP of Lichtenstein at C.C. Sabathia, the Pirates are apparently scouting players by watching Office Space and Harold and Kumar.

Time To Get Out the Soapbox

Preaching is not really my style. High-class sermons on the state of professional sports are something I avoid like flossing. However, I’m going to climb up to the pulpit and attempt to eloquently discuss something, rather than make 18 stupid jokes that only 3 people understand? I recognize that such a shock to the system is not necessarily something that our reader will be happy about, but I beg of him/her, please don’t quit us after you read this, you’re all we’ve got.

What the Tampa Bay Rays did last night was great for baseball and great for professional sports. This might seem like an awfully obvious thesis statement, akin to “Douglas over Tyson was a big upset”, but let me explain why I felt the need to make the obvious point. There have been rumblings ever since David Price got Jed Lowrie to ground out that a Rays/Phils World Series was bad for everyone but the people living in those two cities. Bad for TV, bad for advertisers, bad for the precious fans in Boston, New York, LA, Chicago, etc. This is simply not the case. In a sport where virtually every team, from the crappy ones to the great ones, makes a nice profit, TV ratings are not the most important thing. And yes, I’m sure FOX wanted a sexier, bigger market matchup, and I’m sure Joe Buck is not thrilled that he’ll be broadcasting from a dome with all the charm of a washed-up porn star, and a bandbox with a bunch of angry, bile spewing ex-convicts, but this World Series is going to have some major juice where it counts—on the field.

The popular argument against the Rays making it to the Series is that, well, they have bad fans. And this isn’t even a statement I’m going to try and refute, because when a team is in the playoff chase in late September and can’t draw even 15,000 people for a big game, there’s a problem. Part of the mentality of some of these fans, though, is understandable. The Rays have been beyond laughable for their entire existence up until this year, so there were no die-hards that populate so many other stadiums game-in and game-out, confident that their patience will be rewarded by a winning team, just people that didn’t have anything better to do on a given night. Success changes all of that. New fans are right now being cultivated in Tampa/St. Pete, and they’re young, impressionable, and know only that a group of young, enthusiastic players are playing their guts out for a little glory. The added bonus is that very few, if any of these guys are making big money. It’s easier to root for players that, though they may be rich by every other standard, are paupers in the baseball salary game.

The other big argument against this World Series, and it’s really the bigger of the two, is the point of view that assumes that, since a major media market isn’t involved (and since when is Philly not a major media market—you’d think it was a town of 300,000, not a city of 2 million) this series has no real tie to the common, neutral fan. This statement or thought process is so backwards it makes me think of Kris Kross. For every displaced Yankee, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Dodgers or Angels fan in the country, there are at least 6 or 7 fans that love an underdog story more than anything. There are long suffering fans in other cities, that, while they might not like the Phillies, can at least relate to Phildadelphia’s 28 year championship drought. (Hello Cleveland!) This elitist idea that sports don’t matter if they aren’t played in Boston, New York, Chicago, LA or Houston/Dallas/Miami, et al is ludicrous. If this really is the case in the minds of anyone but TV executives, why bother having teams in other cities. Let’s cut this down to the top 6 to 10 media markets in the country for each sport, and then have them battle it out. For sure, the talent level on teams and the quality of play would go up, but just try and legitimately visualize that scenario. It sucks. It alienates the majority of the country. It is, in the long run, not so good for sports. But some would have you believe that it is.

One thing I’ve always hated about the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox is the romanticized view the media gives to their fanbase, as if they’re the only ones that have ever suffered through a long losing drought. Granted, what the Cubs have done over the last 100 years is pretty staggering to think about, but to make it as though their fans somehow “deserve” a championship is silly. I’m a loyal Pirates fan, and I can say with 100% honesty that I don’t feel they’ll ever win a championship while I’m alive. Does that make me as a fan pitiable? I hope not. Sticking with your team through thick and thin, good and bad, nauseating and exhilarating is the essence of being a fan. And really, this “pat ‘em on the back, don’t worry guys next year is your year” crap that the media gives to Cubs fans is mostly due to their status as a big-market team. When do you hear about the Cleveland sports title drought? Not too often. Put 3 million people in Cleveland and you’ll start to hear about it a lot more, whether it’s justified or not.

But let’s get back to the field, for a minute. This series sets up as possibly the most intriguing matchup of any we could have had from the 8 teams that started the playoffs. Yes, Cubs/Red Sox would have been interesting on the field because it matched two exceptionally strong offensive clubs that also had dominant pitching staffs, at least during the regular season, but what we’re about to be treated to is a contrast in styles that almost guarantees exciting, compelling baseball. Are you a baseball purist, that believes in pitching, defense, productive outs and timely hitting? Please step into the Tampa corner (though they did mash it all over the yard against the Red Sox). Are you new-school, a steroids-era fan that loves the long ball? The Phillies hit a ton of them. Do you like dominant closers with just a little hint of past failure, guys that you feel bad not rooting for, despite not having a reason to? Meet Brad Lidge. Do you like a young gun in your closer role, a guy who was just thrust into the spotlight last night and exceeded expectations completely? I have David Price on line 1. Do you like scrappy role players who step up at big times? Shane Victorino and the entire Tampa Bay team outside of Crawford, Longoria, Upton and Kazmir would like a word or two with you.

Point is, there’s plenty of compelling to go around during this series. There’s going to be a story that plays out one way or another that will appeal to virtually everyone; either a city will see its championship drought end, or an unfathomable Cinderella story will write an utterly improbable final chapter. Whatever the outcome is, don’t let anyone tell you that it isn’t important because it isn’t in New York or Chicago or Boston or LA. It’s damn important for that very reason.

Enjoy the games everyone, Rays in 6.