Better, I Guess

Better to beat the Pirates 4-3 than lose by that score, I guess. And better to snap a five-game losing streak than see it grow to six, for that matter. So, I’ll try to sound excited. After all, Dylan Cease beat a team that doesn’t have the word “Detroit” in its name, though Cease may want to work on his fielding; two errors on the same (bunt) play is two errors too many. And I think it’s time for White Sox coaches, announcers and beat writers to point out what most everyone else in baseball knows, how Cease throws a fastball that lacks movement and his success in a game depends on him establishing his curveball from the start. But what do I know? It looked to be a beautiful Wednesday afternoon in Pittsburgh, blue skies to match all those empty blue seats at PNC Park; 10,406 fan showed up to root for the home team. It reminded me of the Pirates-Sox game Clare and I went to a little over three years ago, in May of 2018; Daniel Palka homered and Nate Jones coughed up the lead in the ninth. (There were 12,476 fans on hand at Guaranteed Rate Whatever that day, by the way.) That Pittsburgh team would go on to win 82 games. The Pirates haven’t finished above .500 since. According to Wikipedia, the Pirates haven’t had a decade where they’ve played .500 or better since the 1970s; the best they could do was to get to within five games in the 1990s and ten games in the 2010s. That’s a lot of deferred gratification for any one franchise or its fans. Good thing Rob Manfred is at the helm of MLB. Otherwise, I’d worry about the future of baseball in Pittsburgh.