The Pittsburgh Pirates Suck (John Lennon)

Even though I’m a blogger who spends a lot of time ranting about Glee, I do have friends. Devoted Lists on Caffeine readers, all five of you, will remember Ankeet’s post about his 12 Favorite Movies and Spencer’s article about his mixed feelings for the Grammy Awards. In that tradition, today’s guest writer is my friend Joey. Enjoy! –Tim

My father and younger brother both called me the other week very excited after attending a mixer between Pirates fans and players. They had gotten to talk at length to Ross Ohlendorf, one of the Pirates’ underachieving and overpaid pitchers and Josh, my younger brother, impressed Ohlendorf with his wealth of baseball understanding. I sometimes wish that I had the steely resolve towards rooting for a team (granted the hometown team) that refuses to do anything but let us down, over and over again. I’m just not that noble of a fan, or a person for that matter. This character flaw has inspired these words.

I will be the first to point out that I have grown up in a fantastic environment of successful professional sports. Pittsburgh has the best football franchise of the modern era (thanks, Art II!) and a hockey team that has already won one Stanley Cup in recent history (two in the early ’90s) and will surely add at least one more over the coming years. But, the Pittsburgh Pirates make these warm fuzzy feelings disintegrate faster than taking an Organic Chemistry test. It is unfortunately always the same pathetic story. Early spring rolls around where I once again get sucked into headlines of the new “young and improved” team with true raw talent that will surely break through that barrier of 19 losing seasons. Once I find myself in mid-summer do I finally admit to myself, once again, that my team sucks. This is especially frustrating as it leaves me with little to do during the rest of the summer. (see graph of frustration below)

A Graph

I blame a significant amount of my ill will on the owner of the Pirates, Robert Nutting. Robert Nutting is a boring, annoying, self-serving owner of a Major League Baseball team. He has one agenda; make money on his investment. This attitude shows in the people he hires thereby trickling down the whole organization. While the alternative might be a rabid, clinically insane owner (enter Mark Cuban), at least the Dallas Mavericks win. I have watched countless players find early success in their careers only to get traded away once their asking price gets slightly elevated. Simply, I have a genuine dislike for Mr. Nutting. Some of my contemporaries might even tell him to “go suck a big one”.

Mr. Robert Nutting

With all due respect, Mr. Nutting, SCREW YOU. One of my favorite parts of the Pirates season is Nutting’s yearly dispersal draft when the Pirates send off our most promising prospects to our Major League affiliates, the Yankees and Red Sox. But I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge some of Nutting’s successful additions to the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. His “Let’s go Bucs, Let’s go Green” initiative gave a glimpse of Nutting’s soul and his passion for the environment. My only suggestion to him would be to paint the seats great in PNC Park, because he sure would be seeing plenty of green seat backs throughout the summer. Then again, that would cost money.

This just in, the Pirate Parrot and Captain Jolly Roger have been traded to the Buccaneers for Pegleg the Scurvy Riddled Pirate and three lower minor league mascots.

The Pittsburgh Pirates really do suck. Yes, there is history there. Yes, Willie “Pops” Stargell, Roberto Clemente, and Bill Mazeroski were all great, but great long before I was born. Too long. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by such a successful winning culture in my other Pittsburgh sports, but can you really blame me for wanting something more? For wanting something that I can stand behind and believe in? When you boil it all down, I just don’t quite appreciate the essence of baseball enough to stay rooted to my hometown team and suffer the consequences that come with solely rooting for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

I do, however, appreciate the game enough to embark on a journey that I believe will allow me to adopt a Major League baseball team that will hopefully (please God, please!) inspire me to fall in love with what was once deemed America’s Pastime. So, with a legitimate fear of losing my birth right upon embarking on this quest, here goes.

To pick the right team for me, some ground rules had to be laid out. Here is a summary of those guidelines.

1. I cannot choose to follow the New York Yankees. I absolutely hate the New York Yankees. They are the sole reason that makes it hard for me to get into baseball. The organization is ruining the game.

2. I cannot choose the Boston Red Sox for similar reasons. Notably, people from Boston are only marginally less abrasive than people from New York.

3. Everyone in the National League Central is out. This is the Pirates’ division. While it might be fun to root for a team that beats the Pirates, I cannot in good conscience do this.

4. All hometown teams of my closest friends are out. This is a tough one to stomach and eliminates a whole bunch of worthy prospects. I’d love to throw on a Nationals hat in preparation of their dominance over the NL East four years from now.

5. No team in the division of said “closest friends”.

6. No team can be selected that has had recent success (“success” will be a loosely defined term, but will mainly be limited to making the playoffs-why didn’t I decide to do this two years ago San Francisco, why?).

7. No team from Cleveland.

Below is the entire National League split up into respective divisions. By applying above rules, most teams are out.

The National League Ratings

Key to Divison Map:

1. No freakin’ way.
2. Ya…really not a good idea.
3. Leaning towards no…
4. I mean, I could consider it.
5. Let’s take a closer look, this could be our team.

 

The American League Ratings

As you can see, this has very quickly whittled down prospective teams. With some personal bias in hand, my final list comes down to the Chicago White Sox, the Oakland Athletics, the San Diego Padres, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Toronto Blue Jays. I have given an exception of the Rays’ recent success by making the playoffs only because they lost about every relevant player on their team while also picking up washed-up big name players such as Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez. For a while I considered the Kansas City Royals, but why go through all the trouble to root for another awful team that is just too similar to the Pirates (and ultimately, same thought for the Mariners)? But five teams are still too many and I must continue to eliminate possible candidates.

I don’t have the greatest feeling about the Chicago White Sox. I’m not altogether interested in getting behind a team that shares a city. I’m a fan of Mark Buerhle and co. but I’m going to have to turn down the offer. The San Diego Padres are another interesting prospect. In recent years they’ve gotten close to breaking through and had a nice recent record breaker in their ex-closer, Trevor Hoffman (even though he blew the All-Star Game a few years ago). Also, ever since they took Brian Giles (and Jason Kendall) from the Pirates, I’ve always kind of kept an eye on them. But, they’ve been a little too successful as of late for me to choose so I’ll move on. A few things scare me away from the Rays. 1. Their fan base is awful! How can you have such an exciting young team and just not care. The city of Pittsburgh would eat this team up if we had them. Come to Pittsburgh! 2. They just recently lost so many relevant starters, which I guess is why I’m even able to consider adopting them, but still… 3. I have a funny feeling about all the success they’ve been having in their division. Soon, the Yankees and Red Sox are going to figure them out and that will be the end of it. Therefore, I select the…

The A's

and the Blue Jay's

…for final consideration.

Interestingly enough, I find these two teams intriguing for different reasons. First, the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays aren’t afraid of spending some money (their average payroll is over 70 million over the past five years) and have a competent general manager. Their previous general manager, J.P. Ricciardi ran a good operation and cultivated talents such as Ted Lilly, Eric Hinske, Vernon Wells, and most importantly, Roy Halladay. I believe that in a different division the Blue Jays could do some serious damage as they are managed effectively and are often able to compete in their division. I love and hate their divisional situation. How sweet would it be to be able to root against the Red Sox and Yankees. It might also get a little old to root for a team that constantly gets beat by the Red Sox and Yankees too…

The Blue Jays have quite a bit of promise, which is obviously a plus. Promise meets some money spending! When the new General Manager Alex Anthopoulos traded away Roy Halladay, a new era in Blue Jays baseball began. They were able to open the doors to new, younger talent and shed a lot of excess salary hit in the process. I, in general, respect the front office and their management of this team even with the other teams more than doubling the Blue Jays payroll. It takes a savvy front office to build teams that can compete with the money mongers from Boston and New York. My last positive consideration for the Blue Jays is Tony LaCava, head of player development for the Jays, is a family friend and resides about 6 blocks away from my home in Pittsburgh, PA. The Blue Jays make an interesting case.

Now the Oakland Athletics are a fascinating organization. Billy Beane, a failed big leaguer turned general manager had a book written about him and his organization entitled Moneyball. It recounts the genius reinvention of how scouting works and is a testament to Beane’s intellect and brilliant view of what is really important in baseball. Or maybe it was just a gutsy experiment that worked out pretty well. Regardless, Moneyball is a cool thing to rally behind and believe in as a possible A’s fan. The A’s, according to Baseball-reference.com, have an average payroll of $56 million over the past five years. This is admittedly a very small budget and I might not know what I’m getting myself into with the level of frustration involved in how the Athletics operate.

The A’s also don’t have very good facilities or an impressive fanbase. Their lack of a good stadium really is a shame but the fact that the following the A’s isn’t trendy at all is something I kind of like. The real story behind why I like the A’s is how their front office operates! Billy Beane has redefined what a ruthless General Manager can do for a franchise. Front offices around the league are often afraid to deal with the shrewd Beane because of how many favorable deals he somehow pens for the team. Billy Beane has created a baseball managing philosophy that looks past what an old-fashioned scout looks for. The Oakland A’s didn’t create sabermetrics (the advanced statistical analysis of baseball) but they were the first franchise under Billy Beane to begin exploiting sabermetrics to it’s full potential.

The Oakland A’s are able to compete with teams that spend 200-300% of their payroll. Billy Beane is an inspiring character that brings something that I love to the game of baseball; logic and science. The A’s give me something to stand behind. Constantly being underdogs and spending money as efficiently as possible, by reinventing how scouting is done, is something to be proud of and cherish. The A’s have that “it” factor that for reasons that can’t be verbalized, make me want to root for them. So it’s settled.

From now on, and passing this loyalty down to my children, I am an Oakland Athletics fan. I just have one last concern…how will I look in green?

Let's go A's!

“I’m shot. I’m shot.”

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