Monday, April 13, 2009

A Baseball Town

As a most American city, Pittsburgh is passionate about that most American of sports. It's still a baseball town underneath it all. Give the people a team that can win, and watch our fragile morale soar. Kudos to Pirates manager John Russell for letting Zach Duke pitch the top of the 9th inning this afternoon, when I and much of the rest of the Opening Day crowd assumed that Duke's splendid day was done at the end of 8. With two outs in the top of the 9th, my wife turned to me to ask why more than 30,000 fans were booing the pitcher. No, I explained; they're chanting "Duuuuuke." Did anyone go home afterward not thinking that maybe -- just, maybe -- this is the year?

1 comment:

Jerry said...

I hope by the time you got home you realized that this is not the year.

It's a wonderful start to the season, no doubt. But there's, what, 1000-to-1 odds that the rotation will not continue to pitch this way. I think we could have a surprisingly good outfield, maybe even comparable to last year's if Moss realizes his potential. The infield is decent. Catcher is great. Bench, meh.

But the pitching. Oh, the pitching.