Plenty of goods and bads this week, though I’m once again forgoing quoting Pirates blogs in the bottom section...there’s a pretty good reason for it, though.
Good
* Well, the Pirates swept the Cardinals this weekend for the first time in over two years. That’s always a good thing. I don’t want to make more of it than it is, but it’s most certainly a good thing, especially when you consider that three of the young pitchers (Zach Duke, Ian Snell, Paul Maholm) I bragged about last week combined to give up 3 runs in 3 games against a worst-than-in-previous-years-but-still-relatively-potent Cardinals lineup.
* Freddy Sanchez continues to lead the league in hitting.
* Remember Chris Duffy? If not, here’s a quick primer: he hit .341 last year and has amazing speed and range in the outfield and on the basepaths. This got him labeled as the Pirates’ centerfielder of the future. Well, he started the season terribly, providing no offense whatsoever and was sent down to AAA in May...he promptly disappeared for a month while considering whether or not he wanted to continue playing baseball. He finally reported to AAA, completely kicked ass for a month or two, and was recalled when Craig Wilson was traded. He then proceeded to cry and moan that he wanted to be traded or retire instead of going back to Pittsburgh. Good times.
Well, he’s gotten lots of playing time since his return (lesson for all you kids out there: quit, and your team will play you more), playing phenomenal defense (making an incredible diving catch at Wrigley when I was there) and doing absolutely nothing offensively. Well, against the Cards this weekend, he went to the plate 14 times and got on base 10 times. It’s a start. He’s playing “Willie Mays Hays” style now, knocking the ball into the ground and legging out singles, then stealing a base to get into scoring position. Hopefully this gets him going because he’s truly a fantastic defensive player...but you have to at least contribute something offensively...especially if your manager insists on you leading off.
* I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the Pirates have a winning record (15-13) since the All-Star Break. That really doesn’t matter when you go into the All-Star Break at 30 games under .500, but hey...it’s something.
Bad
* Playing winning ball when your season is hopeless means you lose out on the opportunity to get the #1 pick in next year’s draft. That’s not a huge deal, but in a backwards way it’s kind of frustrating. You can’t win when it counts, and then when it would behoove you to lose, you win.
* Before sweeping the Cards, they were swept by the Astros, scoring 4 runs (and giving up 22) in 3 games. When you have young players, this is what happens...extreme ups and extreme downs.
* I can’t help it—I have to mention the amazingly putrid trades of GM Dave Littlefield once again. First, I’ll mention the good part—Xavier Nady has done slightly better than I anticipated. I called him “Craig Wilson without the walks” a couple weeks ago, and while I still say he’s slightly inferior to Wilson, he’s done well so far. For the sake of this bullet point, we’ll say that Wilson and Nady cancel each other out. Okay. So what does that leave for the trading scorecard? Well...
What the Pirates Gave Up:
Kip Wells (who could have been traded for Ryan Howard last June)
Oliver Perez (who could have been traded for Hank Blalock last December)
Sean Casey (2 HR’s in 37 AB’s for the Tigers after having 3 HR’s in 213 AB’s in Pittsburgh)
Roberto Hernandez
What the Pirates Got:
Shawn Chacon
2 minor league relievers
In case I didn’t mention it enough two weeks ago, that’s awful. Name my cat Stan as GM, and he could have gotten more for those players.
Oh, and did I mention that Shawn Chacon this week, after getting absolutely demolished by the Astros (7 runs, 5 outs), decided to admit that he likely has a torn meniscus and has been playing through pain all season? They couldn’t even get a healthy awful pitcher? As I said last week, as long as there is young, talented starting pitching, the Pirates have a chance to be competitive next season, but it is no thanks to Dave Littlefield, still the worst General Manager in sports.
BUT…
There is a silver lining. From the “I’ll believe it when I see it...but please oh please let me see it” department…
A source close to the Nutting family indicates that Pirates ownership is losing patience with General Manager Dave Littlefield and may fire him at the end of the season, even though they extended his contract one year through the 2008 season on opening day. If Littlefield is let go, his waterloo will have been acquiring $18.5-million worth of declining veterans in Sean Casey, Joe Randa and Jeromy Burnitz last winter and getting little production in return.And if you need another reason why this should happen, and soon, check out two paragraphs down.
The Pirates are likely to try to make a deal with Cleveland for reliever Guillermo Mota, who was designated for assignment on Friday. Mota was a favorite of Pirates manager Jim Tracy when they were together with the Los Angles Dodgers.Other Tracy favorites include Jose Hernandez (.238 average and thief of 105 at-bats that should have gone to Freddy Sanchez and Craig Wilson) and Mike Edwards (.188 average in Pittsburgh. If I were hired as general manager tomorrow, I would likely let Tracy keep his job for another year (just because of the cost of the buyout), but there is no way in hell I would let him contribute to personnel decisions anymore. Not even once.
Blog
Actually, instead of quoting blogs, I’ll use this space to review Clemente by David Maraniss. As I said in yesterday’s “When You Least Expect It” post, I finished it recently, and man...if I ever need affirmation for why I’m a Pirates fan, this book is a good one.
Hundreds of pages could be written about Clemente’s baseball accomplishments and skills, and his amazing on-a-rope throws from right field, and his good looks, and his pride, and the fact that fellow players loved him (especially as his career progressed)...but what makes Maraniss’ Clemente such a great read is the fact that Clemente’s flaws are given almost equal time. Heroes, to me, are fallible, just like every other human alive. What makes them heroic is the way they carry themselves despite their flaws.
Thirty-four years after his death, Roberto Clemente has turned into this mythic, perfect figure, but Clemente goes into detail about his at-the-time reputation as an aloof hypochondriac. Some players will play through pain and not let anybody know about it, which is both admirable and stupid. It seems like the current version of the Pirates has the same thing happen every year—a young, promising pitcher starts strong then begins to lose his stuff and get knocked around every time he’s on the mound. His ERA goes from 2-3 to 5-6, and it’s only after about a month of this that he admits that he’s been having discomfort...and inevitably, he ends up having surgery to rebuild his shoulder/elbow and misses the next 12 months, minimum.
Clemente, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. If you asked him how he was feeling, he’d let you know of every single nagging injury he had. And then he’d bang out three hits that night. If he needed a day off, he’d ask for it, and he’d inevitably receive flak for it in the media (and early on, he’d receive it from his manager too).
The most admirable and unique qualities of Roberto Clemente, for me personally, were his clutch play and his pride, especially his pride in his home country of Puerto Rico.
First, the clutch play—I could write paragraphs about this, but instead I’ll just mention that he played in 14 World Series games...and got hits in 14 World Series games. That pretty much says it all. He was MVP of the ’71 World Series and played an integral role in winning both of those series despite being devastaingly heavy underdogs. The offense of the 1960 Yankees and the pitching of the 1971 Orioles were supposed to crush the Pirates, and yet Pittsburgh emerged with World Series rings both times, and neither would have happened without Clemente.
Okay, I’ll write a second paragraph about clutch play. In Game 7 of the ’60 Series, Clemente singled in the 8th to cut the Yankees’ lead to 7-6, then scored the go-ahead run when Hal Smith homered. In Game 7 of the ’71 Series, he hit a HR in the 4th inning, giving the Pirates a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. The bigger the stage, the better “Momen” played. As a sports figure, it doesn’t get more heroic than that.
It was, however, his pride in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean nations as a whole that put him on a pedestal as a human being. His lifelong dream was to build a baseball city in Puerto Rico. His life’s motto was, if you have the opportunity to help people and don’t do it, you’ve wasted your life. Baseball presented him with the opportunity, and he ran himself ragged making sure that that opportunity was realized. In the end, his desire to help people got him killed.
Maraniss does an admirable job of piecing together the devastating earthquake that struck Managua, Nicaragua, right before Christmas in 1972, the corrupt (and Nixon-supported) government that prevented humanitarian aid from reaching those in need, and Clemente’s desire to help. He knew the only way he could be sure that the large amount of donations he’d helped collect in Puerto Rico would actually reach needy hands in Nicaragua was to go himself. He couldn’t find many friends to go with him on New Year’s Eve (only 1, in fact, went), but he went anyway. His desire to deliver as many goods as possible led him to making a deal with the owner of a larger plane, a broken-down, not-worthy-for-flight DC-7, to make the flight. It barely got off the ground and crashed into a lake at 200 mph. Maraniss’ description of the devastation of his family, friends, and the Pirates organization as a whole, was pretty gut-wrenching, but it drove home two points: he loved people and was loved in return, and the love of his homeland drove everything he did in his life. Great story...very much worth reading, Pirates fan or not.
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