Editors Note: The guest blogger today needs very little introduction. He is not only one of my best friends but he is also the only Phillies baseball fan I like, let alone respect. So excuse his jabs at Pittsburgh because it is hard for him to admit his love for our great city. Without further adieu, closet Pittsburgh lover, Cameron Koehler.
Let me start this by saying that I absolutely despise almost everything about the city of Pittsburgh. What you are about to read is not something that I would say just to make you all feel good about yourselves. Your constant reminders about 6 Super Bowl rings gives me good reason to never ever try to give a Pittsburgh native any type of extra confidence. I say what I say in this post because it’s my honest reaction to my trip to the ‘Burgh and the series loss that my beloved Phillies suffered and I had to witness firsthand.
Being a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies is not exactly a chore. Our worst day generally happens about once every 10 games when our 5th starter gives up too many runs and we don’t score any. Our best day? Well there are days when Cliff Lee strikes out 12 guys, Ryan Howard drives in 6 runs, Roy Halladay throws a perfect game, Chase Utley gets 3 hits, or we clinch a playoff series. I have said to Ben on multiple occasions that I honestly feel sort of bad complaining about anything the Phillies do when there are teams out there who can’t manage more than a 2-game winning streak. Teams like, well, the Pirates. Being a Phillies fan is easy, and being a Pirates fan is not. And I’m sure all of you know that much better than I do. After having spent this past weekend in Pittsburgh and attending Saturday night’s and Sunday afternoon’s games, I’m here to tell you some good news. With no real background on the Pirates and very little basis for saying this other than the events of the past 72 hours or so, I think that the Pirates are a decent-to-good baseball team.
If I had lived under a rock for the past 20 years and paid absolutely no attention to the Pirates or the rest of Major League Baseball in general during this season, I would have pegged the Buccos as a first place baseball team. Here’s what I saw this weekend and why it makes sense that this baseball team is on the rise.
Game 1: All I saw was extra innings really, but that’s all I really need to see to know that the Pirates aren’t half bad. Cole Hamels is nasty. And anytime a pitcher like Cole Hamels pitches 8 innings of 1-hit ball for a first-place team, that team will win. That didn’t happen Friday night. The Pirates pitching staff went toe-to-toe with the Phillies, something that I even said I thought they could do in my series preview, but I don’t know that I really believed it until I saw it in action. And the winning run? Driven in by a 22-year-old leftfielder and scored by a 26-year-old rightfielder. And the pitcher who hung with Hamels for 7 innings? He’s only 28, which isn’t too bad in baseball years. Does this individual game represent the projection of their entire careers? Not at all. But it could be a good sign of what they can do. And I know you Pittsburghers have seen plenty of young promising talent come and go, but a promising enough team should encourage the ownership to keep these guys around. Right?
Game 2: You have Roy Halladay on your team, and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially when he’s only 27 years old. This game was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. I never once thought that we would win this game from the time I saw the matchup to Chase Utley’s fly ball to left to end the 9th. I’m sure you all know how good Andrew McCutchen is, but this game and series in general should have served as a nice reminder of that.
Game 3: You lost to Roy Halladay, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And if we look at his line compared to Charlie Morton’s Saturday night, they are (much like the pitchers) pretty much identical. Halladay: 7 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K; Morton: 7 IP, 6 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 K. And Neil Walker (27 years old) went yard off of the best pitcher in baseball in his first career at bat against him. Not bad at all.
So if you look back at this series, what do you see? For me, it’s about as even of a series as you can possibly get. A 6-3 win by the Pirates, a 7-3 win by the Phils, and a 12-inning coin-flip type game on Friday night that the Pirates won. Do I think this makes the Pirates better than the Phillies? Not at all, and I will never say those words. Does this mean that the teams look pretty much equal right now? With the Pirates exceptional pitching as of late and the Phillies complete lack of hitting, it sure does look that way. The Phils are in first and are considered a favorite to represent the National League in the World Series. I don’t think the Pirates can do that this year, but it definitely looks to me like they have a lot of the pieces in place to make some serious noise in the NL Central very soon. And the general consensus I got from my years at Penn State is that Pirates fans don’t exist. Baseball is ignored in Pittsburgh because the Pirates will never be good. I hate to break it to myself, but the Pirates are better than you guys think.
As a Phillies fan, there is really only one positive that I can take away from this series. I learned this weekend that there are multiple teams throughout the league that make horrible shirseys (or jerts…take your pick of what you want to call a t-shirt/jersey) with players’ nicknames on the back rather than actual last name. I had seen a few people walk around Phillies games with “Chooch” written on the back of their #51 Carlos Ruiz shirseys. I had also seen one too many Raul Ibanez shirseys with “Rauuuuulll” pasted above the 29 on the back. And when I say one too many, I mean I had seen at least one. This weekend, however, I saw someone with a Shane Victorino shirsey that read “Flyin’ Hawaiian,” and a Roy Halladay that simply said “Doc.” As the Phils were losing game 2 on Saturday night, these dumb as crap shirseys certainly weren’t going to help me sleep at night. Until something magic happened to let me know that God still loved me. There was a sudden onslaught of Pirates nickname shirseys. It all started with “Cutch.” Then, “Pittsburgh Kid.” Soon enough, G.I. Jones, El Toro, and Great One at least let me break even for the night. Sure we lost the game, but at least we only had 4 horrible shirseys wandering around the park and not the embarrassing 5 that Pittsburghers managed to get. Pittsburgh…what a joke. Of the 29 people who actually support the baseball team, at least 5 of them can’t even do it with any type of fashion intelligence. What a shame
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