Jul 7, 2018 4 min read

How can anyone still be a Pirates fan?

They lost to the Phillies 17-5 Friday night at PNC Park after losing to the Dodgers 17-1 Monday night in Los Angeles. They came into the weekend on a four game losing streak, during which they were outscored 48-13.

Since starting 11-4 the Pirates are 29-43, which put them at 40-47 after Friday night’s embarrassment. They’re never going to see .500 again this season and they’re only a game and a half ahead of the last-place Reds in the National League Central Division.

Other than that, since April, the Pirates have been a joy to be around.

The trading deadline is about three weeks away and, in what has been a tradition around here for way too long, the discussion and debate has started about how big the blow up should be.

Should they trade as many of their best players as possible and do a total rebuild or just trade a few, get some prospects and try to turn it around quickly?

At this point, why would anyone care?

It’s really becoming difficult to imagine anybody buying a ticket to a Pirates game with a smile, unless you’re a fan of their opponent that night.

They have three winning seasons in the last 26 years – from 2013 to 2015 – and that gave fans too young to remember what it’s like to have a good team to watch and root for over an entire summer.

The everyday nature of baseball is what separates it from all the other sports and there’s joy in knowing that you have the option of watching your favorite team just about every night.

But when you stay emotionally involved with a team that stinks for 23 out of 26 years and goes 39 years without winning a postseason series, it becomes a six month source of misery.

Daily. Same old discussions on the talk shows.

Fire the manager.

Trade everybody.

Bring up the prospects.

The owner is cheap.

There are still almost three full months left in this Pirates season. Do yourself a favor and ignore them.

Who, other than members of the players’ immediate families or people rooting for the visiting team, is going to show up at PNC Park in August and September, much less next week?

• Things are just as bad in Cincinnati, Kansas City and Baltimore, three formerly great baseball cities that, along with Pittsburgh, had the most dominant teams in baseball in the 1970s and early to mid 1980s.

The Reds have been in last place all season and are patiently waiting for the Pirates to knock them into fourth place. The Royals, who caught lightning in a bottle after 30 years of not going to the postseason and went to back-to-back World Series, are already 37 games under .500. They had lost 24 out of their last 28 coming into the weekend.

The Orioles have had 10 winning seasons since winning their last championship 35 years ago are 39 games under. Plenty of good seats available in all three cities.

All four teams should be playing in empty ball parks.

And it wouldn’t be surprising to see teams from New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles in baseball’s final four in October.

• I stumbled across my first 2018 World Cup game the other day and decided to check it out. Within 30 seconds someone got bumped, fell down, went boom and writhed as though he had just suffered a career-ending injury. I decided to check back in 2022. I’m not sure which teams were playing. It might have been Uruguay versus Neptune.
• The Phillies used seven pitchers in their 17-5 win over the Pirates Friday night. The game lasted 4 hours and 30 minutes. Earlier in the week, the Phillies and Nationals used 18 pitchers in a 13-inning game.
• Should there be concern for anybody who is still sitting in a ball park that long into a 17-5 loss by their team? Maybe counseling?
• Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are reportedly in negotiations to play a $10 million winner-take-all match. Shouldn’t this have happened 10 years ago?
• Lots of patriotic displays took place during Major League Baseball games on Independence Day. Everybody stood for the National Anthem.
• Does anybody actually watch the hot dog eating contest?