For the Bucs, hoping third time is the charm
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Remember how in the “Peanuts” comic strips, there was that running gag that had Lucy promising to hold the football so Charlie Brown could kick it, but, again and again, pulling it away at the last second so Charlie falls flat on his back, humiliated and frustrated once again?
That is not unlike the position Pittsburgh Pirates fans have been in for the last couple of Junes. As the summer began in both 2011 and 2012, the Pirates were maintaining winning records, vanquishing division rivals and leading the team’s long-beleaguered fans to wonder if a season on the right side of .500 was at long-last in sight.
You know how those two stories ended.
Charlie Brown came running, and the football was pulled away.
Hard reckonings came in August in both years for the Pirates, reckonings so severe you had to wonder if the team had sold its soul to the devil for their earlier successes and now the Prince of Darkness was coming around to collect. Both 2011 and 2012 ended in what has been customary fashion for the Pirates since 1993 – below .500, in the nether reaches of the National League’s Central Division, those June playoff visions turning out to be nothing more than mirages.
So, it’s June, and here we are again. As of Tuesday, the Pirates had a .603 record in the National League standings. They have the fourth best record in the league and are tied for the fifth best in all of Major League Baseball. They’re outshining defending World Series champions the San Francisco Giants and the much-ballyhooed Washington Nationals, who were picked by many prognosticators to be the National League team to beat this season, but have so far lost more games than they have won.
The Pirates even have a better record than the New York Yankees, baseball’s pinstriped, big-salaried golden boys.
Should Pirates fans dare to hope that this year will be different? Will the team’s pitching rotation hold through August? Will Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte be able to retain their hitting power, or, to use the parlance of sports reporters, will those bats slumber as the leaves start to fall?
We can only hope the third time is the charm for the Pirates, and not the straw that breaks the camel’s back.