The Coming of a New, Depressing Season

Well, the Pirates are set to play their first pre-season game today as they prepare for yet another losing season. It’s lucky we have the Steelers around, because if our area’s collective emotions hinged on the success of the Pirates, we’d be doomed.

It’s a bit of a shame that you have to be somewhat elderly to remember the last time the Pirates had a winning season, let alone remembering the last time they were anywhere other than at the bottom of the league like they’ve perpetually been lately.

I realize that the lack of a salary cap is pretty much the root of the Pirates’ problems. All of the wealthy teams shell out oodles of cash to buy the best teams they can get, while the Pirates apparently try to find the crappiest players they can so they can hope to turn a healthy profit off of people who just love the game by selling them $7 Cokes.

Every once in a while the Pirates will accidentally hire a good player. As soon as they realize their mistake, they’ll trade the player away, sometimes so they can acquire several crappy players.

This year I haven’t even heard the usual optimistic speeches by the coaches and ownership. They are usually overflowing with optimism and talk about how “this is the year” that things are going to turn around. Nope, haven’t even heard that this year!

This is also usually the time of the year that they unleash a new, lame marketing campaign, too, but I haven’t heard what the new one might be. Most recently they used the catchy slogan, “We Will.” Of course as fans we were able to fill in the blank to complete the phrase, like “We Will Stink,” “We Will Lose Every Game,” etc. Can’t wait to hear the new slogan!