Despite this past weekend’s unpleasantness, I’m feeling a surge of affection for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Maybe it’s their 9-0 pasting of Milwaukee. Or maybe it’s the fact that they’ve played their last 40 or so games at a blistering (for them) .550 clip, waging a valiant but futile effort to avoid yet another losing season.
I feel like I should congratulate them, in that hair-ruffling, shoulder-patting sort of way you’d congratulate your kid brother on getting a hit in the big boy pick-up game. Or the way you’d congratulate the JV team on upsetting the varsity in a scrimmage. It’s actually kind of cute the way they keep chugging along.
They’re like the little engine that could. Except that, for the most part, they couldn’t.
