Pirates Prospect Running Wild…For Stanford

When Tyler Gaffney was with the State College Spikes, he was a talented player with a 483 on base during his rookie year.  The 220 pounder made the New York Penn League All-Star Team (he walked in the game.)  But something was calling him and it wasn’t baseball…it was his one year of football eligibility.  Last night on a national stage, (well we caught the game after an event in DC)….it was easy to see why Gaffney gave up pro baseball to play football one more year.

Gaffney has been a force for the Stanford Cardinal all season and last night was nothing new.  Stanford ran for 274 yards and played keep away from the Oregon Ducks holding onto the pigskin for over 42 minutes.  Gaffney ran for 157 of those yards.

It’s a hell of a feel good story and the Pirates are right in the middle of it again.

Coming into the game, Gaffney was averaging 5.3 yards per carry.  That went down a bit last night as Gaffney totted the rock 45 times, not a misprint, as he went over the 1,000 yard mark on the season.  The 6‘1′ running back has cracked the century mark six times this year.

We liked this quote the best

"“We rode him like Secretariat,” said Stanford offensive coordinator Mike Bloomgren. “At one point, I got on the head set and asked, ‘Is this child abuse?’ I asked him if he was doing OK when he got close to 40 carries, and he said he wanted to keep going.”"

The San Diego native wanted to finish his degree and he is doing it with a vengeance.  Many have called last night’s victory over the Ducks as Revenge of the Nerds.  That’s pretty funny.  But in all seriousness, the big question for selfish Pirates fans is this…

And if Gaffney decides to return to baseball?  Oh yeh, the Pirates will get him back, we have a feeling they will have open arms and maybe a pair of nerd glasses.