Pay No Attention To The Results

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The Pittsburgh Pirates played that badly after a closed door team meeting.  The Pirates dropped a rain-shortened game to the New York Mets 5-1 last night at PNC Park in front of a really nice crowd.  Pirates fans sat through the rain and the jeers of the Mets faithful to watch a team that have already clinched their 18th consecutive losing season.  Why? 

Why do Pirates fans have such a passion for baseball?  Shouldn’t fans just give up on the major league club and stare at the Altoona Curve stats?

Something needs to change on the ML level.  The major league club is floundering at a pace worse than ever deemed imaginable.  This is getting ugly.

But slow down a minute.  Pirates fans are a tough breed.  We don’t mind getting renewals the day after 18 hits.  We have seen heartbreak.  We’ve stared right into the dark, dark places of MLB and most of us haven’t blinked.   Sure that Bream guy stung us for a bit, but that’s history.

It’s important to know that, because at times the folks at RumBunter feel like Frank, Bob, and Neal don’t realize how much Pittsburgh fans love this damaged organization.  We wore black and gold long before these gentlemen rolled into town, and we will be here long after they’re gone too.

Did you happen to see just how many Pirates fans were still at the park in that storm last night?  It’s amazing.  The team is 40-83!

After Friday night’s defeat, the Pirates players made an effort to change.  A closed door meeting was held.   Hell, maybe someone chewed someone out.  It was probably therapeutic for the team.  Some will argue, maybe that time would have been better spent working on some drills.  For us, we will take the behind closed doors meeting as a sign of life, but it’s also a sign of things to come.

Closed door meetings never seem to happen on a team that is fighting for the playoffs.  Struggling teams and organizations have these meetings to search for answers.

It’s very obvious that the players go hard.  They hustle.  But it seems that hustle is simply not enough to overcome the uphill talent battle on the baseball diamond night in, night out.

The losing has to be keeping someone up at night.  Surely, somebody is pissed off about this too, right?

The character trait of losing seems stamped on the Pirates franchise like a late night tatoo decision.  Maybe it starts with an arm over a players shoulder in the dugout  like Carlos Garcia did last night to Pedro Alvarez after his error extended the fifth inning.  What if Pedro perceived it as apathy?

Hell, who knows, maybe Garcia told Pedro to get his head out of his ass.

The bottom line for us is this.  This ML club is going to have to improve by itself.  Perhaps the players will look in the mirror.  Practice harder.  Be on the field more.  If the players aren’t more talented, then they simply must work harder than their opponents until more talented players are added to the ML roster.  And you know what?  Sometimes hard work by less talented players won’t even be enough, but we have to think that when a player puts in everything he has, and failures occur, there is not a guilty feeling.

It’s all been left on the field.  Closed door meetings wouldn’t be needed.

Call it mojo.  Call it a beatdown.  Call it another bad outing.  Call it what you want, but it’s difficult to watch.  And Pirates fans are still watching.  Still hoping.  Still showing up to let the Pirates know they care about this franchise.

We can only trust Bob Nutting and his team care as much as we do about our team.

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I hear a lot about the town of Mill Run and its’ ball team.  Here’s why…..