Dishin’ It, Pirates Opening Day Edition

I’m a very opinionated guy, especially about sports. I’m 24 years old and my main beef with my generation is that nobody seems to have individualistic, interesting opinions about much, and if they do they seem to be too shy or afraid to share them. That’s not the case with me, so I’d like to establish a platform to express my views, and what better place than right here at RumBunter dot com. I’m not sure how much of this stuff the bosses with the editor permissions are going to let hit the site, but I’m going to give it a try. (Editor’s note:  all of it!)  I’ll even promise to keep it focused on the Pirates and baseball as much as I can. I welcome you to “Dishin It, Pirates Opening Day Edition”, the first of many opinion filled rants where all the guidelines of fairness and proper grammar are ignored.

I’d like to start off on a highly positive note. The regular season is finally here and we don’t have to deal with spring training anymore. Man the month of March is annoying. You read blogs, newspapers (ha nah jk), listen to sports talk radio, and it’s all just grasping at straws (to finally hear that idiom explained, click here). What’s funny to me is that everyone believes that spring training performance and statistics don’t mean a whole lot, unless they’re talking about a player that they really like that’s doing really well. Pedro Alvarez hits a ball 716 feet and people are ready to put him in the MVP race, but then Andrew Lambo strikes out seventeen times in a row BUT IT’S COOL CAUSE IT’S JUST SPRING TRAINING LOL.

One time I gave a scalper six dollars and a piece of gum for two infield box seats.

And this year we’ve been blessed with the extra twist of Jung-ho Kang being in camp which has brought along all the thrilling stories about his social life and if and how that makes any difference on anything. Andrew McCutchen walks past Kang without smiling, hugging him, and offering him a Big Mac and Fries to welcome to America and the media acts like Cutch is pushing him to the ground to steal his milk money so he can buy Fun Dip for himself and Neil Walker every day. I understand the people want baseball coverage and there’s just not a lot to go on in spring, but professional baseball writers should be able to do a bit better than that.

But I digress, because I don’t have to deal with that again for eleven months.

Now we’re on to the first month of the regular season and we can all start brushing off tough losses because “it’s April and these games don’t mean much”, completely ignoring reason, logic, and math. A win in April improves your record by the same exact amount that a win in September does. The Cardinals took the Central crown last year by two measly games after beating the Pirates three times in April last year. If you turn two of those losses into wins, the Pirates win the division and who knows what happens after that. I understand what people mean; the players shouldn’t be overly upset about early losses because there’s so much of the season left and in the end it’s possible that it really won’t mean much, but can we agree to try not to say illogical things this month?

The Pirates being competitive is fantastic, the summer is exponentially more enjoyable when they play meaningful games for six months, but does anyone else really miss getting tickets for four dollars? One time I gave a scalper six dollars and a piece of gum for two infield box seats. Now you’re dropping $80+ for Opening Day nosebleeds and have to prepare to rub on strangers for three straight hours if you do drop the cash to see a game. Those are very welcomed inconveniences, but there were positive things about the Pirates being horrible that I miss sometimes.

It may be too late for this one, but we could also slow our roll on the prediction game too. Everyone guesses at the Pirates record at the beginning of the season and then if somehow they’re close to being right they’ll bring it up seven months later as if they actually knew it was going to happen, even when their 2014 guess was twenty games off and they conveniently scrolled back in their Twitter timeline for three straight hours just to delete the evidence. Predicting the future in sports is like drunkenly heckling Ryan Braun from the bleacher seats trying to get induce a reaction. You might think you’re sweet at the time but you pretty much always just end up looking like an ass – it’s not worth your time.

I’d like to end this installment of Dishin’ It with some Twitter pro-tips.

Twitter Tip #1: If at any point over the next six months you find yourself a) with less than 2,000 Twitter followers and b) tweeting Pirates score updates, stop immediately – nobody wants to see that.

Twitter Tip #2: Just because there’s no daily limit on how many tweets you can send does not mean that it’s impossible to waste a tweet. Common wasted tweets include but are not limited to: tweeting a players name in all caps after they hit a home run or do some other positive thing, complaining about how old and delirious Bob Walk and Steve Blass are (unless it’s funny then it’s fine), retweeting the @Pirates account for any reason other than to win a prize, and making fun of another team or player by simply instituting “l-o-l” into their name, that’s old and tired, find a more creative put-down.

The regular season is back; it’s time for six months of healthy entertainment. You can follow my “Dishin’ Series” all season long right here on Rum Bunter and you can hear me dish it in real life at Pirate games at least once a homestand, I’ll most likely be in left field standing with a $9 beer in hand not wearing any Pirates gear because I’m too cool to fit in.

Next: Is Neil Walker the best Pirates 2B of the last three decades?