The 2009 Pirates: I didn't know we still had a team

If the folks who brought us the movie Major League came along today with that idea, the team they'd base it on would be the Pirates. No doubt, there are society-type ladies all over Pittsburgh, like the one in that awkward scene where Tom Berenger crashes the party at Rene Russo's boyfriend's place, saying: "Baseball? Here? In Pittsburgh? I didn't know we still had a team?"

Indeed, what with the Penguins and Steelers both winning championships and the Steelers now back in training camp, the only way for the Pirates to get any attention is to do what they did today. Hey, it's not every day a team trades away two of its cornerstone players. It's not every year a team trades away five members of its starting lineup, three of whom have been all-stars and one of whom was just signed to a three-year contract extension in February. And we're not even going to bring up the Jason Bay and Xavier Nady deals from last year.

You can't even really get upset about it anymore. We all knew it was coming. But it's sad when a player like Jack Wilson who kept showing up every year for nine years of losing and gave everything he had gets shipped away. And it's frustrating to give up a guy who can hit like Freddy Sanchez.

They managed to get a pretty decent haul out of the Wilson trade -- or so it seems on paper. Jeff Clement is in his third season in Class AAA ball and hit .227 in an extended trip to the majors with Seattle last season. Hate to say it, but just from looking at his numbers, it feels like he might be one of those guys who's topped out already. Another Adam LaRoche. No more upside. A couple of the pitchers that came from Seattle are in Class A ball -- nice numbers this year, but too early to know if they'll pan out. One of them is 6-foot-7, so if nothing else he's got a great build for a pitcher.

We'll know in a couple years. And that's the frustrating part. We have no way of knowing if these guys are going to work out or if the team will find itself two years from now still bellyaching -- as they have been for years -- that they "don't have enough talent." It's the same old song we've been listening to for years, through multiple management groups. Sure, you can make the argument that the team wasn't winning with all of these guys they've unloaded the last couple years. The thing is, some teams address that by spending some money and filling their holes through free agency. The Pirates seem willing to tear it all down every few years and start from scratch. There are teams that do that too, but then they eventually become at least respectable, if not contenders. No such luck in Pittsburgh.

So we're back to where we were in the mid 1990s and again five or six years ago. We're rebuilding. We're hoping these guys we've picked up in all these deals will pan out. And forgive the pessimism, but we're hoping to hold on to the ones who do pan out. Is that too much to ask? For the last 17 years in Pittsburgh, it has been.

'We choose to go to the moon .... and that's the way it is'

It is a confluence of events that is ironic and bittersweet and unique -- this 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the death of Walter Cronkite. Sad that he's not here to commemorate the occasion, one that literally left him speechless.

Cronkite's reaction 40 years ago tonight as the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility was simultaneously the most and least eloquent of his esteemed career ... something along the lines of "Hoo, boy." And you have to love the way he then asked astronaut Wally Schirra, who was co-anchoring with him, to chime in and save his ass.

"You say something, Wally, I'm speechless."

I wish I'd been around to see it. If I could, I'd rearrange the threads of history so I'd have been born in 1952 instead of 1972. That way I'd have been 8 when Bill Mazeroski's homer beat the unbeatable Yankees in the 1960 World Series. And I've have been 17 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Of course, that also would have meant that I'd have graduated high school in 1970, right in time to get shipped off to Vietnam. But I do wish I'd been around to see the first lunar landing, to experience that summer of 1969 -- to be there when a truly simple world was transformed into one in which we could go to the moon.

The other day a co-worker told me he wasn't that impressed with the Apollo missions -- that it was all just a matter of mathematics -- that all you have to do is make the right calculations and point the spacecraft in the right direction. OK, but it's not really that simple. And it's especially not that simple when you're doing it with technology conceived 40 and 50 years ago. The average cell phone has more computing power than what NASA had at its disposal. They were still doing those calculations my co-worker was talking about with sliderules because there weren't any electronic devices smart enough to do them.

In 1961, when President Kennedy set the goal of reaching the moon by the end of 1969, NASA had just about 15 minutes of manned space flight to its credit. Yes, it was all a matter of mathematics and making the right calculations, but nobody really knew what the conditions would be like once we shot a spacecraft out there. We thought we knew, but we didn't know. Nobody knew that we could rendezvous and dock in space. We thought we could do it, but we didn't know. And nobody knew how to create a landing craft that would get the job done, that wouldn't weigh too much, that wouldn't get stuck up there and leave two men stranded on the moon for eternity.

In less than 10 years, we got it all figured out. We tested and tried and failed. We lost Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee on the launch pad during a test that required them to do nothing more than lay on their backs in the command module for a few hours. But we didn't give up. We completed the mission. And it is the greatest achievement in human history.

If there is to be a lasting legacy from Apollo, this is it: This country can achieve whatever it wants if we put our minds and our efforts and our resources into it and we refuse to give up. The men who walked on the moon would have us use such resolve to go back there or to Mars, which apparently Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins talked to President Obama about today. As idealistic and romantic a notion as that is on this 40th anniversary of "one small step for man," there are far more pressing issues for us to address.

What if we put an Apollo-like level of resolve into ending the era of internal combustion engines? What if we decided to get off petroleum-based fuel in 10 years? What if we decided we were going to fix our dilapidated electrical grid and its endless miles of wires that can shut off power to the entire Eastern seaboard if the trees are overgrown in the wrong place in Ohio? What if we decided that everyone deserves to have health care without worrying about how much they're going to have to pay for it? What if we decided that in the wealthiest nation on earth it was no longer going to be acceptable for people to live on the streets? What if we decided -- as Rob Lowe's character Sam Seaborn in The West Wing once argued -- that "schools should be palaces?"

What if we could muster an Apollo program for even one of those things? How much better would our country be? The agonizing thing is that we know we can. Apollo taught us that. It took nearly a decade and an army of 400,000 people working in NASA and various private-sector firms across the country. But it happened. We did it once. Why can't we -- or won't we -- do it again? Yes, of course, this is rampant, childish idealism. But isn't that what Apollo was all about? And how can you avoid thinking that way when you look at the iconic images of that time -- two men standing on the moon, a quarter of a million miles away, the command module and the lunar module, floating in space, docking and flying home. We lived in a world where things had never been done. And then they were.

I just hope I'm around to see it when we decide to do something again.

Meet the new Pirates, same as the old Pirates

So it's been two years since I last decided to say anything here. I've gotten a few stray comments here and there, so I guess someone is reading. Or not. Whatever.

Tonight I've been jolted back into a ranting mood by news I never saw coming. I'm watching MLB Network when I see a crawl go across the bottom of the screen saying the Pirates have traded Nate McLouth to the Atlanta Braves for prospects. First I sat there dumbfounded, reading it and then rewinding it on the DVR to make sure I saw what I saw. Then I searched the Web. The Internets never lie, you know.

Why do I not give up on the Pirates? I've given up on everything else. They've clearly given up on me and every other Pittsburgher. But it's like an addiction or something. I've got MLB Extra Innings, so I can watch whatever game I want, but who do I turn on every night? Pirates. Why do I do that? Lanny Frattare is retired now, so I don't even have the nostalgia factor working there anymore. I was spared the three-hour treat tonight of listening to Greg Brown try to spin this trade as a good thing because the Pirates and Mets got rained out. Hey, they beat Johan Santana last night, so less than 24 hours later they trade away their best player. Makes perfect sense, right?

God damn, am I sick of watching this team sell off its top talent. Jason Bay, Xavier Nady, Aramis Ramirez, Jason Schmidt. Yeah, I'm perfectly well aware that I can't hold the current management accountable for stuff that happened before they took over. So what? Whether they like it or not, this franchise has a well-deserved reputation for dumping its top talent and getting players of empty promise in return. And here's the thing ... a great way to not get lumped in with the old management would be to -- wait for it -- stop getting rid of all the best players.

I'm still devastated over Ramirez. We traded one of the best third basemen in baseball and Kenny Lofton, who was hitting .277 at the time, for Jose Hernandez, Bobby Hill and some guy named Matt Bruback, who never made it to the majors. Hill was a marginal middle infielder. And Hernandez? Hoo boy. You're talking about one of the most notoriously undisciplined hitters in baseball at the time -- he hasn't played since 2006. Want numbers? He has more career strikeouts (1,391) than hits (1,166). He struck out 56 times in 58 games after the Pirates acquired him in 2003. Then they released him. Two years and 121 strikeouts later -- after the Dodgers and Indians had both seen enough and let him walk as a free agent -- the Pirates re-signed him. He managed to strike out only 29 times and get 32 hits in 67 games in 2006 before they somehow managed to convince the Phillies to buy his contract.

Meanwhile, Ramirez has hit 200 homers and driven in 671 runs since the trade. I may never get over that one, which doesn't bode well for handling this McLouth thing. Then again, given the team's recent history, I had already resigned myself to losing Bay last year, so it softened the blow when it happened. It's like clockwork. They're going to get dumped as soon as they're marketable. But nobody saw this coming. The Pirates just signed McLouth to a three-year deal in February, and team president Frank Coonelly was quoted by the Post-Gazette saying that McLouth's deal and others the team signed with Ryan Doumit and Paul Maholm, "reflect our commitment to build a strong core from within our system.’’

But I guess that was February. Lots has changed. You've got a team that finally is pitching well, save for Ian Snell. Can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Bob Smizik that Snell needs a minor league stint to get his shit together. Other than that, all they need to do is score some damn runs. It's the first week of June, and yeah, they're in fifth place. But they're only six games out. So what do they do? Trade the team leader in home runs and runs batted in.

Yeah, yeah, I know you have to look at what you get in return in a trade, and this time the buzz is that one of the pitchers Atlanta gave us is ready for the big leagues now. The other pitcher in the deal is getting rocked in Class A ball this season. And they gave us an outfielder we don't really need, but he's in Class A too. And if history tells us anything, the guys the Pirates get in these deals rarely pan out anyway.

It's yet another sad day for the Pirates. But we're used to it. And how much do we really care? The Penguins are in the Stanley Cup Finals for the second year in a row. By the time they drop the puck Thursday night for Game 4, it'll have been 24 hours since news of this trade came out. At that point, how many people do you think will give a shit who these guys are that the Pirates got in this trade?

The Steelers go to camp July 27. All will be right with the world then.

Strike Zone Channel -- Greatest. Invention. Ever.

For the second night in a row, I'm sitting in front of my TV watching the free preview of the baseball Strike Zone Channel on DirecTV. I wasn't planning to buy the extra tier of service that DirecTV is hawking this year for the first time with the Extra Innings package.

Plans change.

Now, it's not as if this is a new idea. DirecTV did the same thing with its NFL Sunday Ticket package, where they had the Red Zone Channel, which bounced around from game to game, taking you to wherever a team was about to score. And it worked for football. But it works even better for baseball because it's so slow moving. That probably seems counterintuitive to say, but the thing is every time there's a lull in one game, they find something happening elsewhere. In the span of the last couple minutes, I've seen Albert Pujols, Torii Hunter and Miguel Tejada hit.

I don't recognize the guy they have hosting. But no doubt they screened all of the applicants for this job for ADD, because this would be a nightmare for someone who has trouble staying organized. He's a traffic cop, taking you from one game to the next, setting up each situation, which must be real fun when there are 10 games going on at once. He's not bad, though. MLB is going to launch a 24-7 cable network in 2009, and I don't know what they have planned for evenings, while games are being played, but Strike Zone Channel should be it. They can just migrate this coverage over onto the MLB channel. Of course, it's the nucleus of the $40 per year add-on package on DirecTV, so that's probably not likely.

To me, it's stuff like the sports packages where the 500-channel universe shows its true value. Most of the channels on my DirecTV are a complete crapfest. Does anyone need Lifetime Movie Channel? Do I need six Discovery channels? But the ability to watch a dozen baseball games simultaneously? That's the way the world should be. Watching the teams I want to see -- that's what I love about it. I'd love to see it extended to more than just sports. I'd still watch the local TV stations from Pittsburgh if I could, even though I don't live there anymore -- a little slice of home. Yeah, I know there are all sorts of rules that prevent it. Screw 'em. It's the information age. The Internet has broken down the barriers for newspapers. Let's let the 500-channel universe break them down for TV.

In the meantime, I'll be watching the Strike Zone Channel this summer.

Piss on politicians: A tale of two stadiums

A story started circulating in the last week or so that has me seriously thinking about getting into politics. Because if the buffoons who are responsible for this can be in positions of power, a stupid schmuck like me can do it too.

Apparently, officials from Washington, D.C. are talking about trying to woo the Washington Redskins to relocate back into the city. For those who don't realize it, the Redskins play at FedEx Field in Landover, Md. Been there for 10 years after leaving behind the miserable hell hole known as RFK Stadium. FedEx is one of the jewels of the NFL -- the largest stadium in the league at just under 92,000 seats, more than 200 luxury boxes. But the fact that seemingly has eluded the good mayor of Washington and some of his cronies on the city council is that the Redskins' tyrannical owner, Daniel Snyder owns FedEx Field. So even if the city somehow induced him to move back into town, he'd have to unload the stadium he's already got. And nobody is going to buy a 92,000 seat stadium that has no tenant. The mayor of D.C., by the way, is the same guy who repeatedly opposed funding of the new Nationals' stadium while he was on the city council.

Maybe if Starfleet Command called the starship Enterprise back into Earth orbit, they could beam FedEx Field into the District. Even then, you're looking at myriad problems with the utilities and infrastructure ... you know, sometimes even the easy solution can't work.

I don't live in D.C., so maybe I'm not permitted to comment on things like this -- I'm part of the country that taxes those poor people without representation, after all. But if I did live there, I would be disgusted that anyone in power thinks trying to lure the Redskins back to town is a good use of time. You mean you've got nothing better to do? How about focusing on the development of the area around the new Nationals' stadium? How about doing something about the crime that runs rampant and spills over into the surrounding counties?

The Redskins left. It happened. You had the chance to keep them there, but it didn't occur to you to do anything about the hell hole you had them playing in. And now, a decade later, you want to try to fix it. Too late. Move on. Be lucky you have a baseball team. They play literally 10 times more home games every year than the Redskins. That means if you create the right kind of neighborhood around that ballpark -- retail, dining, clubs -- you're going to have a major boom for the city's economy. Focus on that. Don't just make it good. Make it the best ballpark neighborhood in the nation.

Do that and you'll all have plenty of cash to bankroll a few luxury suites at FedEx.

Tech notes

So I've lost one of the outlets for my witless ramblings about sports media and tech. Things change. What are you going to do? So I guess I'll try to start using this space to do what I'd been doing elsewhere. And I'll be using more words here. Because it's my blog, and I can.

• XM and Sirius are trying to merge. Tell me you didn't see this coming. I remain addicted to satellite radio. I listen on the way to work, which fortunately doesn't take as long as it used to -- nothing like the office moving closer to your house. I listen all day at work. I listen as I'm falling asleep. There's always something on worth hearing. So I'm looking forward to what happens when the two systems come together. Mel Karmazin, the head of Sirius, claims they're not going to raise the subscription price for the new company. I'll believe that when I see it. Actually, I'll sort of believe this whole merger when I see it. I think it's still 50-50 whether it gets regulatory approval. I like what I've seen from the Sirius music channels. Every time I've been in Best Buy and messed around with a Sirius radio, they always seem to have multiple channels playing music I like. And I love the idea of having access to all the sports broadcasts. But it sounds a lot like they're going to create different programming tiers and charge more money to get the sports content. That sucks. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised with the new lineups and prices, but I'm preparing to pay a few bucks more per month.

• NBA Street Homecourt came out a couple weeks ago. I messed around with the demo and it seemed pretty good. The tricks weren't impossible to learn, which was refreshing. There's nothing worse than being unable to really play the game the way it's supposed to be played because you can't master the button mashing. I had a chance to talk to Sue Bird, the former UConn star now with the Seattle Storm of the WNBA. She's one of six WNBA players included in the game, which marks a first for women's basketball players. There wasn't room for me to use most of what I talked to her about, but it was an interesting conversation. She's got the hottie factor going for her. One Web site I saw referred to her as the Anna Kournikova of the WNBA, which I'm not sure is really a compliment, considering how infrequently Kournikova wins. Bird seems to take her off-court celebrity in stride. She doesn't seem to mind the idea that her appearance may bring guys to WNBA games, saying that the quality of the game will make an impression, even if that's not what brought someone in the door to begin with. And she understands that people either appreciate the women's game or they don't. But she was a little frustrated by the fact that there's a double standard when it comes to endorsements. She pointed out that a good-looking male athlete won't get those opportunities unless he achieves something on the field. And, of course, it didn't work that way for Kournikova. The really interesting part of the conversation, to me, was that she still hasn't had a chance to actually see herself in the video game. I figured at some point EA Sports would have given her a demo to check out. No such luck. She spends the winter playing in Moscow (which must be great fun, because that's where I want to be in the dead of winter). She came back to the U.S. to attend the NBA Street launch party in Las Vegas, a couple days before the NBA All-Star game. But there was a snow storm that week and she got stuck in New York and never made it. And she had to turn around and head back to Moscow because her team had a game. It must be a strange experience to see yourself in a video game. And even stranger when the game is out there and people are playing as you and you haven't had a chance to see it yet.
  
  
• SportsLine is gearing up for lots more of its live coverage of big events. Their March Madness on Demand set records last year as the most-viewed live event in Internet history. And they're going to be showing live coverage from the Masters on the Web too. I think this is a model other sports could follow. The reason this stuff works is because it's during the work day, when millions of office drones are tethered to their desks -- the perfect captive audience. The idea of playing sports events during the day is from a bygone era. For years, everything has been at night because that's when the TV networks can get their best audiences. But is the same thing going to happen for Internet broadcasts? The time to maximize the audience for a Web cast is in the middle of the work day. Now, it's true that the NCAA Tournament and the Masters are marquee events, and perhaps much of the interest is the result of their importance in the sports world. Would a routine regular season game draw an audience the same way? Probably not. But isn't that what everyone said about Monday Night Football at the beginning? It became a must-see event because it was packaged properly. And the same thing could be done on the Web.

DJ

When Dennis Johnson's life was cut short by a heart attack last week, the scribes and pundits all came gushing forth with the predictable response: Dennis Johnson, Mr. Under-appreciated.

He was only under-apprecaited by people who didn't watch him play. It's easy to make that interpretation if you only know him by his stat line. He was never the highest profile player on his teams, and so it comes as something of a shock when you see how much he scored -- especially in the playoffs. You don't average 17.3 points per game in the postseason without being a hell of a player.

What you remember about him if you watched those Celtics teams of the 1980s was how great he was in the clutch. You remember how relentless he could be. You remember him shutting down Magic Johnson in the 1984 Finals. Larry Bird called him the best he'd ever played with. He was the perfect point guard for those Celtics teams. He understood his role on a team with Larry Bird was to make sure Bird had the ball. How many other point guards wouldn't have been able to assimilate into that Celtics lineup and make such a critical contribution?

It's unfortunate that he's not been recognized for his achievements. He belongs in the Hall of Fame. And at some point he'll be inducted. And more people who didn't appreciate his game until after he died will write about how great he was.

Some of us knew it all along.

Super Bowl rebroadcasts: It's about damn time. And while we're at it ...

Finally, finally, finally, they heard me. For years I've been complaining to anyone patient enough to listen about how short-sighted it is of the NFL to be so tight-assed about its game broadcasts. They were the only pro league that didn't allow ESPN Classic to show old broadcasts, not that it matters now, because all ESPN Classic seems to show anymore is World Series of Poker and old bowling tournaments. But the NFL always deferred to its NFL Films division and didn't allow any "classic" programming that would compete with what Ed and Steve Sabol do. And I don't say that to disparage NFL Films. They do great stuff. But there's no substitute for watching a TV broadcast of an old game. It's a historical document. A moment captured in time.

Little by little, the NFL has loosened up. They started re-running condensed versions of the previous weekend's games on NFL Network this past season. And in January they finally heeded my call (I'm sure they were listening all this time) and started airing the network broadcasts of several Super Bowls. Apparently, they still don't have clearance from the networks to air them all. But a few is better than none. This afternoon, they'll air Super Bowl XXIII, featuring the Niners' dramatic last-minute drive to beat Cincinnati in 1989. That's one of my favorite Super Bowls. There are many of the greatest athletes who I never saw play. But I'll always be able to say I saw the greatest quarterback ever, Joe Montana, and I vividly remember watching one of his best performances -- the final drive for the game-winning touchdown in Super Bowl XXIII. And tonight they're airing the NBC broadcast of Super Bowl III. All I can say is, it's about damn time.

After last season, the NFL released a DVD package of the Steelers four postseason games that included the video from the CBS broadcasts. But they used audio from the Steelers radio network. Unfortunately, it was a year to late for that to include Myron Cope, who had retired after the 2004 season. And as much as it's cool to hear Bill Hillgrove and Tunch Ilkin, I'd rather have the TV broadcasts intact.

So while I'm at it, here are a few other sports media things I'd like to see. It may be a while before any of these things happen. But, hell, I waited out the NFL on the Super Bowl broadcasts. After that, it feels like anything is possible:

• Not that I expect the NFL to make any more moves anytime soon, but how about putting out Super Bowl or playoff game TV broadcasts on DVD? The NHL, NBA and MLB have all done it. I own the 1979 World Series. You telling me that every fan in Steelers Nation wouldn't buy a boxed set of the Steelers five Super Bowl appearances? You could sell a set to Dallas fans. Another one to Patriots fans. Another one to Broncos fans. How much does it really cost to press and package a DVD? And then think of how much more you can charge. Cha-ching!
  
  
• While I'm at it, let's pile another one on the poor old stodgy, crusty NFL. Actually, this one applies to the rest of the leagues too. How about selling out-of-market TV packages a la carte? I love NFL Sunday Ticket. But what I really want is to be able to see the Steelers even though I don't live in Pittsburgh. I can't watch nine games at once, and I don't really care to try when the Steelers are on. Some people want all those games. Some people (like me, occasionally) want to be able to watch guys on their fantasy teams. But would more people be willing to pay for an out-of-market package if they could pay a little less money to see just the team or teams they want to see? I'd still pay $100 a season to see the Steelers and nothing else. Of course, perhaps the first thing to work on when it comes to out-of-market packages is keeping them available to as many people as possible. Senators Specter and Kerry are calling DirecTV's exclusivity into question on Sunday Ticket and Extra Innings. These packages need to be available to everyone.
  
  
• I'd like to see leagues embrace their past by officially licensing video games with classic teams. This has long been done without licenses on baseball games for the PC. And word came this week that 2K Sports is working on an unlicensed pro football game that is rumored to include retired players. And EA Sports' Madden series has included classic teams for years. But in Madden, they don't use player names, and in many cases they don't use the right uniform numbers either. The leagues should get with their players' associations and alumni associations and work to get these things licensed. Gamers in their 30s, like me, will love the nostalgia. And younger gamers will be exposed to the history of sports that they weren't around to see.
  
  
• Once MLB and DirecTV finalize their deal to carry Extra Innings, the stage should finally be set for a 24-7 baseball channel. Word is that working out the details of the channel are the final sticking point. It's been a long time in coming. They've been talking about it since 2004. And it's a natural fit for baseball. If you count spring training, the season is eight months long. They can cover the minors. They can cover the summer college leagues. They can cover the Arizona Fall League. If they were really ambitious they could get deals to televise the Caribbean World Series. There's no shortage of programming options. And as you might have guessed, I'd approve of classic games too. They're talking about launching it on DirecTV in 2009. They should make it happen ASAP.
  
  
• I'm in love with satellite radio, and it's great to listen to all the play by play and sports talk. But sometimes what I'd really like to hear is the local perspective instead of the national stuff. If they can give us all those local game broadcasts from around the country and even the feed of stations like WLW (which is on XM) it would be great to have local sports talk stations too. They do it on satellite TV. I can get Fox Sports Pittsburgh (and every other regional sports net). So why not do the same thing on the radio? ESPN Radio and Fox Sports Radio are already carried, so why not some of their affiliates from around the country?