Bad News Baseball

For those of you not following the Pirates' fortunes of late, they've actually been doing relatively not poorly since the All-Star break, hovering around .500. Despite yesterday's football-scorish 14-7 loss to the Reds (a score which sets me fondly thinking of grudge-fueled Pittsburgh-Cincinnati bloodsport to come in about a month) recent games have shown some long absent components of Pirates baseball, such as relatively stable starting pitching and home runs with runners on base. Besides Freddy Sanchez's run at the NL batting title (he's been on another tear for the past couple weeks and as of last night is hitting .355, plus leading the league in doubles), then, I'm rooting against the now traditional September meltdown -- If the team wins about as many games as they lose in the second half of the season it could more plausibly portend a glorious future of Brewers-like mediocrity instead of another year of Pirates-like why-the-hell-am-I-even-watching-this-ocrity. Granted, the fortunes of recent acquisition Shawn Chacon (one decent start, one blow-up, relegation to the bullpen due to aggravating an old knee injury) are yet another reminder that building up the franchise's base of players -- much less maintaining it -- is either beyond the reach of the team's management or simply not a priority, so it's hard to see any runs of competent play as laying groundwork for the future. Still, having a winning season in 2007 looks attainable, if only about as likely as the team inexplicably being selected to play a championship series in Japan under the guidance of grumpy new manager Walter Matthau.

On the brighter side, when I read last night's box score I noticed the Reds' shortstop is Royce Clayton. Fellow Tecmo Baseball afficionados may recognize a convergence with that game's Cinci. roster:


Chalk one up for this venerable arcade-style baseball simulation and its stable of fictional, first-name-only players. Now if anyone can point out Major League ballplayers named Fries, Gunner, or Marghe, I'll revise my opinion that the game's developers had a less than stellar command of American naming conventions.