I Am Now Rooting for These Guys

Have you seen the blog written by the two Indian athletes the Pirates just signed? You need to go read it. They post under their first names, Dinesh and Rinku. Do not miss the post where Dinesh praises Denny's Lumberjack Breakfast but pans the movie Rock n Rolla. (This guy sums up the blog well.)

I know nothing tangible is likely to develop out of this baseball-wise, but it seems to be a refreshingly bright-eyed moment by pro sports standards. And it's good optics, at least, for the Pirates, who so far have managed to have fewer notable accomplishments this year than actual pirates.

(This all comes via Slate's Bruce Reed, who seriously needs to learn that cracking one-liners about the Pittsburgh Pirates is about as impressive as hitting a piñata without a blindfold on. So past it already.)

Elsewhere, Dejan Kovacevic writes about the Pirates' changing attitude in their Dominican scouting program. I haven't read all three of these articles, but Kovacevic writes excellently as usual.

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In other sports news, the NFL offices decided that Ryan Clark's hit on Wes Welker last Sunday was not, in fact, an illegal hit. As soon as I read this I went back and watched the clip on YouTube like four times. Does this make me a bad person?