Yearning For Mediocrity

--In my previous post, I mentioned what I feel is a legitimate question, given the current ownership group. That question: Does Mr. Nutting even want or desire to field a team that can contend for championships?

--Given that question, however, I figure that I would yet again note the stunning ineptitude of the National League Central Division this year. Because I remain a Pirate fan even as the team approaches their fifteenth consecutive losing season, I'm quite used to inflicting this mild form of "baseball fan torture" (hardly the real thing) upon myself.

--The Brewers have won 74 games. The Pirates have won 64 games. The Brewers have won 10 more games than the Pirates. Yes, the Bucco record remains among the worst in all of the majors. In other divisions, the Brewers and the Cubs are merely mediocre teams who have no business contending for a pennant. But the Brewers and Cubs, along with my team, the Pirates, all play in the NL Central; and in 2007, a mediocre baseball team will be good enough to win the division known throughout baseball as the Comedy Central.

That being said, if I really, really wanted to torture myself, I'd pull up the Bucco record to this point in the season. Painful as it would be, I think I could easily identify ten games that my pathetic Pirates could have won rather than lost. Of course, I could blame the loss on the implosions of the bullpen, the idiocy of the manager, the non-performance of the "marquee for Pittsburgh" (above average MLB players) players, ridiculous personnel decisions, and the like. But the point is, if I really wanted to, I think I could find 10 games that a "mediocre" baseball team could and should have won this season. While I will not be choosing to inflict this pathetic Pirate fan torture upon myself at this juncture of the season (hey, at least Littlefield is gone, right?), I'm guessing that anyone who chose to probably could.

And what I have to say about this yearning for mediocrity--it's seriously sick. Not because I'm wondering how a bad baseball team could win 10 more games and morph into a mediocre baseball team. But because this is what being a fan of the Pirates has left me with--an expectation that mediocrity is good. Sure, mediocrity is better than piss-poor play, and at some point in time, a team, especially one developing from within, doesn't necessarily shoot from bottom of the standings to the top of the standings in one season, but in order for real progress to be made, there needs to be an expectation that mediocrity is not the goal. Sure, a .500 season this year would have been great and would have put my team in a pennant race. But for a team to progress beyond only hanging around in a pennant race in years when a division royally stinks, the expectation has to be that mediocrity is only the starting point, not the finishing point.

And when it comes to the new CEO, the new GM the CEO will hire, and especially when it comes to Mr. Nutting, I want to know--will a vision of excellence, rather than mediocrity, be your vision, and will you hire people who can develop and manage players who can actually begin to fulfill a vision of excellence in terms of winning actual baseball games?