The Weight of Nineteen Years

Easy as it is to say “it’s not about the past nineteen years” when it comes to the 2012 Pirates, there’s another uncomfortable truth. 

Factually, none of the players on the 2012 Pirates are responsible for the past nineteen years of losing baseball.  

But for a city that hasn’t seen winning baseball but hasn’t forgotten what it looks like:   Um, well.

Of course it’s about the losing streak.   As one local sportswriter has written, it’s about the losing streak until it’s not about the losing streak.

But fact remains.   These guys on the 2012 Pirates, most of them, had nothing to do with it.

The losing is an “organizational” issue.   The trading.  The horrible signings.   The horrible development.   

Everything.   That’s organizational, until it’s no longer organizational.

But the players are just players (sorry, but it’s true).   Let them play.   Let them change the perception of the organization.

Because, to be blunt, that’s what Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and Marc-Andre Fleury and Kris Letang did for the Penguins.   The Penguins sucked (for a short amount of time, at least in comparison to the Pirates).    The players performed.   As one Pirates blogger has noted, the local hockey team became a perennial contender that goes home disappointed when it loses in the playoffs (making the playoffs is now an expectation).

Until the players win on the field, the Pittsburgh baseball organization will always be perceived as a loser, not as a destination.  The players have to change that.   The players—bluntly—are the only ones who can.  (Yes, management has to draft, develop, and trade for the right players, and managers and coaches have to assemble the players and put them in the best position to win the most number of games.) 

But the players aren’t the ones responsible for the past nineteen years of losing.  Many were elementary school kids when previous management was telling fans like me that Kevin Young/Al Martin/Carlos Garcia were the wave of the future.   Lots of the current players were barely in high school when the Pirates drafted a bunch of first-rounders who were supposed to return the franchise to glory.    Even the veterans who have been around awhile, they were busy helping their teams to the playoffs and carving out major-league careers while the Pirates were busy gifting Aramis Ramirez to their divisional rival Chicago Cubs and making similarly ill-advised (AKA stupid) trades.

So, seriously.

Nineteen years of losing is managerial and organizational.   But these players?

The center-fielder who’s in a “slump” because he’s only hitting a shade above .300 in August.

The veteran pitcher who had one of his “worst” outings of the year while still managing to strike out 10 batters and go almost six innings.

Seriously.

These players are not every organizational  false hope since 1993.   They are not every terrible trade in those nineteen years.  They are not every failed prospect in the past two decades. 

They deserve to be judged and to stand or fall on their own merits.

Maybe they’re not a playoff team (did we ever rationally expect them to be?). Maybe they’re not a pennant-winner.  I highly doubt they’re eventually a World Series champion.

But they’re fourteen games over .500 in mid-August and in the thick of a competitive division and Wild Card race.    They have a legitimate MVP candidate for the first time in two decades.  They have legitimate major league pitchers, including a starter who has won big games in October (when’s the last time you can say they’ve had even one of those guys on the pitching staff)?      

I understand the panic.    I’ve been a fan since I was five years old in 1987.   I fell in love with the game when my favorite pitcher was a Cy Young award winner (Doug Drabek) and I assumed a major-league team simply had an outfield comprised of players like Bonilla/Bonds/Van Slyke.    And then came 1993, and Carlos Garcia/Al Martin/Kevin Young and then Denny Neagle/Denny Neagle traded and then Jason Kendall/Brian Giles and failed prospects and oh-so-many pitching prospect arm surgeries all in the midst of this ridiculous losing mounting and then even good players like Jason Bay/Freddy Sanchez weren’t good enough to make a difference in the losing ways and the pitchers who were supposed to turn the franchise around (Duke and Maholm and three in the loss column; Gorzelanny and  Snell and three days of hell and then none of these pitchers ever doing what we once though they could for the Pirates)….and the collapse in 2011.   I lived it all as a fan. 

I get it.   I understand.     Because every time the team looks like it’s going to lose a game, the chorus comes, in my own head, and in the head and heart of every fan who has lived through the past two decades:  “It’s the Pirates.  Here we go again.”

But until proven otherwise—and we don’t know that until season’s end—these Pirates are not those Pirates.    A simple look at the statistics says these Pirates are not those Pirates.   A simple look says that Andrew McCutchen is not Jason Bay, Brian Giles, Jeff King, or whoever else failed to return the Pirates to glory.   That AJ Burnett is not Ian Snell, Zach Duke, Matt Morris, or a bunch of other pitchers that haven’t managed to return the Pirates to winning ways.   That the manager is not every terrible manager the Pirates have had, that the players who have scored more runs than any other teams in the majors in a month of the season aren’t the same as the players who comprised teams that never managed to outscore their opponents in even one month of a season.  That a team with a positive run differential is a team with a positive run differential, not all smoke-and-mirrors and plain old good luck. 

Rather than sigh “It’s the Pirates”—how about just doing what’s counter-intuitive for fans that have been burned too many times, and just let these guys stand or fall on their own merits?

The weight of nineteen years hangs.    It presses.

But, it has nothing to do with Andrew McCutchen, who was six the last time the Pirates had a winning season.  It has nothing to do with AJ Burnett—the Pirates haven’t had a winning season for the length of Burnett’s major-league career.   Nineteen years has nothing to do with Joel Hanrahan, Michael McKenry, Neil Walker, or, to be blunt, any of the current players who are going to determine the final win-loss record of the 2012 Pittsburgh Pirates.   

They’re a baseball team in 2012 that’s in the midst of real race for a playoff spot in a town that knows what good baseball is but has not seen meaningful, good baseball in two decades.

Give this team—not the Pirates, but your Pirates—the benefit of the doubt.   In this same town, Sidney Crosby made you forget Rico Fata pretty fast.   I’m pretty sure Andrew McCutchen has the same ability to make you forget…oh, I won’t even go there when it comes to Chad Hermansen. 

You’re moaning and very worried in August because McCutchen’s not hitting .400 anymore.  

Perspective.

Your team’s 14 games over .500.

What happens to their season will have nothing to do with the past nineteen years.  And everything to do with what they do on the field, this season.

Let them play the games on the field this season.    And appreciate—and marvel—at your complaints in August. 

It’s the first time in a generation you’ve even had the chance to make such complaints.   And every complaint about an All-Star not being perfect shouldn’t prompt cries of “The sky is falling!” but rather, a different thought:  “How’s this going to play out?”

Let it play out.

Watch the games.   Complain (as spoiled Pittsburgh hockey and football fans do when All-Star talent proves itself imperfect with less-than-stellar moments).   But don’t forget—and don’t stop—cheering (because usually All-Star talent proves itself as All-Star talent, even when All-Stars occasionally have human moments). 

Enjoy the race for the playoffs.  Enjoy what these players—who have nothing to do with what you haven’t seen in 19 summers—are letting you see this summer.

Baseball games that matter for something more than next year’s draft position. 

It’s what we’ve wanted all along, right?

Let’s, at least, go along for the ride until it ends.