Friday, June 08, 2007
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jason Bay connects on his game-winning homer in the ninth inning of yesterday's game in Washington.
WASHINGTON -- Tonight in the harsh urban light of the Bronx, the Pirates will go to work inside baseball's premier cathedral with their customarily modest margin of error, the one their manager consistently describes as "so slim," the one that rests just to the tangible side of the purely hypothetical.
These 2007 Pirates, their swash not yet completely buckled, shove off in a three-game series at Yankee Stadium with the full knowledge that they don't need any help losing, that the slightest opportunity that gets ignored or the slightest spasm of carelessness virtually guarantees another dismal outcome.
We take that as gospel.
But then there was yesterday, the occasion of their last game ever at doomed RFK Stadium, when it appeared the Pirates could get away with anything, at least from the moment Jason Bay's ninth-inning homer lifted them beyond their own dubious margins to a 3-2 victory against the Nationals. It was the fifth consecutive one-run game they've been in, and the eighth in a row decided by two runs or fewer.
And it started with precisely the kind of lethal little failure Jim Tracy's team shouldn't be able to withstand.
Rajai Davis led off the game with a triple into the alley in left-center, and Nationals manager Manny Acta, happy to trade a run for an out, kept his infielders back while Jose Bautista and Freddy Sanchez batted against left-hander Matt Chico, he of the two quality starts in his past 12. A ground ball just about anywhere would have scored Davis, so naturally Bautista and Sanchez popped up, then Bay took a called third strike.
"I didn't think about it until the eighth inning," Bay said, "and, even though you always want to take advantage of chances like that, there are always nine million things that could have happened between then and now that might have changed it."
Of course, Bay's 11th homer, a majestic opposite-field missile that snapped a string of 12 scoreless innings by Washington closer Chad Cordero, changed everything and obscured at least until tonight some egregious baseball that Ian Snell and reliever Matt Capps somehow enabled the Pirates to overcome.
"If that homer doesn't get hit," Tracy said as the Pirates prepared to board a train for Gotham, "you're sitting around thinking about a groundball out that would have gotten you an extra run in the first."
Uh-huh. And about a disgraceful trip around the bases by Ronny Paulino that should have gotten you another run in the second.
Paulino walked with two out and apparently had no travel plans from that point, because he reacted to Jack Wilson's double inside the bag with something less than total interest. Pedestrians in Georgetown move more purposefully than the manner in which Paulino rounded second. I imagine he was chagrined to see Jeff Cox waving him home as he coasted into third, as this would obviously require running another 90 feet.
It was a good gambit by the third-base coach because there were two out and Snell was in the on-deck circle. Cox merely was challenging left fielder Ryan Church to make a perfect throw from 250 feet down the left-field line to the plate, which Church did. The throw was in time, and that was good enough for Paulino, who did not appear so much as to consider a slide, much less -- are you kidding? -- a collision.
Tracy said he didn't know if a slide would have made any difference, but on a team with a margin of error "so slim," it might have been interesting to find out. But I guess if you're not that interested in running, you're probably not that interesting in sliding, and that's a shame because it creates the impression that you're not that interested in, you know, winning.
That, of course, brings us to the crossroads of the Pirates' world, New York, New York.
Two years ago, at just about this exact juncture, the Pirates got to Yankee Stadium with a record of 30-31 and lost all three games by a combined score of 22-6. They were soon 40-55 on their way to 67-95. Some like to think that a couple of victories this week, even against the depleted Bombers, could spark their interest in a competitive summer, because all victories are not created equal.
"I think it would mean more than two wins somewhere else," Bay said. "I know all games are equal, but it would be a little more satisfying doing it there, a place we only get to once every couple of years or less. I think it would be especially important to this team. We could come away from it thinking, 'ya know, we can do this.' "
He's right. This could still be an interesting summer if this team were at least consistently interested.
(Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.)
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