Monday, June 23, 2008
NEW YORK - JUNE 21: Alex Rodriguez #13 of the New York Yankees accepts the 2007 Babe Ruth Home Run Award from Julia Ruth Stevens, daughter of Babe Ruth, as grandson Tom Stevens (C), and great-grandchildren Amanda and Brent Stevens look on prior to the game against the Cincinnati Reds at Yankee Stadium June 21, 2008 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Whether you consider the essential separation between the Pirates and New York Yankees to be 375 miles of hard road or 375 light years of jagged baseball politics, there is no ambivalence that what begins at PNC Park tomorrow night is the highlight of the sporting summer.
The Yankees, last seen in these parts skulking off an Oakland diamond in a World Series daze 48 years ago, will now reappear for three games on the other side of a century and from the other side of the financial galaxy.
In strictly athletic terms, this near maniacally anticipated series wouldn't seem in any way even noteworthy, a matchup of fairly unremarkable teams, both with arguably as many problems as assets, both grasping for answers as the season leans toward its midpoint.
Except for this:
Alex Rodriguez will bring to this stage 14 homers and 41 RBIs, and Nate McLouth will bring 15 and 51, but for every dollar McLouth makes, A-Rod makes 66.
Do you want to point out that A-Rod has played 19 fewer games due to injury? Ya think that explains it?
Bobby Abreu has eight homers. Jose Bautista has eight homers. Bautista makes $1.8 million, Abreu makes $16 million.
Derek Jeter has four homers and 32 RBIs. Freddy Sanchez has four homers and 30. Sanchez makes $4.1 million, Jeter makes $21.6 million.
NEW YORK - JUNE 21: Derek Jeter #2 of the New York Yankees hits a single in the ninth inning against the Cincinnati Reds on June 21, 2008 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx borough of New York City. The Reds won the game 6-0. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Pirates management knows it can't be smug about any of that. On the contrary, no one is perhaps more painfully aware that talent generally settles somewhere near its compensated level.
Bud Selig (still commissioner) can fancy himself one of the game's great change agents and a maverick who has uncorked a flood of revenue sharing and luxury tax cash away from baseball royalty and toward its working class, but so long as any game can pit one team with a payroll of $209 million against another paying $49 million or less, baseball has economic issues that are pitiably inexcusable in the salary cap era.
But enough.
It's time to fill the ballpark, grab some brew and assess in good leisure just how the Pirates measure up to some unreasonable facsimile of the Bronx Bombers. Win or lose, sweep or swept, it beats the heck out of three more with the Blue Jays or 40 more with the likes of the Reds, Brewers and Astros.
This particular New York edition isn't so much the Yankees of A-Rod, Jeter, Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada. They're all present in certain vaguely compromised states, but this is as much the Yankees of Melky Cabrera, Morgan Ensberg and Chad Moeller.
Really, what's this, Murmurer's Row?
New York managed four runs yesterday to avoid getting swept at home by the fearsome Cincinnati Reds, but the Yankees' bats have essentially gone silent after a seven-game winning streak that last week appeared to save the summer.
Pittsburgh Pirates' Jason Bay (38) is greeted by Nate McLouth who was on base for Bay's first-inning two-run homer off Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Jesse Litsch in a baseball game in Pittsburgh on Saturday, June 21, 2008.
(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
If you had told the people who waited in that Federal Street ticket line for hours March 8 that the Yankees would come to town in late June having hit fewer homers and scored fewer runs than the Pirates, would they have felt any saner?
"I think that's great," Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit was saying after yesterday's 8-5 loss to the Blue Jays. "Everybody stacks themselves up against the Yankees, so it's great. It gives us a lot of confidence."
Doumit knew immediately we weren't talking hypotheticals. The Pirates have scored 370 runs, the Yankees 351. The Pirates have 78 homers, the Yankees 76. If the Pirates were in the American League East, they would be trailing the Yankees by only five games. Of course, they would be trailing the Red Sox by 10, but somebody probably deserves some credit for the Pirates arriving at this summer highlight as nothing less than an accomplished offensive team.
"I'm not that familiar with the Yankees' situation," said Pirates outfielder Xavier Nady, "but it was nice to finally get two of three in one of these [interleague] series. Obviously, we've got a lot of areas where we've got to improve, but this makes us feel like we'll continue to do that."
Pittsburgh Pirates' Ryan Doumit singles off Washington Nationals reliever Joel Hanrahan in the seventh inning of a baseball game at Pittsburgh Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Doumit hit a home run in the fifth inning to lead the Pirates to a 3-1 win. Catching is Nationals' Jesus Flores.
(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
How the Pirates are going to improve their wretched, worst-in-the-majors pitching is wildly unclear. Tom Gorzelanny will start the opener of the Yankees series (against Darrell Rasner), followed by Zach Duke (vs. Joba Chamberlain), and Paul Maholm (vs. Mike Mussina), but the Pirates' five-man rotation has for weeks and months and years been flaccid. Were it a sitcom (as though it's not), it'd be Two and a Half Men.
As the Yankees arrive, the Pirates have one win by a starting pitcher in the past eight games. But fret not. Let's watch Pirates-Yankees inside the city limits. Really, what's the worst that could happen to the local club, they'll end up 36-43?
Hey, they might even win a game.
Gene Collier can be reached at gcollier@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1283.
First published on June 23, 2008 at 12:00 am
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