Tuesday, September 08, 2009
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pirates/
Pirates of the past can hardly believe it lasted this long, can hardly envision when it may end.
Pirates of the future hardly can wait for a chance to alter the course of this horrific history.
The alumni talk about the unthinkable happening right here in the City of Champions. This is the town that has hoisted two Lombardi trophies, taken one Stanley Cup and visited yet another Super Bowl and Cup final while its once-proud baseball franchise has nothing to show for itself.
Nothing other than a slew of failed next great prospects, a half-dozen different managers, 1,501 defeats and, now, a North American professional-sports record of 17 consecutive losing seasons.
The Washington Generals of baseball, one wag called them. America's new, true biggest losers.
The pledge class talks about it, but not too often, not too loudly. They do think about it, though. Often. Quietly.
Rusty Kennedy/Associated PressAtlanta first baseman Sid Bream lies on top of teammate Dave Justice at home plate as they celebrate Bream scoring the winning run in bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series. It was the last time the Pirates ended a season with a winning record.
Dave Parker sees speckles of talent, having been present for a 1979 championship-reunion weekend a fortnight ago when the Pirates won two of three from Cincinnati, having witnessed foundation bricks in "two or three of those young players and two or three of those pitchers; build around that." Ed Ott sees light at the end of the tunnel, though he prays it isn't an oncoming train. Bob Friend sees promise, especially in fleet Andrew McCutchen.
Pedro Alvarez sees the seemingly everyday trading. Brad Lincoln sees, hears, feels the derision that he terms "mockery." Andrew McCutchen sees red: "We all know. We all know. We're experienced enough to know we need to get certain things done" -- a critical defensive play, a shutdown inning of pitching, a ball lifted into the outfield or laid down for a bunt.
Currently, the Pirates have their third-youngest roster of the past half-century, and many more of the prospects such as Alvarez and Lincoln remain months, a year, a couple of years away. So, it is still a matter of time until these kids will be able to enact what they know, execute it, perhaps exceed expectations and extinguish the torch of defeatism passed from Pirates team to Pirates team for nearly a generation.
Winning is the legacy left behind by Friend, Parker, Ott and so many others before them with this tradition-steeped, 123-year-old franchise.
Losing is the reason Andrew McCutchen is here, the reason Alvarez and Lincoln are in waiting,
the reason the organization is dealing cards to reshuffle the underside of the deck: the minor leagues.
"That's why the organization every year tries to make as many moves as possible: to end that," said Alvarez, the 2008 second-overall draft choice and its great, wide-shouldered hope who clubbed 27 homers and collected 95 RBIs in 126 games at Class A Lynchburg and Class AA Altoona combined in his first pro season. "Every decision they make is for the benefit of the organization."
These are the voices of the halcyon days and the are-they-here-yet days, glory days and gory days, salad days and days of just-dessert, first-round, draft selections.
They are the artifacts of days gone by.
They are the building blocks of days yet to come.
Climbing out
Bob Friend has seen the absolute bottom, endured the worst of Pirates baseball.
He went 7-17 on what is considered the nadir of the franchise.
"That '52 team that lost 112, these guys [in 2009] are so much better. I hate to compare them to a team that lost 112. But you can see the talent; I'm not kidding."
The mention of '52 kindled a recollection.
"I won't forget a meeting [general manager Branch] Rickey had at Havana, Cuba -- that's where we trained," Friend recalled. "We just lost 112 of 154, and Rickey said, 'Gentlemen, we have World Series potential sitting in this room.' I was only 21 at the time, but the old-timers in the room, they were like, 'Holy cow.' But that's what you got to build on."
In that same room were Vernon Law, Dick Groat, El Roy Face -- bricks on the '60 champs.
Friend brings the grandkids to PNC Park games nowadays. The heck with the long ball; he digs Andrew McCutchen and a youth movement that, at long last, seems to possess some talent.
"This is the first time we've got young kids who are going to develop," Friend said. "We had the old-timers come in -- they were done two years before. They got more talent in place now. They keep talking about the bottom up. I don't think they care about setting the record. The next year or two, they can climb up and maybe be .500. Who knows, they could surprise. I tell you what, I'd pay to go see them. It's just a matter of getting them to believe in themselves."
Own the park
The Cobra hissed.
"You hate to see it 'cause it's such a sports-oriented city, the City of Champs," Parker, a former MVP and four-time All-Star Pirates outfielder, said last week from his Cincinnati home. "You have that hockey and football team winning championships. I hate to see the Pirates be the missing link.
"People will say, 'What happened with the Pirates?' It's really evident that it's tougher for the smaller markets to compete with the larger markets. The larger markets just go out and get what they need.
"The Pirates have had some good, young talent, but, unfortunately, they chose to go in other directions and get rid of the nucleus they had there. The type of personnel that's got to out-hustle, manufacture runs to compete. You ain't gonna hit it all the time, you ain't gonna catch it all the time, but the one thing you can control is your hustle. If I had anything to do with it, I'd tell them, '... you've got to out-hustle your competition.'
"It's a different type of baseball now," Parker continued. "We had great leadership: [Willie] Stargell, [manager Chuck] Tanner, [Phil] Garner, [Bill] Madlock -- we had four or five guys who'd take charge. Chuck put the responsibility on us to govern each other."
Perhaps, some leaders will grow from the current crop. Yet Parker believes it must be fertilized by past successes.
"Bring back the tradition," he said. "Bring back some of those guys from '79, some of those guys that are winners. Bring back some of that tradition as well. It's been a long road, 17 years, you say? That's a long time. Sometimes you can learn to accept losing. That's the one thing we took pride in, we tried to reflect what the city was about. The Pittsburgh people. The hard-working people.
"When we stepped between those lines, it was all business; we were not going to be embarrassed, by no means."
Sure, these Pirates have crafted a winning record in PNC Park. Parker, though, wants them to completely own the place. Use its nooks and crannies and friendly right-field porch to full advantage. They should dominate that house, to his way of thinking.
"It's beautiful," Parker gushed. "Willie would've hit some Downtown, and I would've capsized a few boats. I would've loved to have played there."
The descent begins
Oct. 14, 1992, Stan Belinda threw the last meaningful pitch, the last playoff gasp offered to Pirates followers. Almost a generation of youth have not beheld such a baseball thing of beauty. Meanwhile, the Steelers, Penguins, Pitt football and Pitt basketball have combined to play 297 postseason games. The city has staged two Downtown victory parades alone in the past half-year.
Belinda's pitch. Francisco Cabrera's hit. Barry Bonds' throw. Sid Bream's slide.
That's how Atlanta marched directly to the World Series plus a decade and a half of dominance.
That's how the Pirates fell into a death spiral of losing.
Seventeen years since that National League Championship Series ...
"It's a shame," said Jason Kendall, a catcher on the one Pirates club that came close to the postseason. "I know in '97, we went into the last four days of the season with a chance for the playoffs, the heck with a .500 record. Wish I could have been part of the turnaround, but that's the way it goes."
"We put together a team; on paper it looked good. One bad month, and we couldn't regroup from it," added Dale Sveum, a teammate in '97 and nowadays Kendall's coach with the Milwaukee Brewers that endured 14 seasons at .500 or below before their youth movement blossomed into a contender in the National League's Central.
"Yeah, [17 losing seasons] is kind of amazing, especially with the ups and downs of this division. ... You'd think there'd be a chance. It's unfortunate. There has been some talent go through there and stuff, but they haven't been able to put together the whole puzzle. The history and the banners and the Hall of Famers and the great players and the winning teams there ..."
High expectations
The highest-paid Pirate in 2009 turned out to be a boatload of them: the entire draft class, at roughly $9 million.
None of those 18- to 21-year-olds played any higher than Class A this summer.
"With everything that's been done bringing the level of competitiveness up in the organization, getting more guys in the minors," began Daniel McCutchen, a young starter acquired last July in a trade with the New York Yankees. A line of succession has been drawn. Players won't so much look behind them at a sordid, 17-year history; they'll look beneath them at players pushing for their jobs.
"I know how hard I worked and how hard my teammates worked [to reach the majors]. With the competitiveness, don't take a day off 'cause there's a guy behind you in the minors to take your spot."
And this from Andrew McCutchen, talking about the present: "We know we have what we need to compete and to win games."
It isn't happening yet, what with the Pirates' 11-23 record since the last of a dizzying number of trades that left three starting position players standing from the opening-day roster.
"We understand what's at stake and what has to be done to change the scenario," said Lincoln, a Class AAA Indianapolis pitcher who was the fourth overall selection of the 2006 draft.
"Guys who have been up and down [from the Pirates] let you know how the situation is up there."
But it remains relatively unspoken among the Pirates of the future.
"It's just one of those things we have to deal with, have it in the back of our minds that this is what we have to do no matter what," added Lincoln.
A long streak of above-.500 baseball, "that'd be something we need to achieve. Just show baseball that we deserve to be here and not [be made] a mockery every year that we're the Pittsburgh Pirates."
Catch more on the Pirates at the PG's PBC Blog. Chuck Finder can be reached at cfinder@post-gazette.com.
First published on September 8, 2009 at 12:00 am
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