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Another game, another set of odd circumstances, but another Pirates win is the only part that matters. Atlanta’s scheduled starter Mike Hampton never even got to start the game as he pulled a chest muscle in warm ups. Jeff Bennett started in his place going 4 innings giving up 2 runs with 3 K and 2 BB. The Braves knocked Zach Duke around to the tune of 10 hits but only managed to get 2 earned off of him. Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez both left the game early, Wilson is expected to be replaced by Luis Rivas tonight with Sanchez also expected to be in the lineup.

Now the real craziness happened in the game when Bobby Cox took his right handed pitcher Chris Resop and put him in the field and brought in lefty Royce Ring for one batter than put Resop back on the mound. Had it worked it would of been genius but it was to no avail as Xavier Nady scored his second game winning hit of the year off of Resop to put the Pirates ahead for good and making him the Jolly Roger Player of the Game.

With this win the Pirates win the series 2-1. Thats the most important part in my mind, you concentrate on the game, then the series. If you win series your in good shape and the .500 record stigma will take care of itself. Another good part of this game is that in 4.1 innings the bullpen gave up no runs. Its encouraging to see they have a short memory as when you don’t score a lot of runs their role is magnified.

Tonight the Pirates face the Florida Marlins and pitcher Scott Olsen who are coming off of a 13-0 beat down courtesy of the New York Mets. The Marlins have the lowest payroll in baseball by far but they do still have some weapons, case in point 2B Dan Uggla who last season hit .282 with 27 HR and 90 RBI.

In other news the Post Gazette is reporting that Bucs closer Matt Capps has signed a 2 year 3.1 million dollar deal that takes him through his first year of arbitration. Its a good move for the Pirates to get him locked up now for 2 years even though both sides would prefer longer deals. The Pirates are continuing to put their money where their mouth is and follow through on their promise to lock up young guys going into arbitration and FA so that we can get some of their prime years before they become too expensive and must be moved. Now the next question is what happens when the Bucs are hovering around .500 and Nady has continued his hot start, now that will tell the tale…

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So far out of only two games we are already seeing a trend, the “black sheep” of the Pirates are the guys out in the pen. Not only do they try multiple times to blow the game on Monday they then come out tonight and give up 7 runs in 1.2 innings. Flat out bad, Damaso Marte sure didnt start out his trade resume well, after tonight his ERA is 81.00 granted thats only over .2 innings but its still no way to start out. The bullpen began the year as one of the concerns and gripes after the Sean Burnett demotion and thats now magnified even after just two games. On a good note however the starting pitching has been decent. If we can get guys going 6 innings with 3 runs against we might be ok, thats not great but its manageable. The young rookie pitcher Jair Jurrjens from the Braves that the Pirates missed out on in the failed Jack Wilson trade was stellar. 5 Strikeouts to just 1 walk is always a good thing, hopefully Gorzo can do better than his ratio of 3 K to 3 BB. Tomorrow is the rubber match, where we get our first look at the re-energized Zach Duke who hopefully lives up to the high praise from his teammates. He will face power hitting pitcher Mike Hampton. Maybe someone should have pulled a Rick Ankiel on him back in Colorado. Well here’s to tomorrow…. Lets Go Bucs!

Jolly Roger Player of the Game - Jason Bay 1-2, 2 BB, 1 Run, 1 K

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The first game of the Pirates season was without a doubt the craziest opening game I can remember. It was really the tale of two games, the first 8 innings and the last 4. Through those first 8 the Pirates did exactly what the need to do to be successful, they were patient at the plate taking alot of first pitch balls. That caused Tom Glavine to get up in pitch count and they were able to chase him away early, getting them into the bullpen where they could score some runs. They took advantage of the defensive mistakes made by the Braves. Then in the 9th the wheels plain fell off, accentuated by the fly ball that Jason Bay and Nate McLouth both watched fall between them. A mistake Bay has now taken credit for. Though we seemed to try our best to lose it, a win is a win. McLouth looked great with production in every at bat fully showing why his teammates named him the player most likely to have a break out season. Now McLouth is one of my favorite players and its very tempting to give him the player of the game but it has to go to Xavier Nady, he along with McLouth had 4 RBI but Nady’s second HR of the game put the Buccos ahead for good. I plan on naming a player of the game for each game, the jolly roger if you will. Im going to keep track of them on the page (upper right hand corner) and the one with the most at the end of the season will be the Jolly Roger Pirates MVP.

There is not one day of the year filled with more hope and optimism than today, enjoy it while it lasts…

For those of you who like me will be unable to see the game, you should be able to hear the game on the Pirates official radio station 104.7 FM News Talk online here.

I have some work to do tonight but I should be able to give you a quick recap tonight or tomorrow morning…

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The Pirates officially open up their 2008 season tomorrow in Atlanta. Whenever the Bucs and Braves get together the image of Sid Bream sliding into home in the 1992 NLCS, the slide that killed the Pirates organization. So tomorrow at 7:10 the Pirates Ian Snell will take the mound to face the Braves who will be sending out Tom Glavine. Obviously the Braves are the superior team, though they will still have a hard time competing in their division with the likes of the Mets and Phillies, I would look for the Braves to be locked into the 3rd spot certainly above the Marlins and Nationals and maybe creeping by either the Mets or Phillies into second but I doubt it. For the second game the Pirates will be sending out Tom Gorzelanny to face Jair Jurrjens, Jurrjens came to the Braves from the Detroit Tigers with whom he was apart of the Jack Wilson trade discussion. He is only 22 years old and would of been a great addition to the team but would of also created another whole as we have no bonifide shortstop prospect coming. In the rubber match Paul Maholm will face Mike Hampton of Coors Field fame. You thought Matt Morris’ salary was bad take a look at Hampton who makes 3 million more than Mr. Brave Chipper Jones at 15,475,185. I would look for the Pirates to take at least one game from them though it would be great to see the Bucs win the series to start off the ‘08 campaign on a good note before heading to face the equally or possibly even more mediocre Florida Marlins and then coming home to face the Cubs on the 7th.

Photo - Peter Diana, Post Gazette

Before we get to the actual main post, 1. Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Between Easter and school kicking my ass it wasn’t at the top of my priority list. 2. Please leave some comments, the more I hear back from people the more I will be inclined to respond. Also if you would like to see a specific topic, I have lots of opinions on a lot of things…. so bring up some topics! Ok now on to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

So with 27 guys left on the roster and four days to go there is only one more spot to settle (and no the roster limit is still 25, Chris Duffy will go on the DL), who will be the last man in the ‘pen? Will Sean Burnett get the spot or not, many outlets such as the Post Gazette are fairly certain that he will be the one left out. But lets look at the merit here before we get too carried away with the anger. Burnett is 25 years old has just come off another arm injury and has had a great spring with his .90 ERA and 8 inning scoreless streak. There are just three spots for four guys, the others being Franquelis Osoria, Phil Dumatrait, and rule 5 man Evan Meek. Now Osoria is the lock, no doubt he is headed north, so that leaves Burnett, Dumatrait, and Meek. Of those three Burnett has had the best spring, now a good or bad spring doesn’t necessarily translate to the regular season but it’s never a bad thing to be pitching well. Lets look at the reasoning behind why the guy pitching the best is probably going down.

Starting with Meek he is a rule 5 guy selected from the now devil-less Tampa Bay Rays. That means he must stay on the 25 man roster for the entire season or be offered back to the Rays. He is a 24 year old kid with a rocket arm, he struggles with his command a bit but is valuable as the Pirates are short on power pitchers. The reason I see them keeping him is they continue to talk about restocking the system with legitimate prospects, and Meek can be one of those guys. He has only pitched in AA so the potential for him to get shelled and lose his confidence is there but if he shows he has potential than its worth keeping him around for the 50,000 dollars it took to acquire him, much better than the 300,000 we payed to watch Kim toss Home Run Derby practice for a few games in the spring.

Now according to Dejan Kovacevic of Post Gazette Dumatrait is a lock for the pen over Burnett, there can only be one reason for this that I can see, if Dumatrait was to be sent down he would have to pass through waivers, as would Burnett (Note, I just found out that this is aparently not true.  He had to clear when he came off of the 40 man roster but now that he is off he can be outrighted to Indy without going through waivers). The difference being however that teams would be a lot more likely to snag a guy like Dumatrait than a guy like Burnett who has had multiple arm problems and had already made it through waivers once. Though there is some risk, other teams do pay attention to the spring and his great spring might warrant someone taking a chance on him.

If it was up to me I would keep Burnett as I think he has more upside, he is a home grown popular guy with the fans and his teammates. But in sending him down yes you will make alot of fans made but those fans are probably the same “p-Irate” fans that complain about everything even though there is baseball sense going on here.

Well its that time of year again when every Joe Blow office co-worker thinks they are the one who will have that magical perfect bracket. Why do we become so obsessive in a few days about filling out the winners of 66 games? No one fills out a bracket for the NCAA hockey championships, nor for the D1AA football playoffs, NCAA Soccer Playoffs, NBA Playoffs, MLB Playoffs, or NFL Playoffs. For some reason this phenomena is very unique to the NCAA D1 Basketball Tournament. There are umpteen methods for filling out your brackets, the standard semi-intelligent way of actually trying to use your knowledge of the teams and the streaks trends and other stats to pick the winners (which still degrades into luck anyway) and then there are the more fun ways, things such as the mascot battle. Many more of them are detailed on ESPN’s Page 2 article A Star Studded Formula To A Winning Bracket. These are the methods used by your geek co-worker who will inevitably win the office pool because he doesn’t know that there is no way some team who you and all your sports buddies couldn’t name one player on should beat a 2 seed.

On Uni Watch they are running a style of bracket which I really like, “Pick any six of the 64 teams in the NCAA tournament. You will receive points correlating to each team’s seed for each game that team wins. For example, a Number 1 seed will receive 1 point for each game it wins, a Number 5 seed will receive 5 points for each game it wins, a Number 12 seed will receive 12 points for each game it wins, and so on. Highest score wins.”

That format forgoes the standard pick the number 1 seeds type of thinking and lets you try to really decided what mid seeds will make it, all the number 1s will not make it, they never have. Generally 1 #1 will make it, at least 1 #2, and the last 2 spots are usually #2-#4 with the occasional #5 making it in. That being said I picked

Pittsburgh
Clemson
Marquette
Wisconsin
North Carolina
Texas

Of course I am rooting for Pitt to win it all, and at least one expert a certain Mr. Knight thinks they will win it. Lets all hope so, they never have really entered the tournament with this kind of momentum before.

So who are you all picking to win the tournament??

Here is what I am picking for my full bracket…

So I’m headed off to Bristol tomorrow for the NASCAR race this sunday so I’d thought I’d share some fun facts…

In 21 of 40 years since Bristol opened, a driver who won a Sprint Cup race at Bristol went on to win the series title later the same year.

Chevrolet has won 14 more races at Bristol than the next closest manufacturer (Ford - 23)

Jack Smith is listed as the inaugural race winner but Johnny Allen was in the car in relief of Smith when the checkered flag flew.

Kurt Busch won his first NASCAR race here in 02 (I was in attendance)

Only two drivers starting outside the top 30 have won, lowest was Elliot Sadler from 38th in 01

56.9 percent of races are won from the top qualifying positions… good news for Johnson, Gordon, Bowyer, Kenseth, and Mears.

81.9 percent of races were won by drivers who qualify in the top 10 including 4 of the last 5

Kyle Busch has 4 consecutive top 10’s at Bristol

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has 12 top 15’s in his last 13 at Bristol

In 1961 more cars did not finish than did, 19 finished 23 did not

Cale Yarborough lead all 500 laps in 1973

The most common position to start from and win is the pole position

Roush cars have won the most out of active car owners (9 wins)

This will be Dale Jarret’s last points race

So with this information I would definitely put my money on someone in the top 10, particularly Carl Edwards. With his hot streak, 9th starting position, winning last year’s August race, and Roush’s record here.

UPDATE:

I’ve put together my pictures into a Flickr album…

you can see them here

The End. It comes for every athlete, for the fortunate its by choice. I am now at that end, and I thought it pertinent at this end to reflect on it, what has been and what I’ve learned. I ended my competitive swimming career with my best times of my life, no they’re not world records but they are my records and I am more than pleased with that being my end. The end of 7 years of work, fun, friendship, defeat, and triumph. But I think its best to not judge those years based on the clock. That clock is at face value what we strive for but show me someone who swims for the clock and I’ll show you some one who will never be happy. As I’ve thought about writing this I have thought about my career as a swimmer and I can say I don’t think I would really change much. Of those 7 years I’ve only swam about 5 but those missing years made the end that much sweeter.

When I was writing this I began reliving my swimming life over in my head but I do not intend for this to be a recap, a eulogy of my swimming life, I’m not dead and my involvement in swimming surely isn’t over. This is more of a thank you, a thank you to my teammates, my coaches, and the sport itself.

To my teammates, Thank you. You guys and girls are what makes that long season bearable. Going through the morning practices, bus rides, and airports with you makes the difference. You can’t help but to become closer to a group when you spend more time with them than you do your own roommates. In the end they become your family and its certainly true in my case as well. Both in high school and through college the team really is my other family, and I’d like to think we are all there for each other in our own times of need whether large or small. We shared alot of experiences together, things such as the Sheetz runs and nights in Zach’s basement from high school, the gatherings to blow off some steam after a tough week of classes at someone’s apartment, the Halloween or Christmas get togethers, the swim team romances and the drama they caused. These are all things I won’t forget any time soon and will always give me a chuckle. Hopefully its the same for you as well. I’d also like to thank you for the support over the years, the cheering, the pat on the back, the handshake, those things are all very important and make you want to continue when you think its no longer worthwhile. Hopefully we all try to stay in contact as well as possible even though we may scatter around the country and for some of us the world. For you young guys (and girls) my best advice is to stick with it, the window you have is finite and when your at the end you’ll wish you didn’t waste any of it. For my fellow seniors, its been a hell of a ride, I feel honored to have been apart of the same team as you and to see it be built and heading in a positive direction as we leave is great.

To the coaches I’ve had, I really appreciate all you have done for me. Putting up with all of my crap, giving me the opportunity to prove my worth, and continuing to have faith when things like my shoulder put things in doubt. The team can be a hard thing to get a handle on but you did an admirable job of “steering the bus”, helping us all to discover new things we didn’t know we had in us.

The sport itself is something I’ve only really began to have an appreciation for. It’s one of those sports that walks the fine line between team and individual, something that I think helps you learn to rely on yourself and a group all at the same time a tool that I think is valuable in other capacities as well. In the past year I’ve really began wanting to really learn more about the sport I’ve been participating in all these years. For a long time I simply did what I was told with out much understanding of why. But I find myself looking for those answers now and with the increasingly vast amount of information available finding them. The pool hasn’t really treated me that great. Up until a couple of weeks ago my fastest times were from high school and being able to overcome my difficulties to finally break them all in my last meet was a great feeling. They always say you learn twice as much from losing as you do from winning and that certainly is true. I think that my renewed interest in the sport itself is partly the reasoning for my improved performance. Understanding the mental and why we train, the purpose, is as important as the training itself. Certainly this is the end of my competitive career, but I don’t think it will be the end completely. I find myself still wanting to be a part of it, perhaps in a coaching role at some point. We’ll have to see how that plays out.

In the end its bittersweet, that continual pounding is over but so is the thrill of victory as well. Its been something that has shaped both my high school and college life and therefore helped shape who I am but it does not define me. But it is something I will carry with me and remember. The End… For Now.

After yesterday Zvjezdan Misimovic should really add another s to his name. After being the aggressor for the majority of the game and continually miss hitting and just not being able to finish the service the pressure paid off when Kluge beat Benjamin who then followed through with his back foot knocking Kluge to the ground. After some discussion with the linesman the referee who was a little shaky throughout finally awarded the penalty. Which of course he then hesitated on and Hamburg’s goalie Rost knew exactly what was coming as did the rest of the stadium and it was a easy save.

Nuremberg really came out hot and put the pressure on Hamburg the whole first half particularly the first 20 minutes. They controlled the flow but just couldnt get on the end of any of the crosses and never were really able to make Hamburg’s goalie make a save on the ball, It was just a bunch of off target shots. In all they took 12 shots and only had 2 on goal. That miss I think took the good feelings that the team had from a first half in which they were the better team and sent them out the window, van Hessen then couldn’t get them back together in the second half. They just got sloppier and Hamburg’s quality started to show. It should of been a domination by Nuremberg in the second half as Hamburg was playing on short rest and did alot of chasing in the first half. But it just wasn’t to be.

The new man in goal Klewer looked ok handling the mulitple free kicks and corners fairly well outside of 2 shaky 1 handed punch outs. I think the worst players out on the pitch for Nuremberg were certainly Pinola and Mnari, they really took some bad fouls and didnt look good with the ball either. Vittek and Saenko both looked comfortable with the ball and had some good ideas but particularly Vittek didnt have his finishing touch which was to be expected with the limited time this season. I thought van Hessen’s substitutes were a little odd as well, Kluge was playing a good game and drew the penalty but still was taken out in favor of Kristiansen which didnt make much sense to me. And it was obvious where the game was going in the second half and bringing on Mintal and Charisteas about 10 minutes to late was a half hearted attempt to gain the extra 2 points.

The game was really a tale of two halfs Nuremberg won the first and Hamburg won the second, Nuremberg definatley was the more attacking team with Hamburg depending on a lot of long balls (which resulted in a lot of offsides calls) but Hamburg definitely had more quality chances. So in the end I think the draw was a fair result for both teams. Though had Mr. Miss-imovic struck that penalty we would be sitting above relegation for the first time in a long time.