One of the things I look forward to when reading the Monday morning Post-Gazette is Dejon Kovacevic's summary of Neal Huntington's comments from his Sunday radio show. Today's tidbits included two more classic pieces of Nealspiel:
First, the "next noteworthy wave of starting pitchers" in the Pirates organization (Morris, Owens, Locke, and Wilson) are not expected to make the team out of spring training next year. I guess Neal doesn't want to instill any sense of optimism in these kids. It could also mean that none of these pitchers are expected to be better that the current staff. Wow, that really would be bad news considering that the current staff has five, count 'em five, ten game losers, a distinction not seen by a Pirates team since 1954. On the other hand, it is nice for the fans of the Indianapolis Indians to know that they might have a really good staff in 2011.
The second gem was the quote that while the Pirates will pursue free agents in the off-season, they are "not going to just throw money at free agents to appease the fans and a few members of the media." That the Pirates aren't going to throw money around comes as no surprise, but it was the second part of Neal's statement that blows me away. His constant dismissal of what "the fans" might think tells me that this guy hasn't connected one bit with "the fans" (also known as the "paying customers") in his three years here in Pittsburgh. Isn't it part of his job to "appease" the fan base so that the will continue to be paying customers and perhaps even become a larger fan base? Or maybe even make eight, ten and twelve year old kids excited about the Pirates again (we all know about the "lost generation" of Pirates fans, which will have expanded to two generations by the time Jameson Taillon reaches Pittsburgh).
When I read this quote aloud this morning, Marilyn used the word "arrogant" to describe Huntington, and that sure fits. In an email exchange I had with Huntington last winter after Matt Capps was let go for nothing, Huntington said that he didn't understand what "the big deal" was over the whole thing. I thought then and continue to think that either he just doesn't relate AT ALL to the customers, or he doesn't care what the customers think. Frankly, I'm not sure which is worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment