The Trade

The unofficial second half of the season started disastrously.  A 1-5 road trip, an injury to SS Jordy Mercer, which, coupled with the earlier injury to Josh Harrison, had forced the Pirates to play bench guys like Sean Rodriguez on a regular basis, and plug Quad-A (at best) players like Brent Morel and Pedro Florimon into the starting line-up.  Pirates naysayers were heading to the Clemente Bridge to leap off because, surely, GM Neal Huntington was never going to be able to pull the trigger to make a deadline deal that would help this team.  And the first place Nationals, who swept the Pirates last month were coming to town.  Armageddon was certainly upon us.

Then, late yesterday afternoon, news came of the trade that Huntington pulled off with the Brewers to land Aramis Ramirez.  And what did he give up?   Prized prospects like Josh Bell, Alen Hanson, or Tyler Glasnow?  Nope.  Relief pitcher Yhonathan Barrios.  Now, Barrios may turn out to be a good pitcher for the Brewers someday, but in my mind, when you get an every day player, especially one with Ramirez' credentials, for a relief pitcher, and a minor league one at that, you have made a good deal.

And while he money aspects of trades don't interest me - these teams have the money - the Brewers are still going to pay half of the $6 million salary that is due Ramirez for the remainder of the season.  How did Huntington, who was in a desperate buyer's mode, manage to get the Brewers to agree to that?

Yes, Ramirez is now 37 years old, and has indicated that he will retire after this, his 18th season in the majors.  He is not the dangerous slugger he once was, but even today, after a horrid first month of the season, he has 11 HR, 42 RBI, and a .725 OPS.  Put him in the batting order behind Andrew McCutchen, and he is an improvement over every other guy who has been in this slot this season.  He will fill the gap at third to allow Jung Ho Kang to play short and cover for the injured Harrison and Mercer.  He is exactly the kind of pick up the team needed at this point in the season.  And he has now been taken from a team going nowhere and put on a team in the middle of a pennant race.  You would think, you would hope, that this will rejuvenate him and motivate him to make this final half season of his career a stellar one.  We shall see.

Finally, there is the delicious karma of Ramirez coming BACK to the Pirates in the midst of a pennant race.  No need to recount the painful circumstances of the horrendous salary dump deal in 2003 when Kevin McClatchey forced Dave Littlefield to get rid of perhaps the team's best player and brightest young star in years for a collection of used jock straps and batting practice baseballs.  (Someday, I hope Dave Littlefield will write a book and explain HIS side of that awful transaction.)  If A-Ram can manage 8-10 home runs and 30 or so RBI's over what time he has here, it will be one terrific story.

Seven days remain before the trade deadline, and reports are that the Pirates are in the hunt for another pitcher.  I have full confidence that GM Neal is working the phones diligently to pull of something that will help this team down the stretch.  He proved yesterday that he can make things like that happen.

Meanwhile, in Alabama Last Weekend.....

While the eyes of the golf world were on the Old Course in St. Andrew's and the British Open last weekend, the PGA Tour was chugging along in Opelika, Alabama last weekend staging the Barbasol Championship.

I had an interest in this event because competing in it was Richy Werenski, the winner of 

Golf Channel's  "Big Break Palm Beaches" show from last spring.

http://grandstander.blogspot.com/2015/04/congratulations-richy-werensky.html

Part of Werenski's prize for winning The Big Break was an exemption into this PGA Tour event.  I always like to track how Big Break winners fare in the Tour events into which they are awarded an exemption.  It is usually not a pretty result, but Werenski did better than most.

First of all, he made the cut, and he did shoot even par over the course of the four rounds.  That's the good news.

The bad news is that his score of 284 was nineteen (19) shots behind the winning score posted by Scott Piercy, and it tied Richy for third from the bottom (T-72) of all the seventy-seven golfers who made the cut.  Werenski cashed a check for $6,825 for his efforts.

Werenski is only 23, and he appeared to me to be one of the better golfers that have paraded through the Big Break over the years, so perhaps he can build on this and carve out a living as a touring pro.  I hope so, because he appeared to be an awfully nice kid.  On the other hand, at age 23, he is two years older than Jordan Spieth, so he does have a long road ahead of him.

Also of interest in this tournament was the fortunes of Sam Saunders, 27, who happens to be the grandson of Arnold Palmer.  Saunders competes on the minor league Web.com Tour in hopes of making it to the PGA Tour.  He actually led the tournament after the first round, but ended up tied for 32nd place, eleven shots behind Piercy, and earned $21,219.

Golf Channel was no doubt able to get an exemption of it's winner into this event because they knew that all of the really great golfers would be competing in the British Open last week, and that was certainly the case.  Still, it is interesting to go down the scoreboard at the Barbasol Championship and see who actually was competing in that event.  Lots of names you never heard of, but also some really familiar ones: Boo Weekley, Aaron Baddeley, Johnson Wagner, Jason Gore, David Toms (a PGA Champion), Duffy Waldorf, Trevor Immelman (a Masters Champion), Charles Howell III, Chad Campbell, Shaun Micheel (another PGA Champion).  Some of these guys, in addition to being former Majors winners, have won on the PGA Tour and have, at one time or another, been considered Young Guns and Up and Comers in the world of professional golf, yet none of them are currently good enough to have qualified for The British Open. It just goes to show you how hard it is to compete at the highest level in this sport (or any sport, for that matter), and that for every Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson who win big, hang around at the top for twenty or so years, and earn tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, there are scores other guys who have to compete in a backwater like Opelika, Alabama just to make expenses and try to keep their Tour Cards.  

It ain't easy.

The Champion Golfer of the Year

Well played, Zach Johnson!

To Absent Friends - Alex Rocco

Alex Rocco

1936-2015

Actor Alex Rocco died yesterday at the age of 79.  IMDB lists 103 acting credits for television for Rocco, which included his first acting role a villain's henchman in Batman in 1966, recurring roles in such shows as The Facts of Life and The Simpsons, and an Emmy winning role in 1989 in The Fabulous Teddy Z.

Rocco also had 60 acting roles in movies, mostly playing small time hoods and gangsters.  However, Rocco is best known and will be forever remembered for playing Las Vegas casino owner and gangster Moe Greene in 1972's The Godfather.  I mean really, can we ever forget such lines as...

"Draw chips for everyone in the room so they can play on the house", or...

"The Corleones don't have that kind of muscle anymore", or...

"I buy you out, you don't buy me out", or...

"He was banging cocktail waitresses two at a time", or....

"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?  I'm Moe Greene! I mae my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders."

And of course, how could anyone ever forget Moe's death scene on a Las Vegas massage table?

RIP Alex Rocco, and here is that most famous sit-down between Moe Greene and Michael Corleone.

Throwback Thursday - Three Rivers Stadium

Today, July 16, marks the 45th Anniversary of the first ball game played in Three Rivers Stadium.  The Pirates lost that game to the Cincinnati Reds. The picture above is a ticket stub from that game.  No, it wasn't my stub, it's my Dad's.  He was at that game.  I was not.  

My first visit to Three Rivers came three days later, on Sunday, July 19, which happened to be the first DAY game played at Three Rivers.  That day, my Dad and I were among 32,294 in attendance to see the Pirates defeat the Reds 7-3. In that game, Dave Cash hit a home run, Manny Sanguillen had a triple, Roberto Clemente went 0-for-2 with three walks, and Willie Stargell went 2-for-3 with an RBI.  Luke Walker pitched eight innings to get the win and boost his record to 7-3.  Joe Gibbon pitched a 1-2-3 ninth inning and was, according to the box score on Retrosheet, credited with a save.  The Save Rule must have been different then.  Under today's rules, Gibbon, who entered the game with a four run lead, would not be credited with a Save.  Oh, well.

That was the first of many, many visits that Stadium for me over the course of the next 31 years, and with that in mind, I reprint for you know (whether you want to see it or not), a list that I complied back in 2001, shortly before the implosion of Three Rivers Stadium.  These are events for which I was actually in attendance.

Top Ten Three Rivers Stadium Memories

1. 1972 – Franco Harris and the Immaculate Reception beats the Oakland Raiders in the Steelers first ever playoff game.  How could anything else be Number One?
2. 1979 – Pirates defeat Cincinnati Reds in Game Three to sweep the National League Championship Series and win Pennant.
3. 1971 – Attended Game 3 of World Series, my first World Series game.  Pirates win and go onto win World Series.
4. 1975 – Steelers defeat Oakland on an icy field in AFC Championship game.
5. 1978 and 1979 – Steelers defeat Houston Oilers two years in a row in AFC Championship game.
6. Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente – just watching these two Hall of Famers over the years.
7. 1979 – Attend Game Three of World Series. It’s a night game, it’s cold, there are snow flurries, and Pirates lose.  They win the World Series anyway.
8. 1994 – Steelers lose AFC Championship to Chargers when last minute fourth down pass at goal line falls incomplete.  I’ve never heard 60,000 people get so quiet.
9. 1995 – Steelers beat Indianapolis in AFC Championship game to go to Super Bowl.
10. 2000 – I catch foul ball hit by Jason Kendall, my first such souvenir in over 40 years of attending ball games.
11. 1985 – Bruce Springsteen “Born in the USA” concert.  Over 65,000 people, largest crowd ever at Three Rivers for any event.  Still the single best concert I’ve ever seen.
12. 1970 – Three Rivers Stadium opens.  It is old and outdated now, but it sure was dazzling when it first opened.

OK, I know that’s twelve.  So sue me! 

The Open Championship

I don't know about all of you, but I find myself really fired up for the Open Championship okay, the British Open, that begins this Thursday.

Credit for this, obviously goes to Jordan Spieth and the fact that he has won both the Masters and US Open this year and now has a chance to do something that has never been done - winning the modern Grand Slam in the same calendar year.  The fact that he played in the low level John Deere Classic this weekend, and won it, only intensifies the hype.  Also, I heard today that he will be paired with none other than Dustin Johnson in the first two rounds of the Open.  Those Brits know how to stage drama, don't they?

Also, the Open will be played on the Old Course at St. Andrews, the birth place of golf.  I love watching the Open when it is played there.  I hope it will be cold, windy, and overcast.

Spieth will be the favorite this week, especially since the injured Rory McIlroy will not be there, and you have to root for him.  However, one of the hardest single things to do in pro sports has to be winning any given golf tournament.  And one of the hardest things to predict is the winner of any given golf tournament, so I am going to wait until after the first round is played before offering my pick.  Yeah, it's kind of a chicken-scratch way to do it, but My Blog, My Rules!

Two other story lines to follow beside Spieth's quest for the Slam.

One is Dustin Johnson.  He has it in him to win one of these Majors, but how will that 72nd hole meltdown at the US Open effect him?

The other is Tiger Woods.  Yes, I know that Woods' days as the pre-eminent  golfer of all time are over, but an appearance by Woods in any tournament will always be a story, just as appearances by a washed up Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus were always stories whenever they played.  Call me crazy, but I still think that Tiger Woods will win again on the PGA Tour, and maybe even win another Major.  He knows St. Andrews.  He has won at St. Andrews, so give him a puncher's chance to be in contention for the lead on the weekend, and if he is in contention, you never know what might happen.  It's probably more likely that he will miss the cut, but I would never count him out.

Play well, gentlemen.

The Was The Weekend That Was

Some closing thoughts on what was an astonishing weekend of Pirates baseball.....

• As hard as it might be to believe, the ten inning 6-5 win on Sunday may have been even more improbable than the 14 inning 6-5 win on Saturday.
• Two weeks ago this morning, the Pirates were nine games behind the Cardinals.  today they are two and one-half games behind.  Making up 6.5 games in fourteen days is almost unbelievable.  If something  like this happened in, say, the last two weeks of September, it would be deemed to be historic. Of course, the Cardinals are STILL in first place, so this is a long way from over.
• Ace Cardinals closer Trevor Rosenthal gave up more runs this weekend - four - than he had in the entire season leading up to this weekend - three.
• After listening to a polished national Fox broadcast by Matt Vasgersian and John Smoltz, last night we were treated to the folly of the three man booth used by ESPN.  Play-by-play man Dan Schulman is okay, but you also have to deal with John Kruk in his role as the Fat Guy Buffoon and the endless bloviations of Curt Schilling, a man deeply in love with the sound of his own voice.
• For all that, Schilling did say two things of note in the tenth inning last night.  As the Pirates were mounting their rally, he noted that, and I am paraphrasing here, "if these guys come back and win again tonight, it might be the springboard for something really special this season".  And when the game ended, he said, that no matter what the score might be in any game for the rest of the season, the Pirates will never again feel like they are out of the game.
• Remember the cries in the not so distant past that Gregory Polanco should be returned to the minors?  In the last seven days, in 26 at bats, he is hitting .308 with 4 RBIs, 3 Runs Scored, 7 walks (against only 3 K's), and sports an OPS of .878.  And three of his hits were game winners.
• Remember the cries at the end of Spring Training that Jung Ho Kang should start the season in Indy and that someone like, say, Steve Lombardozzi (who did out hit Kang in the Grapefruit League) should come north with the team.  How might that have worked out?
• The Pirates return form the All-Star break with series in Milwaukee and Kansas City, and then a home series against the Nationals.  As a friend of mine might put, that's a lot of grass to mow.
• As great as the recent 8-2 home stand was, it should not be forgotten that Josh Harrison is out for the foreseeable future.  That loss is going to be felt eventually, and I am sure that it will factor into whatever trade deadline machination Neal Huntington will try to pull off.
• Have you watched the highlights of the last two games synced with the radio play-by-play of Greg Brown?  It is classic, but I truly fear for the man's health if this keeps up.  Hope an EMS guys is standing by with the paddles for the rest of the way.

As far as what to expect once the second half begins on Friday, I can only offer the following advice: