Sports Happenings on Pittsburgh's North Shore

What a few days it has been on the Pittsburgh sports scene, and where do I even begin?  

Let's start with last night's Steelers 27-14 win over the awful Miami Dolphins.

When I got home from the Caring Place last night and turned on the TV, it was early in the second quarter, the Steelers were down 0-14, and Mason Rudolph was standing in his own end zone to take the snap from center.  Things looked grim indeed.  Well, you know what happened next.  The Steelers drove the field and kicked a FG to make it 3-14, and then proceeded to score 24 more unanswered points to win the game 27-14.  Obviously, my presence in front to the tube cheering them on made all the difference.  I will try not to miss any more action in future games.

Mason Rudolph in action last night

Rudolph, playing for the first time since October 10, looked horrible at the start, then he shook off the rust, and performed admirably, I thought, in leading the team over the last two and one half quarters of the game.  He was helped by a strong game from James Conner, and great play from WRs Diontae Johnson and JuJu Smith-Shuster.  Rudolph is still very much a developing work-in-progress, but I see some good things there and am encouraged by how he has performed thus far.

Now the Dolphins, as I said, are truly awful, so a win over them must be kept in context, and at 3-4, the Steelers season thus far has been nothing to brag about, but I take joy in at least these two facts:

1. The Steelers are one game AHEAD of the 2-5 Cleve Brownies in the standings.  You know, the Browns who were everybody's trendy pre-season pick to storm their way to the Super Bowl.
2. Browns cinch-for-the-HOF QB Baker Mayfield has thrown six TD passes thus far this season.  Mason Rudolph has thrown seven.

The season is only half over, and the Steelers and Browns have yet to play each other, so things can certainly change, but for now, at least, those two facts are just delightful.

        ********

The bigger sports news this week, though, has been made by the Pirates. Last week, team president Frank Coonelly and the team agreed to part company. Yesterday, GM Neal Huntington was fired, and Bob Nutting introduced Travis Williams, an executive with the NHL Islanders for the last eight years, and more importantly, a native Pittsburgh who had served for many years as Chief Operating Officer for the Penguins, as the new President of the team.  Nutting, himself, actually met and spoke with the press on the occasion for the first time since Spring Training.

Travis Williams

In the end, Nutting did what Pirates fans had been screaming for - he cleaned house.  Since the end of the season, the manager, general manager, and team president have all been given their walking papers.  The so called "best management team in baseball" is no more.  Nutting also talked the talk and said what many fans have been saying....why haven't we drafted and developed players like other teams have, and why are our players suddenly performing so much better when they go to other teams?  He also tap-danced around questions about payroll and spending money, so we will wait and see if these changes will, in the end, really mean anything.  As one sports writer has said, he did what needed to be done insofar as cleaning house, so he deserves the benefit of the doubt and a fresh start - for now.

Travis Williams certainly brings a good resume as a sports executive to the job. He's not a baseball guy, but the team president doesn't really have to know who should be called upon to get Cody Bellinger or Christian Yelich out with the game on the line in the bottom of the ninth.  That's for the GM and the manager and the "baseball people" to figure out.  Williams first order of business will be a huge one: hiring the next GM to steer the ship in the days and years ahead.

One quote from Williams presser yesterday struck me.  Before taking the job, he asked Nutting if he was willing to do "whatever it took" to do things right and win and contend consistently, and Nutting assured him that he would.  Seems that I heard the same quotes from Coonelly and Huntington when they were hired in 2007 and from Hurdle when he was hired in 2011.

Like I said, we'll see.

A word about Frank Coonelly.

Full disclosure: Back in 2009, when I was working for Highmark, I met Frank Coonelly, and we became friends. He is a charming and engaging guy. He never forgets a name or a face once he meets you.  Marilyn and I would run into him at the ballpark, at spring training in Bradenton one year, or even just around town, like at a PNC Bank ATM machine, or the Ace Hardware in Wexford (true stories!), and he always  would take time to chat and engage with you.  Every year in November, I would have lunch with him, and I considered him a personal friend.  Often times at those lunches, the state of the Pirates was the least of what we talked about.  I never wrote about what we discussed during those lunches, and I was always reluctant to be critical of him in all of the many posts I've written about the Pirates over the years.  Hey, I never claimed to be Woodward and Bernstein when I write this blog!

So, as I mentioned to a pal on Facebook when the news of Frank's departure became known last week, I take no joy in this.  I look at it as a friend of mine losing his job, and I feel bad about that.  Not that we need hold a benefit for him.  He will bounce back from this, and I know that he will land in a good spot for him and his family.

Maybe Frank's departure and Williams' hiring will work well for the Pirates.  As a fan, I hope that it absolutely does mean good things for the team, but I am sorry that a friend of mine, Frank Coonelly, will no longer be a part of the process.  I wish him well, whatever he does.

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And while we are talking about sports on the North Shore, how about the Pitt Panthers spitting the bit last Saturday against a not-great Miami team?  After winning five straight games and sitting at 5-2, there was talk that it was certainly possible for Pitt to win their remaining five games, finish at 10-2, maybe getting to the ACC Championship game, and getting a really nice Bowl game for their efforts.  

Then they fail to put the ball in the end zone and lose 16-12 to Miami.  They are now 5-3 with four games left.  They could win all four of them.  A case can be made for that.  It is also possible that they could go 1-3 in those games.  I doubt that they'll lose all four of them, but I wouldn't be totally shocked if that happened either.

As Dan said when we left Heinz Field on Saturday, "I've followed Pitt all my life.  I'm used to this." 

Hurdle Takes the Fall, Bye-bye to Blass, and Who Ya Got in the Series?

The blood-letting began at PNC Park yesterday when the Pirates, in the smarmy personage of General Manager Neal Huntington, fired manager Clint Hurdle, right before the team's final game of the season.  The Pirates can manage to screw up just about anything, even a firing.

Clint Hurdle rides off

into the sunset

Let's face it, a case can certainly be made for Hurdle's dismissal.  He's been on the job for nine seasons, and his message had probably gotten stale with the players and was no doubt falling upon deaf ears.  His fate was probably sealed with that unbelievably horrid twenty-eight game stretch after the All-Star Break when the team went 4-24, and if THAT didn't do it, the tales of a clubhouse completely out of control during the second half of the season surely did.

All of that aside, though, the site of GMNH smugly saying how Clint needs to be "honored" for all he did for the Pirates, and short time after he fired him, is enough to make to make you want to retch.  And how about Bob "Mr. Dithers" Nutting going on and on about how great Clint was, and then telling us that GM Neal and his "excellent leadership team" will remain in place and will no doubt lead the Pirates to greater heights into the future?

As the PG's Paul Zeise said in his online column today, Hurdle's firing can be justified, but it can also be said that he did HIS job with the Pirates one helluva lot better than Neal Huntington and his scouting and development team did theirs.  And if you don't believe that, just take a look at the collection of sub-standard, non-major league quality pitchers that Clint had available to him in the bullpen whenever the underachieving starting staff faltered, which they did almost all of the time.

Clint gets the last laugh.  He is owed $6 million from the Pirates over the next two years, and I hope that he collects every dime of it from this sad sorry-assed organization that the Pirates have become.

********

Until the front office screwed it up with the timing of the Hurdle firing, there was a "feel good" story this weekend, and that was the final series of games being broadcast by retiring announcer Steve Blass, after sixty years serving the Pirates organization.  (Has anyone served the Pirates so well for so long?  I think not.) The fact that Blass' final season turned into a complete shit show was a shame, and the hijacking of his final game by yet another inept front office gaffe was icing on the cake.

As my own tribute to Blass, I will tell my own Steve Blass story.  I've told it before in this space, but, what the hell, here it goes for one more time.  Back in the '00s  when I was chairing the local SABR Chapter, I invited Steve to be a speaker at one of our meetings, and he accepted.   How cool was that to have a genuine, honest-to-God World Series hero come to speak to us free of charge.

Well, he showed up, spoke for an hour, and did a great job of being Steve Blass.  The following week, as was my custom, I sent a thank you note to him for his time and for the job he did at our event.  A few days later, my phone rang at the office - I was still working then - and it was Steve Blass.  He want to thank me for sending him a thank you note.

Who does that?

Here's to a long, happy, and healthy retirement for Steve Blass.

********

The Major League Post-Season begins tomorrow with the first of the Wild Card games, and culminates with the World Series, which might end right around Thanksgiving.  Ten teams are alive for a chance to obtain that World Series gonfalon.  Here is my Grandstander Confidence Ranking (GCR) for the teams still standing, with (1) being "most confident" and (10) being "least confident".

1. Astros
2. Yankees
3. Dodgers
4. Braves
5. Cardinals
6. Twins
7. Brewers
8. Rays
9. Athletics
10. Nationals

Feel free to factor the GCR into your calculations as you make your own World Series predictions, and, as always, watch, but don't bet.

The Bucs Just After The Break

Eighteen days ago, July 8, I made a post on this blog entitled "Bucs At The Break", wherein I waxed enthusiastically over a thirteen game stretch prior to the All-Star Break when the Pirates went 8-5 against teams that were higher than they were in the standings.  You can look it up easily enough.

In order to save myself retyping the same words, allow me to cut-and-paste another passage from that post:

After the Break, they face another thirteen games against teams above them in the standings, Cubs, Phillies, and Cardinals.   If they can fashion another 8-5 record, or better, in those games, then you have to think that the Front Office will simply HAVE to make an effort to add a piece or two to put the team into a position to make a run for a playoff spot.

That thirteen game stretch ended today, and I don't think that I have to spell it out for fans of the team what happened, but, what the hell, here it is, anyway.  They went 2-11 in those games.  They are now 46-56, in last place in the NL Central, 9 games out of first place, and 9 games out of the Wild Card with eight teams between them and that second WC spot.

For all practical purposes, the season for the Pittsburgh Pirates is over.

The question of what does Neal Huntington do at the July 31 trade deadline (My $.02: listen to any and every offer that might be made for any and every player on the team except Josh Bell, Kevin Newman, and Brian Reynolds) is of far less importance than this one:

Who will be held accountable for this mess of a season?

You could say that it's the fault of Clint Hurdle and his coaching staff, especially Ray Searage, so fire them all, BUT they can only work with the players that they are given, SO....

You could then say that it is GMNH's fault because he has produced a pretty bad ball club, which has included a parade of pitchers who absolutely, positively do not belong in a major league uniform (I don't have to list them for you, do I?), and whose big splash deal of last year, the acquisition of Chris Archer, has blown up in his face like a cheap exploding cigar, so fire him, BUT Neal is hamstrung by a budget that is requiring him to try and compete with a payroll that ranks 27th among MLB's thirty teams, SO.....

You can then say that the accountability buck stops at the desk of owner Bob Nutting, and one thing we know is that Bob Nutting likes nothing more than making money, and the Pirates are making money, so he's not likely to change his skinflint ways (never mind the fact that maybe he could make even more money if he actually had a winning and competitive team).  He likes it just the way it is right now.

So, when the season comes to its merciful end for the Pirates in September, a couple of coaches, or Clint Hurdle, or maybe even GM Neal may get sacrificed to placate the angry masses, but as long as Bob Nutting is still signing the checks, I fear that things are never going to change.

Maybe the team might catch lightning in bottle some year like the KC Royals did a few years back, but we as Pirates fans are doomed to serve the rest of our days as fans residing in baseball's version of Purgatory.  That's the way Bob Nutting wants it, that's the way the MLBPA wants it, and that's the way MLB itself wants it.

Us fans?  We're screwed.

Justin Morneau Is a Pirate

Here is what yesterday's Pirate trade for Justin Morneau - and the trade earlier in the week for Marlon Byrd and John Buck - means.  

It means....

• ...that the Front Office has lived up on it's promise to do what needs to be done once all of the building blocks were put in place in the franchise infrastructure
• ...that Bob Nutting opened up his wallet and spent money, significant money in the case of Morneau, to put the pieces in place for a serious post-season run
• ...that maybe, just maybe, Neal Huntington has been right all along in his "plan" to make the Pirates a contender (and regular readers know that The Grandstander has been a huge NHR critic in the past)
• ... that in terms of the 2013 season, Nutting, Coonelly, and Huntington have done their jobs
• ...that the Front Office has given Clint Hurdle, to the largest extent possible, the tools he needs to succeed
• ...that it is now up to the players on the field to finish the job

So, I would suggest that everyone quit bitching about the timing of these trades ("should have done it on July 31") and just enjoy these last 28 games of the season.  Wait until the World Series is over to fire up the Hot Stove and put Nutting, Coonelly, Huntington, and Hurdle on the griddle.

Right now, there is a pennant race to enjoy. 

The Big Announcement from Captain Nuts

It's hard to come up with words for Bob Nutting's (aka, Captain Nuts, Commander of the Ship of Fools) big announcement this week, which, in true Pirates fashion, was made on the same day that America was going about electing a President, no doubt hoping that it would be lost in the shuffle.  Dejan Kovacevic, Bob Simizik, and others have written some great stuff on this, but the best analysis I've seen came in Gene Collier's column this morning, and I recommend it highly:

 http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sports/gene-collier/whole-lot-of-nothing-from-nutting-661133/

Read the whole column, by all means, but I cannot resist printing one paragraph here.  What a terrific metaphor:

Huntington took the car keys from Nutting near the end of 2007, drove a junky 68-win team down into a 57-105 ditch three years later and has now steered teams cruising toward the postseason hard into the guard rails in consecutive summers.

I wish I could write like that.

If I Was Bob Nutting....

....here is the VERY FIRST question that I would ask Frank, Neal, and Clint as I begin my "investigation" into the second half collapse of 2012 that not only duplicated, but eclipsed the second half collapse of 2011.

"Well, FrankNealClint," I would begin, "you know how we are always bragging about how we have built up the farm system, how we have established that baseball academy in the Dominican Republic, and, most of all, how we have been so aggressive in paying above slot signing bonuses for our draft choices?  Tell me, please, what have I, Bob Nutting, and it is MY  money that you have been spending here on MY team, gotten for all this money of MINE that YOU have spent?"

We can bitch all we want about Bob Nutting, but I think that he does have a right to ask that question, don't you?

Of course, if FrankNealClint point out the ever increasing amounts of cash coming into Nutting's coffers, maybe that will be OK for old Bob.  If he cares about winning as much as he says he does, then maybe the answer to that question might lead to something, anything, happening that might improve the lot of this ball club.

Or, maybe not.

A Poll Question - Participation Needed!!!

With apologies to Facebook and SABR Friend Dan Bonk, I want to propose a question to you. Who is the most disliked figure in Pittsburgh sports history? Dan got the ball rolling by nominating three people: Bob Nutting, Barry Bonds, and Francisco Cabrera.

Personally, I would discount Cabrera. He was just another guy on an opposing team doing his job. I also strike Bonds from the list. While he was never enormously popular during his years as a Pirate, I do not recall him being a truly disliked figure until many years later when his home run totals increased with proportion to his head size.

That leaves Nutting, and he's going to be a hard guy knock from this dubious pedestal.

Some guys receiving votes on Facebook included Kordell Stewart, Neil O'Donnell, and Dave Littlefield.

Anyone else care to make a nomination?

A Scene from Opening Day

Need to share this item from John Perrotto's Beaver County Times story today about this scene from Opening Day. I'd have loved to have seen this.

Clint Hurdle is still learning the lay of the land in his first season as Pirates' manager. That provided an awkward moment before the home opener Thursday at PNC Park.

Hurdle was walking in the hallway that leads from the clubhouse to the dugout about three hours before game time when he saw Pirates owner Bob Nutting. Hurdle put a bear hug on Nutting. Nutting is not what you would call a huggable guy. The look on his face was priceless as he received what was assuredly his first-ever man hug.

Opening Day and Other Thoughts

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box on Opening Day while listening to the great Bob Dylan on the iPod:

• Opening Day for the Pittsburgh Baseball Club. Today, all things are possible. Not probable, but most certainly possible.


• Perhaps the most memorable quote from Spring Training came from Bob Nutting when he told that team that starting in 2011 "incremental progress will not be acceptable." Personally, and maybe I've just been totally beaten down by this bunch, I would be thrilled to see even "incremental progress" by the Pirates in 2011. Lord knows we haven't seen any such progress during the PNC Park era.


• I am guessing that that "incremental progress" quote will be thrown back at Nutting more than once as the season progresses.


• Setting a moderate goal, I said back in December that if Clint Hurdle could coax 70 wins out of this team, he should be Manager of the Year. That would be a 13 game improvement over 2010, so what the hell.... 70 Wins or Bust in 2011!!!


• When I am looking for a specific game score or result, the crawl at the bottom of the screen on ESPN is terrific. When I am not looking for a specific score or result, the crawl is extremely annoying.


• Just finished reading "True Grit" by Charles Portis. Had I read this novel when it first came out in 1968, I'm not sure that I would have thought "Wow, this would book make a great movie."


• Next on my reading list: "Branch Rickey" by Jimmy Breslin, and "Rawhide Down" (about the assassination attempt on President Reagan) by Del Quentin Wilber.


• Speaking Bob Dylan, my issue of the AARP Magazine (insert appropriate smartass comment here) arrived yesterday, and it includes a feature story commemorating Dylan's 70th birthday on May 24. Yes, Bob Dylan will be 70 years old next month!!


• Tonight is Fantasy Baseball Draft Night. I have the first pick in the North Park League draft, which I earned by finishing last in 2010. Just like in real baseball, all things are possible on Draft Night. I can tell you that Albert Pujols will be my first round selection tonight. After that, who knows?


• Readers of this blog know my abysmal track record making sports predictions, but last October 26, I predicted that the NBA Finals would be contested by the Los Angeles Lakers and the Chicago Bulls (you can look it up). As of this morning, the Lakers are #2 in the West and the #1 team in the East is none other than the Chicago Bulls. Still a lot of grass to mow until the Finals, but How 'Bout Them Bulls?


• Purchased the DVD set of Mad Men Season 4 yesterday. Looking forward to settling in with that.


• Bad news is that Mad Men Season 5 won't start until 2012. Will jumping an entire season mean jumping the shark for this great series?


• Welcome news for North Hills residents in the PG today. Cinemark will be building and opening a new, modern 12 screen movie theater complex in McCandless. Finally, modern comforts and amenities for movie goers in the North Hills, and good-bye to the dumpy Rave (formerly Showcase) Cinemas on McKnight Road. The bad news is that this complex won't be open until Fall, 2012.


• I am looking out my window as I type this and watching it snow. Wish I could say "April Fool's" to that one, but it is all too true.


• Enjoy the Bucco Opener today. Eighteen - and counting - seasons of ineptitude can't stop you from being a fan. Let's Go Bucs!!!

"Unbroken", Stan the Man, Bob Nutting, and Dick Groat

It has been awhile since I have checked in, so here goes an extended version of The Grandstander for today.

Let's start with a book, Laura Hillenbrand's #1 bestseller, "Unbroken." I just finished reading the incredible story of Louis Zamperini. Zamperini was a young member of the 1936 American Olympic track team in Berlin, who was looking to be right on track, no pun intended, to win a gold medal for the USA in the 1500 Meter race in the 1940 Olympics that were scheduled to be in Tokyo.

Of course, WWII intervened and those Olympics never took place. Zamperini enlisted in the Army Air Corps and therein lies an amazing story. In 1943, Louie's plane crashed over the Pacific, he survived for 47 days floating in a raft in the ocean, was captured by the Japanese and then spent two and one-half years in several POW camps.

It is a most compelling story of perseverance and the triumph of the human spirit, and an incredibly sad and depressing story of man's inhumanity to man. At times while reading the book, I felt like I couldn't take much more of this story, but in the end, you are in awe of what Zamperini and his fellow POW's withstood.

Not to give too much away, but here is one statistic that will give you some idea of this. In WWII, 1 in 100 American POW's held in Germany and Italy died. Of the Americans held as POW's in Japanese camps, 1 in 3 died.

No doubt, this is an important and worthwhile book, but Hillenbrand's book of a few years back, "Seabiscuit", was a lot more fun to read.

******

Last week President Obama awarded the nation's highest civilian award to 15 Americans, including two athletes, Bill Russell and Stan Musial. Hard to dispute either award, and I will focus only on Musial today.

Go to a baseball encyclopedia of any online baseball reference and look at the lifetime stats for Stan Musial. When great players of his era are mentioned, the names of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio are always brought up, but rarely do you hear Stan the Man's name in the same conversations. Why is that?

Over the course of a career that lasted 22 seasons, Musial put together 475 HR, 1,951 RBI, and a .331 lifetime BA, 3,630 hits, and seven NL batting titles. Six times he recorded an OPS in excess of 1.000, and seven other times an OPS of .900 or more. Over those 22 seasons, he averaged 86 walks a year and only 37 strike outs. In fact, in only three seasons did he strike out over 40 times, and two of those seasons were his final ones, 1962 and 1963, when he was 41 and 42 years old. And to add some perspective, in that '61 season, at age 41, Stan hit .330 with 19 HR and 82 RBI.

Of course, Stan never had a "signature event" like Williams .406 average or DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak, so perhaps that is why he gets lost in history, but what a shame that is.

How can you not say that Musial is not one of the top ten players of all time?

*****

News came from Bradenton yesterday that Pirates owner Bob Nutting addressed the team. This is the year, Bob said, where things will change....merely being "good" is not enough....the only acceptable goal will be the National League Championship. I also believe that

the old Nutting buzzword, "accountability" was also tossed out there. Yawn.

We've sure heard this song and dance before haven't we?

I don't believe that any mention was made that the Bucs will open the season with a payroll in the bottom five (if not the bottom one or two) of MLB. This has been another hallmark of the Nutting Era.

*****

I know that Dick Groat is considered by many to be a hallowed institution here in Pittsburgh. After all, Dick Vitale always has the ESPN cameras pan in on him while he, Vitale, sings his praises whenever the four letter network is televising a Pitt game. So, at the risk of committing a mortal sin, I have to say that listening to Groat in the closing moments of Pitt's loss to St. John's while out running errands on Saturday was high comedy. Oh, the foolish turnovers, oh, the fouling of St. John's best free throw shooters, and, of course, the jobbing of Pitt by the officials. I thought old Richard Morrow Groat was going to start weeping at any moment during those final three minutes when Pitt was unable to make a basket. Even the biggest homer announcer of all, Bourbon -Nose Billy Hillgrove, was a model of journalistic comportment by comparison.