There's a rule in APA style writing that says journalists should type out all numbers less than 11. After ten, you can just type the actual numbers. Well for nine years now, Pirates writers have had to use the number pad to type out the number of consecutive losing seasons their team has had.
The last time the Pirates had a winning season, I was turning two years old, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life in prison, and George H. W. Bush was President of the United States.
That stinks.
Ryan Braun hit a home run today. It stinks that he was allowed to play in the game in order to hit a home run. The urine sample was blah blah blah and Fedex blah blah blah and he didn't blah blah blah and it stinks.
A.J. Burnett didn't pitch in the last week of Pirates spring training games. He bunted a ball into his eye and broke his face. That stinks.
Matt Diaz didn't hit a home run last year. Yeah, that stinks too.
I know I normally try to stick to the stats and not get too emotional and whatnot on this blog, and I'm normally pretty positive, but wow... being a Pirates fan really stinks sometimes, doesn't it?
So why do we do it? Why have I sat here at my computer and wrote 1,011 posts about the Pittsburgh Pirates when I haven't seen them compete for anything since I've been potty trained.
Sometimes, that's just what life is about. Hope. We all root for the underdog, hope for the hopeless, and wish to be a part of something big. In the scheme of things, baseball is just a game and isn't nearly as important as other things going on in the world (like stopping Joseph Kony), but it's still important to us. For whatever reason, there are thousands of people that love the sport of baseball and the Pittsburgh Pirates, and seeing this team have a winning season and competing for a playoff spot would be so much more than just something that happens in a sport.
You know what I like? Math. You know why? Because math says that this losing streak cannot continue forever. Someday, the Pirates are going to win 82 games in a season. The day that the Pirates win that 82nd game, there's going to be some kind of smile on my face. In the scheme of life, win number 82 will be meaningless, but it's going to mean something important to me.
It means that if you find passion for something, no matter what it is, and stick with it, you can go somewhere and it can benefit you. Dedication always pays off. To steal a phrase from a seven year old, quitters never win.
So keep your head up. Stay faithful. Don't turn off that late-September Pirate game where we're about to lose game number 100. Someday it'll all pay off in the end, and all this suffering and pain will be worth it - and that doesn't stink.
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