Beaver County Times, August 17, 2014

Are you stressing out over whether Russell Martin will be back with the Pirates next year?
Relax. He's gone.
They're not going to re-sign him, and they really shouldn't. There is absolutely no doubt Martin's departure will downgrade the catcher position next season.
In a perfect world, the Pirates would sign him for one more year at a hefty raise and get another season like this one from him. That isn't realistic, though.
He's going on the open market, most likely looking for a three-year deal somewhere around $35 million. There's an excellent chance he'll get it from someone. But it will involve a change of address.
Martin will be 32 at the start of next season. He's probably OK for another season, but anything after that is high risk. Most players start to decline in their 30s, and the cliff is even more steep for catchers, who have the toughest workload on the field.
Some catchers are able to last longer. Tony Pena and Jason Kendall did, but they had more flexible bodies than Martin does. Maybe Martin is an exception, but there's a significant collection of actuary tables that says he won't be.
It's a physically demanding position, and Martin doesn't take any shortcuts.
If you're operating on the Pirates' budget, you don't make multi-year commitments to players who are 32. Use that money to lock up players who are 25 or 26 and get their best years instead of the twilight ones.
The Pirates did that expertly with Andrew McCutchen, and they missed badly trying to do that with Jose Tabata.
So don't sweat it. Martin is leaving. Put that future angst aside and enjoy the rest of this season, when he's still throwing his body in front of bad pitches, mentoring pitchers and getting timely hits.
If you're worried about whether they're going to sign Neil Walker, put that aside, too. He owes the Pirates two more seasons beyond this one and can't become a free agent until after the 2016 season, when he'll be 31.
Just so you know: They're not going to sign him, either.
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--FULL CIRCLE
Back when Three Rivers Stadium was still standing and the battle for new sports venues was being waged, the Pirates chartered a bus and took local media types to Cleveland.
They went for a ball game during the Indians' sellout streak that covered seven seasons and 455 games. The idea was to show the commerce and energy a new ballpark could create. The neighborhood's bars and restaurants were hopping, a sharp contrast to Three Rivers, which was surrounded by parking lots, Kaufmann's warehouse and the occasional "who needs two?" guy.
Naturally, most of the people on the tour took everything at face value and came back gushing about Cleveland's renaissance.
This year the Indians are next to last in MLB attendance. The team recently announced plans to remodel its 20-year-old park. The changes will reduce seating capacity by about 5,000 to 38,000. Now the Pirates have the crowded sidewalks and the tickets that are hard to get.
Sports has always been a cyclical business, especially when there are 81 home dates to sell.
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--YINZ TUBE
The only good thing about the NFL preseason is the annual reappearance of the "Steelers Trivia Challenge" on KDKA-TV.
The show airs on Saturday nights at 11:30 with the impeccably-coiffed Bob Pompeani channeling Bert Convy as the genial quizmaster. All sorts of ancillary Steelers show exist on TV and radio, solely because there are sponsors anxious to buy them. Even after two years of 8-8, the Steelers are still a gold mine. "Trivia Challenge" trumps them all.
The show has three competing teams, all wearing a rack's worth of Steelers gear, vying for a trophy and more practical swag, like McDonald's certificates that are probably cashed on the ride home.
The questions range from the ridiculously easy ("Where did the Steelers play home games before Heinz Field?") to the ridiculously arcane ("What was the final score of the 1989 Wild Card game?)
There's an unseen studio audience that seems to be comprised of the relatives of the contestants. It has that oh-so-local feel that's been missing ever since "Bowling For Dollars" left the air.
Watch it while you can. Soon the season will start, and the good natured competition among Terrible Towel wavers will be replaced by angry phone calls from wanna-be offensive coordinators and Edmund Nelson complaining about Ben Roethlisberger.

Beaver County Times, August 10, 2014

When Andrew McCutchen is on all fours, writhing in pain and angry enough to slam his bat, it's not good for the Pirates.
That was the case last Sunday when McCutchen was drilled in the back by a pitch from Arizona's Randall Delgado. This was apparent retaliation for the Ernesto Frieri fastball that broke the hand of the Diamondbacks' Paul Goldschmidt.
The difference in the two pitches was it appeared Delgado identified a target and hit it. Frieri had no good reason to hit Goldschmidt, so the pitch was likely a product of Frieri's lousy control rather than malicious intent.
There's no way of knowing whether the pitch that hit McCutchen led to a rib injury sustained on a swing later in the game. Clint Hurdle dismissed the possibility while McCutchen at least left it open to speculation.
The fallout brought a lot of reaction, and most of it didn't make much sense. Tony LaRussa, now a front office honcho with the Diamondbacks, didn't see anything wrong with McCutchen getting hit. That's no surprise. During a managerial career that spanned three teams and 33 years, he promoted more fights than Don King.
(Worth noting: LaRussa was never hit by a pitch in his 203 major league plate appearances). LaRussa was always outraged when one of his players was hit, perpetually indignant if anyone questioned his right to get even.
Supposedly the Diamondbacks violated an unwritten code by failing to hit McCutchen on his first plate appearance. Then Delgado was accused of further trashing protocol by not drilling McCutchen with his first pitch.
So it's OK to bruise a guy as long as he's certain it's coming?
If the circumstances had been reversed, the Pirates would have been livid that McCutchen was dealt a season-ending injury by a nobody's careless inside pitch, regardless of intent. And there's no doubt that some obscure relief pitcher who extracted pointless revenge on a Diamondbacks star would win some points in his own clubhouse.
Baseball players have been aiming pitches at each other for more than a hundred years. Intimidation is part of the game. So is claiming the inside part of the plate so hitters can't dig in and cover more of the strike zone. Sports have always operated on an eye-for-an-eye system. Zach Duke is still vilified, not for his 45-70 record with the Pirates, but for his failure to respond and protect a teammate once.
MLB's inaction, beyond Delgado's immediate ejection, is an indication that the people in charge didn't think it was that big a deal.
People throw baseballs at each other sometimes, reality that's little consolation to someone wearing the imprint of a pitch.
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--PARTY TIME
South Florida police should be on alert every July 25. That's when the Pouncey twins, the Steelers' Maurkice and Mike of the Dolphins, celebrate their birthday.
Things tend to get a bit spirited, which is why there are reports Maurkice may be facing charges stemming from an incident at this year's party.
The Pounceys are 25 now, so perhaps it's time to tone down the celebration. Maybe stay home and get pizza delivered?
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--CALLING IT QUITS
Pohla Smith retired from the Post-Gazette the other day, ending a 40-year journalism career to battle ongoing health issues.
She worked for UPI's Pittsburgh bureau in the 1970s and was one of the nation's first full-time female sportswriters. She had to stand outside locker rooms and wait for team officials to bring players out to be interviewed. That consistently put her at a big disadvantage in filing stories on tight wire service deadlines.
Eventually women were allowed in locker rooms, but that didn't instantly make things better. Juvenile behavior by players made it impossible for Smith to be just another reporter. A Pirates coach made a vile comment suggesting any females in a locker room had to be seeking more than just a story.
Things have changed. Women regularly cover every team in town and no one gives it a thought. Nobody apparently realized it in 1979, but towels and basic respect solve a lot of the issues.
Meanwhile, any female journalist who covers a locker room without incident should be grateful to the pioneers like Smith, who endured a lot as they changed the culture.

Beaver County Times, August 3, 2014

Baseball's non-waiver trading deadline passed, and the Pirates' roster remained the same.
Ernesto Frieri, Brent Morel and Michael Martinez were all in place after the frenzy had passed. It was business as usual for a team that talked about a lot of deals but didn't make any.
Reaction was swift, angry and predictable. They had betrayed their fans. They were delusional about the potential of their prospects. They passed on a chance to pursue success.
The Pirates needed pitching help, especially for the starting rotation. The two big tickets moved, Boston's Jon Lester to Oakland and Tampa Bay's David Price to Detroit. The Pirates' rotation, which currently lacks a clear cut No. 1 starter, stayed intact.
At this point, it's relevant to invoke the words of the British philosopher Mick Jagger, who once pointed out that you can't always get what you want.
The Pirates evidently pursued both pitchers. In the end, the Red Sox parted with Lester for the chance to acquire Yoenis Cespedes, a right-handed power hitter who should put some dents in Fenway Park's Green Monster. If that's what the Red Sox wanted, the Pirates probably never had a chance.
Cespedes is a wild swinger who has too many strikeouts and not enough walks, but he has a pedigree as a home run hitter. He had 23 and 26 in his first two major league seasons, and is on pace for more than 30 this year. In other words, he's not quite as well-rounded as Andrew McCutchen, but has accomplished more than Starling Marte at this point.
If that was the price for Lester, the Pirates were not a match.
After the smoke had cleared on the three-way deal that sent Price to the Tigers, Peter Gammons wrote this: "Most people thought the Pirates' offer, which was all about prospects and minor leaguers, might have been greater in terms of talent and that the Pirates were much closer to getting Price than we realize."
The Rays opted for a package of two major league players (lefthander Drew Smyly and infielder Nick Franklin) as well as 18-year-old infield prospect Willy Adames. Tampa Bay was apparently interested in immediate help rather than a bundle of prospects who might be two years away from the major leagues. It's their yard sale, so it's their prerogative.
That's the thing about trades -- you make your pitch and hope for the best. As any plaid-jacketed car salesman knows, sometimes the customer goes down the street and makes a deal with someone else.
You tweak and haggle and hope but sometimes (here's Jagger again), you can't get no satisfaction.
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--FALSE ALARMS
The deadline spotlighted the kind of dubious reporting that seems to be rampant these days.
ESPN ran with a false report that Tampa Bay utility player Ben Zobrist had been traded to the Pirates. They bought into the bogus scoop to the point that the network's experts were discussing how Zobrist would fit into the Pirates' lineup.
Former major league general manager Jim Bowden, a notorious loose cannon, falsely reported the Phillies had traded Marlon Byrd to the Yankees. His uncredited source was apparently a fake Twitter account a prankster had set up using the name of a New York newspaper columnist.
A million or so years ago, new employees of The Associated Press were always instructed with one of those corny sayings that sounds like it came from somebody's fussy old grandmother: "Get it first, but first get it."
Might be time to dust that one off again. It's even more relevant in a Twitter-driven environment.
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--RARE HONOR
The Steelers have never been much on sentiment, but there's always been a special place for Joe Greene, the first player drafted in the organization's turnaround.
So it's no surprise that he would become the second player in franchise history to have his number retired. Dan Rooney chose Greene as his presenter for the Hall of Fame, an earlier nod to what Greene's talent and presence meant to the teams of the 1970s.

Beaver County Times, July 27, 2014

NFL Network is a product of our multi-splintered, 200-channel television universe in which narrowcasting has replaced broadcasting.
There's not only a channel for every interest, there's probably a sub-channel as well. We have channels that feature nothing but cooking shows; how long before we have one devoted to slow cooker recipes? You click back seven hours later to see the finished dish.
NFL Network, launched in 2003, fills a bigger niche than a lot of speciality channels. It reaches about 63 percent of television households in the United States, and it has some programming that appeals to more than the truly obsessed.
NFL Network has a Thursday game of the week. The first half of the schedule this season will also be on CBS, but the last eight Thursday games are exclusive to NFL Network.
As a 24/7 operation, there are a lot of hours to fill. So you not only have wall-to-wall coverage of the NFL draft, you get endless hours of deposed general managers and personnel directors talking about what may happen in the draft. After that, it's the same suspects back to offer opinions of what did happen.
NFL Network provides annual coverage of the NFL Scouting Combine, where players are measured like livestock and tested like chorus line dancers. But with all that time to fill, some of the offerings appear to be as marginal as the "Hangin' With Mr. Cooper" reruns on Nick at Nite.
"Inside Minicamp" and "Live From The Pro Bowl" are two of NFL Network's regular seasonal offerings.
A natural for NFL Network would be a courtroom show. Barely a week passes that an NFL player doesn't show up on a police blotter somewhere. Someone is always getting popped for drug possession on a routine traffic stop, and weapons violations have become commonplace, too. A lot of players are packing something.
Sometimes the brushes with the law are major, as was the case with Ravens running back Ray Rice. A security video showed Rice dragging the limp body of his fiance (now his wife) from an elevator. She was in that state because Rice had allegedly punched her in the face.
It wasn't he said/she said. It was he did. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell looked at this elevator video and gave Rice a two-game suspension.
In the NFL, domestic violence equals a slap on the wrist. In the NFL, a player can get a one-game suspension for deliberately violent hit on the field. Do something violent off the field against someone who is defenseless, and it's only an extra game.
Rice had a couple of things in his favor: He hasn't been in trouble before, and he's been suitably repentant. The fact he's now married to the woman he dragged from the elevator would suggest they've addressed whatever issues existed in their relationship.
But is Goodell so tone-deaf that he doesn't understand how offensive Rice's behavior was to a large segment of the NFL's audience? The league aims a portion of its marketing specifically at women. The Ravens website sells a women's pink, bejeweled Ray Rice jersey for $59.95. If the league isn't interested in taking the moral high ground, it should at least be savvy enough to protect its business interests.
What if some groups were outraged enough to share their wrath with the NFL's long roster of corporate partners and official sponsors? What if organizations dedicated to fighting domestic violence made it known they would avoid buying products made by Ford, Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch, all of whom are official NFL sponsors?
The NFL blew this one on a stunning scale. Eight games would have been a more appropriate penalty for Rice than eight quarters.

Beaver County Times, July 20, 2014

You can look in a lot of directions for possible second-half upgrades for the Pirates, but it's this simple: They need pitching.
It's not that they don't need help at other spots, but the most critical need is pitching. The Pirates showed last year that a team can win with spotty offense, as long as the pitching is good enough.
The pitching staff, as presently constituted, is a cause for concern. Temporary success from Jeff Locke, Vance Worley and Brandon Cumpton may make it seem like there's an abundance of starters, but that isn't the case.
None of those is a proven commodity, and there isn't much behind them that's major league-ready at the moment. Opportunities have come because Gerrit Cole is on the disabled list for the second time, and Francisco Liriano is due to come off the DL today. Neither has pitched as well as he did last year.
The old hypothetical question -- Who would start if there was one must-win game? -- has no clear answer right now.
There are other leaks: Josh Harrison is providing fewer miracles, Gregory Polanco is suddenly waving and missing at a lot of pitches, and first base is a frustrating black hole.
Whether they make their evaluations from a spreadsheet or trained eyes, baseball people will generally agree a team never has enough quality pitching.
The Pirates are no exception to that rule.
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--DIFFERENT VERSION
Root Sports occasionally does retrospective specials, and players take full advantage of the opportunity to rewrite history.
There's one where Bill Madlock describes his success by saying, "I worked hard at it. I would hit, hit, hit, hit. There's no substitute for swinging the bat."
The fact is Madlock rarely took batting practice when he was with the Pirates, and he was so good that Chuck Tanner didn't mind. Madlock's usual pre-game routine at Three Rivers Stadium was to sit in a recliner watching TV with a bowl of potato chips.
He would hit the field about a half hour before game time, stretch, and usually go 2-for-4.
But the real disconnect came in Root's special on Tanner where Bert Blyleven says, without irony, "If you couldn't play for Chuck Tanner, you couldn't play for anyone."
Oh really? In 1980, the Pirates were defending World Series champions when Blyleven quit the team in late April because he felt Tanner was taking him out of games too early. Blyleven said he personally liked Tanner, "but I didn't like the way he handled me. He showed no confidence in me in the late innings of a close game."
Regrets? He had none. When he returned to the Pirates 10 days later, Blyleven said, "I'm proud of what I did, and I might do it again. Until they trade me, I'll do what I have to do. I was always looking over my shoulder after the fifth inning. Tanner showed little faith in me. I began to lose my competitiveness. I feel that I can't produce under Chuck Tanner."
The Pirates were so mad that they traded Blyleven after the season, exiling him to Cleveland for a four-man bag of nothing. Tanner, who rarely criticized a player in public, referred to his wandering pitcher as "Cry-leven" after the fact.
Just some small details that have been lost with the passage of time.
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--ON THE MARK
Usually the most memorable home run calls reflect jubilation. But Tim Neverett's plaintive, "Not again....not again" was just about perfect when the Pirates lost a second consecutive game in St. Louis on a walk off home run.

Beaver County Times, July 6, 2014

Back when the Bill Cowher weekly press conference was must-see TV, you could count on two things:
He would make at least one reference to the "thin line between winning and losing" and he would assert at least once that he wouldn't play the "what-if" game.
In tribute to those days, let's play the what-if game to demonstrate the thin line between winning and losing.
Since the Rangers eliminated them from the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Penguins have fired their general manager, dumped the entire coaching staff and turned over about one third of the roster. They're not done making changes, either.
So what if Sidney Crosby had scored just one more goal during the Rangers series? He had one in the seven games. Had another goal come at an opportune time, the Penguins probably would have won the series, maybe in five games. They would have been favored in the next series against Montreal, and would have had an excellent chance at beating the Canadiens.
It's doubtful they would have beaten Los Angeles in the Cup final, but just getting there would have represented progress and radically rewritten their disturbingly consistent postseason story line.
Crosby couldn't get that other goal. The Penguins lost. So now moving companies and realtors are experiencing booming business. When you tally up the money remaining on the contracts of Ray Shero and Dan Bylsma, and add that amount to the lost ticket revenue from a third playoff series, the number is somewhere north of $10 million. That's what the lack of a second Crosby goal cost the organization.
Much of the roster churn may have been inevitable, given the Penguins' salary cap situation. The Penguins were in no position to pay the kind of money Matt Niskanen and Brooks Orpik found on the open market. But the overall changes wouldn't have been nearly as radical if they had beaten the Rangers.
Crosby didn't find that second postseason goal. Now there will be a new group of players greeted by a new staff when training camp opens in September.
That thin line between winning and losing is the reason you don't drive yourself crazy playing the what-if game.
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--FALLING STOCK
Clint Hurdle used his pre-game session the other day to express a degree of disappointment with Pedro Alvarez.
Interesting as it was to hear those words, Hurdle's actions speak even louder. When you're removing the club's projected clean-up man for pinch hitters and replacing him for defensive purposes in the late innings, it's pretty apparent the manager has lost confidence in the player. After a bad start, the Pirates have an urgency to win games. Hurdle is making it clear their best chance to do that sometimes involves putting Alvarez on the bench.
Alvarez is two years away from free agency, which makes this offseason the ideal time for the Pirates to explore their trade options.
Hurdle isn't going anywhere, and he's showing his opinion of Alvarez has dropped.
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--BIG SMILES
The Pirates had Photo Day recently, where fans get to come on the field and take pictures with the players.
It's always good to see a smiling fan with his arm around someone he's been ripping on social media for the last three months.
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--MIRROR IMAGE
A lot of people have noted Ike Davis' obvious resemblance to former Pirates first baseman Adam LaRoche.
As LaRoches go, better Adam than Andy.

Beaver County Times, June 29, 2014

The Penguins' eventful offseason took an especially interesting turn when Mike Johnston's hiring as head coach was announced last week.
It wasn't even that Johnston was hired after he failed to make the initial list of candidates. Rather it was the simultaneous announcement that Rick Tocchet would be his No. 1 assistant.
Tocchet's inclusion on the staff was apparently mandated by ownership, part of the organization's stated goal to increase its level of grit after five years of playoff disappointment. Tocchet's hiring appeared to be non-negotiable, and it reportedly became a deal breaker for at least one potential coaching candidate.
Little wonder. Coaches want to pick their own assistants. Staffs spend hours together, and it's important that they're all on the same page. It's difficult to feel that loyalty when you don't even know the guy who's been selected as your top aide.
This may all turn out fine. Tocchet is a hard worker whose devotion to hockey was unquestioned as a player. He was a key addition to the Penguins' second Stanley Cup team, a fierce competitor who once played after his jaw was broken. He wore six different uniforms in the NHL, but he always played like a Flyer.
Tocchet's coaching record was too spotty to make him a serious candidate for the head coaching job, so he's been cast as an assistant. He's been designated as the butt kicker, the hard guy who will try to translate his approach to the game to a team that often seems to lack passion.
But it's an awkward fit, especially with a rookie head coach who doesn't have the name or NHL history that Tocchet does. Tocchet is close to Mario Lemieux. He watched playoff games from the owner's box this spring. Isn't it disconcerting to know your assistant plays golf with your boss?
What if the players take Tocchet's message more than Johnston's? Pascal Dupuis did an interview on 93.7 The Fan and said his reaction to the hiring was to do a Google search on Johnston. He'd obviously never heard of him. There isn't a player in the locker room who doesn't know who Tocchet is.
What happens if the players look past Johnston to hear what Tocchet has to say? If Tocchet becomes their go-to guy, doesn't Johnston then become an empty suit, a head coach in name only? The situation has the potential to be uncomfortable.
Ownership's philosophy is basically correct. The Penguins will be a better team if they play with the commitment that Tocchet had a player.
But the execution of bringing that fire to the team is clumsy, and could wind up being disruptive.
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--BOOK IT
The Angels will now try to figure out what went wrong with Jason Grilli.
It could be that age has caught up with him, it could be that an accumulation of injuries has made him less effective, or it could be that he's just going through a rough patch that can be corrected.
Here's what it's not: It's not that he's been distracted by promoting his awful book. Baseball isn't football, where every minute of game day is programmed by the team. Shaking hands with people at Giant Eagle at noon isn't likely to have an effect on a relief pitcher's performance 10 hours later.
Players routinely make appearances for the team on game days. It isn't a big deal.
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--HI, FRIENDS
There was a time when the phrase "drone at PNC Park" was a pithy reference to Lanny.