Holy Crap

On ESPNs main page I saw a link in the Page 2 Box that read "Baseball's Biggest Series- Guess what, it ain't Sox-Yanks". Well, being bored and curious. I clicked it. Much to my surprise I read:

EDITOR'S NOTE: Baseball's biggest rivalry resumes this weekend in ... no, not the Bronx. (Yankees-Red Sox is soooooooo overblown.) We're talking B.I.G. Much bigger than Boston-New York. We're talking about the four Games to End All Games in Cincinnati between the Pirates and the Reds. These two storied franchises have been battling for National League supremacy for over 100 years ... and there's often blood involved.

Well, consider my interest piqued. I read on:

Top 10 reasons that PNC Park is better than Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park:

10. Statues are way cooler than grave

stones.
9. It don't reek of urine.
8. The limestone exterior is better than Yankee Stadium's gray concrete.
7. The seats don't face the left-field wall.
6. Primanti Brothers sandwiches kick butt over Fenway Franks.
5. You can fit into the seats.
4. We don't play "Cotton-Eye Joe" as our theme song.
3. The Roberto Clemente bridge.
2. You don't have to watch Jason Giambi or Kevin Millar try to field ground balls.
1. It isn't next to an expressway or a burned-out building

Things got better:

I know fans of other teams have suffered. But only Pirates fans have had to live through the Curse of Sid Bream.
You might not believe in curses. But ever since Bream slid home with the winning run in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS, we've suffered more than James Caan in "Misery." We led 2-0. Drabek was cruising. After losing in the playoffs the two previous years, we were finally headed back to the World Series. And then … it happened. My hands shake as I write this. Say you're a Red Sox fan. Imagine David Ortiz going to the Yankees. And he runs even slower than he does now. The tying run is on third base and Ortiz is on second. Base hit to left field. And Ortiz beats the throw home. Imagine how'd you feel.
And then multiply that by 10 times. There's no way Sid Bream beats that throw from Barry Bonds.

Then, while reading the list of things that have bitten us thanks to the Curse of Sid Bream (among Operation Shutdown, the Braves utter dominance, Kendall's contract, Kevin Young, Pat Meares, and Raul Mondesi), I was taken aback:

The Pirates decided to sign Andy Van Slyke to a big contract, instead of Bonds.

Whaaaat? OK, by now you've probably guessed who my all-time favorite Pirate of my lifetime is. You can probably guess who represents my childhood. You can probably guess who's love for baseball sparked my own love for the game, ever since the age of about 5. If you've been guessing Andy Van Slyke, you've been guessing right. I don't know who Pittsburgh Joe is (the footnote suggests Dave Schoenfield), but in my eyes he is a blasphemer. I seriously can't even put into words how angry this makes me. Andy Van Slyke was the heart and soul of those early 90s teams. Look at the lineups. There was no A-rod on those teams. There was no Manny Ramirez, no huge slugger. There were no real aces (an argument can be made for Drabek, but not much more than that), there was no closer. That team loved baseball. They would've played for free. Van Slyke embodied that, not Bonds. The record books may say I'm wrong, but if you think that signing Bonds in '92 means he'd still be here today and we'd have a World Series since then, you're delusional.

Other than that, great to see a story about the Buccos headlining Page 2