Pirates 7 Giants 5

I won't profess to have seen much of today's game, Sunday afternoons are always BASEketball at home (yes, I'm 21 years old and in a real live baseketball league... just like the movie). Still, my parents were nice enough to TiVo the second half of the game so I caught the highlights. Maholm seemed to be pitching OK today, in his one bad inning there were some very iffy fielding plays (Craig and Casey) that cost him most of the three runs that were scored. But who really wants to talk about Paul Maholm after the way that game ended? In the eighth inning tonight we would've made the Gunner proud tonight, as we took his "bloop and a blast" theory to the ultimate extreme. Bloops by Sanchez and Paulino sandwiched a comebacker single by Castillo, then Nate McClouth followed a Jose K K with an RBI infield single. All of the dink hits set the stage for Jose Bautista to crush a Todd Worrell pitch deep into the left field stands for his first career Grand Slam and give the Buccos a 7-5. Now that is how you turn a 3 run deficit into a 2 run lead.

Anyways, the Buccos finish up the road trip 4-3, which is incredible given their 4-22 record outside of PNC coming in. It's tough to say anything yet, but the Buccos have won 11 of their last 17 games. That may not seem impressive, but think about the way this season started. If we can piece together a decent homestand against the injury riddled Cards and the just plain not very good Twins, next Sunday might find us somewhere we haven't been since the day before Opening Day... somewhere other than last place.