Pirates 4 Giants 3

I decided late in the afternoon today to head down to the game and see Bonds in what very well may be his last game in the 'Burgh (I kinda doubt he'll play tomorrow in the afternoon game), even though that meant a SRO ticket. Despite the lack of seats, I'd say it turned out to be well worth it. Tom Gorzellany turned out to be much better than last time I saw him pitch. In fact, Gorzo turned out to be very good tonight. He went 7 strong with 6 hits and only 1 walk and ramping his fastball up to 96 on the gun. He gave up two runs, but the first one was fairly cheap as Jim Tracy insisted on playing the outfielders in Oakland with Barry Bonds at the plate, even though he's clearly only a shadow of his former self right now, allowing him to loop a routine flyout between Jack Wilson and Bautista that got by Jose for an RBI double. Beyond that, Bonds was a non-factor walking once and whiffing twice (once at Gorzo's hand and once at the hand of JOHN GRABOW who managed to not blow the game tonight... more on that later). After that run in the first, the Pirates answered with one in the second (on a Gorzellany grounder that scored Burntiz from third), two in the third (Paulino RBI single, Castillo RBI ground rule double), and answered the Giants run in the fifth with a Burnitz opposite field homer. The biggest threat from there came with Bonds up in the eighth representing the tying run and Grabow on the mound (a terrifying moment for all involved), but somehow Grabow got the K.

Just a quick note on the crowd tonight. They weren't there for Casey bobbleheads, just like I suspect the crowd last night wasn't there for fireworks. They were all there to see Bonds. The whole place lit up everytime he did something, mostly because everytime he did something it was something not good with the two K's and misplaying an easy Jack Wilson flyball into a ground rule double. It's more proof in the "If they were good, PNC would be packed every night" theory. Give the baseball fans a reason to be there, and they will. It might've been the biggest crowd I've ever seen in person at PNC (minus the Stones concert) as they had well over 38,000 and most home openers only get to about 36-37,000 and it was a great baseball crowd from beginning to end.

One final note, I'm sure you all noticed that Joe Randa played first base tonight. Casey is reportedly injured with some rib thing (I say reportedly because would you doubt that the Pirates would lie about an injury to make people think Casey wasn't traded on Casey bobblehead night?) but there was no sign of Craig Wilson in tonight's game. My dad had the pregame on the radio on his way to the park tonight and he said that Tracy didn't mention Wilson's name at all when talking about the first base situation tonight, which would kind of maybe indicate that Craig Wilson wasn't available to play. Or maybe, you know, the organziation just hates Craig Wilson for no particular reason with the burning passion of a 1,000 firey suns. Either or.