Craig Wilson

With today being an off day (and a pretty slow one at that ), and exactly one week after the trade deadline it seems like a good day to do this. I had meant to post a remembrance of all of Craig Wilson's time here in Pittsburgh and how miserably mistreated he was by the Pirates, but the Bucs Dugout beat me to it with a fantastic post which was followed by a good Craig Wilson post from Billy at Romo. Clearly, this means that my own Craig Wilson retrospectus will have to take a little bit of a different path, but it's something that I feel like I have to do.

It's been a long time since I've had one "favorite Pirate" per se. Somewhere between realizing that Andy Van Slyke wasn't going to be a Pirate forever and realizing that just because Jason Kendall was my favorite player didn't make him worth $10 million or even make him particularly good I stopped having specific favorite players. Still, Craig Wilson came about as close as anyone has in recent years in that department. If you've been around this site for a while, you've noticed that Thor was the only player on the team that managed to get a nickname from me that wasn't sarcastic, cynical, or downright mean (like "White Flag" or any of the number of things that I've called Jeromy Burnitz, Jose Mesa, John Grabow, Jim Tracy, or Dave Littlefield). Something about Craig was a joy to watch, probably because he was always having fun whether he was in right field, first base, or pissing McClatchy off by putting the Mona Lisa in his scoreboard painting. Craig isn't the best player in the world and he knows it, but he's also very good at certain things, something that the front office could never figure out. Even if Shawn Chacon manages to turn things around in Pittsburgh, the fact that Thor Wilson got traded for someone with an ERA of 7.00 will always make me a little sick to my stomach. I'm currently in southern New Jersey and everyone here that isn't a Phillie fan is absolutely pumped by the moves that Cashman made at the deadline. Of course they're mainly talking about Abreu, but Chacon for Craig Wilson is part of their enthusiasm. Craig Wilson's goofy looking picture with a Yankees cap on is the personification of everything that's been wrong with the Pittsburgh Pirates since Littlefield took over.