At least they're not screwing around

I will say that as much as I dislike (dislike is the wrong word, I just feel like it's kind of a pseudo science) the emphasis put on ending "the culture of losing", at least the Bucs aren't screwing around with it. Today's story in the PG talks about the changes made in Bradenton, namely covering the team cafeteria with images of the past and what seems to be a rousing speech from Steve Blass to fire up the troops (I seriously hope this speech ends up on YouTube).

In the past the Pirates did a lot of things that I disagreed with, and they did them badly. This off-season the new management has emphasized a lot of things that they want to do differently and I like a lot of what they've had to say. The problem is, of course, that there's not really any way to know what they're really going to do until the proper situations present themselves. What we can say is that Coonelly definitely stressed that they were going to emphasize team traditions and old players and things like that in camp in order to "end the culture of losing" and they've certainly delivered on that. I don't think this particular aspect will have a huge effect on the product that takes the field in 2008, but I do think that it's an encouraging sign that these guys are actually doing what they said they would do.