Any other game

It is June 13th. The Pirates record today, before or after this game, does not matter. The Pirates have been at .500 almost this late in the season in both 2004 (29-29, I think, after the Mackowiak game) and 2005 (30-30 after beating the Devil Rays twice). There's no award for being 34-34 on June 13th, and affixing more significance to this game is unfair.

Anyways, the Pirates are in Baltimore for the first time since 1979. The Baltimore Sun has a great piece about the '79 World Series and tonight is actually a "throw-back to 1979" night, which is incredibly awesome given that we beat the Orioles in that World Series. As the Sun pointed out, that was a better time for both franchises, even if the O's lost to Pops' Fam-a-lee that year. Phil Dumatrait and Brian Burres are a long way removed from those two teams, but it's nice to have that kind of history to look back to when you're mired in decade-plus franchise losing streaks like the Pirates and O's are.