Why do they call it a rubber match?

Brandon Backe and Paul Maholm take the mound tonight as the Pirates and Astros play the rubber match of their three game series. The two starters have almost identical lines at this early point in the season, which isn't actually a good thing.

Anyways, a win tonight and the Bucs win the series and continue their quest to hang tantalizingly near .500 without actually reaching it. Since Maholm was very good in his last start, I'm actually kind of optimistic about this one, and that's almost never a good thing for the Pirates (especially because the Astros have three hitters that are right-handed or switch hitters that could potentially destroy Paul tonight). But what the heck, we're certainly a lot happier right now than we were on draft day last year.