Game 111: Cubs 8 Pirates 5

What the Pirates do between now and the end of the season is not about wins and losses. It's really not. The problem is that losing still sucks. Games like Sunday's game, which saw Brandon Moss (who's looked quite good at the plate all weekend, I might add, even if he only had a couple hits) and Andy LaRoche (who nearly went yard on Saturday as well) hit home runs are, for all intents and purposes, wins for the Pirates. In their quest to find the pieces to assemble the puzzle for the future, Sunday's game was a good one. In their quest to actually win baseball games, Sunday's game was a bad one because we lost. Sean Burnett, who's recently looked pretty decent out of the pen, served up a couple of home runs and made sure of that. If you missed the end of the game, like me, and checked the box score on Yahoo!, like me, you may have accidentally thought that Daryle Ward hit the first home run. Thankfully, he did not. I don't know if I could've handled that. I mean, Reed Johnson hitting it isn't great, but Daryle Ward would've been bad.

As an aside, you may have noticed that Xavier Nady had six RBIs for the Yankees on Sunday in leading them to a win over the Angels. There's a good chance that people might actually notice him and Bay in the coming weeks, at which point they'll say to you, "Boy, it sucks to be a Pirate fan, huh?" Acceptable responses include, "Yes, it does," followed by a shit-eating grin or something incredibly sarcastic. Unacceptable responses include a punch to the nose or a kick to the groin. Just for your information.