Am I the only person watching the recent win streak by the Pirates but wishing that it were a losing streak?
A week or so ago I read an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review by Joe Starkey talking about how Pirate fans should be rooting for the Bucs to lose and lose a lot. The rational for all this losing is to get a shot at drafting baseball golden boy Bryce Harper. I found myself thinking “yeah, why not?” I could handle another 2 months of losing. I’ve swallowed it for 17 years.
There is an example of a sports team that worked this formula to perfection, the 1983 -84 Penguins. Towards the end of the 83-84 season the Penguins were near the bottom of the NHL standings when they lost 15 of their last 18 games. GM Eddie Johnston called up almost every available minor leaguer and sat down large portions of the starting lineup. The end results were a narrow last place finish over the New Jersey Devils by 1 game, drafting Mario Lemiuex in the 1st round, back to back championships, a new owner of the franchise, and eventually a brand new state of the art hockey arena. Had the Pens won 2 more games that season I’m guessing Mellon Arena hosts Hanna Montana, Disney on Ice and not much else. To this day when Johnston is asked about doing his best to finish in last place he grins, winks, and says something along the lines of “We tried to win every one of those games.”
I’m not suggesting that if the Pirates don’t draft Harper then in 25 years PNC Park will sit empty. I’m not even saying the Bucs need Harper to compete in the next 3 – 4 years. But I am asking myself, is it so bad to think “Lets go Reds, Royals, Nationals, and whoever is playing the Pirates!” Is that wrong?
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Josh,
ReplyDeleteI've never rooted against my team, but I would support my team if they were in the Pirates situation and decided to play their young guys and call up some minor leaguers to get some experience (also with the prospect of landing a better draft pick). As long as the players on the field were giving good effort, I would have no problem with it.
Dave, I think it's pretty funny that you assumed Grubbs posted this simply because it's about the Pirates. Chad posted this. But you did bring up an interesting point.
ReplyDeleteI'd probably root for my team to win if they were playing the youngsters that will eventually be the core of the team. They need to learn how to win. But if the team consisted of veteran rentals, I would definitely root against them.
Although the Pirates have a few guys who won't be apart of their (hopefully) winning 2012 campaign (Garret Jones, Delwyn Young, Ronny Cedeno), some of them will be. Why not use these last six weeks or so to build the confidence of Cutch, Milledge, and others? There's a good chance anyway that some other team will stink worse than the Bucs and take that draft pick anyway.