Pirates of the Allegheny

It had been 18 very long seasons. Nearly two whole decades of failure for Pittsburgh Pirates fans. Many of them might have forgotten what winning was if it weren’t for the prowess of the Steelers. After losing to the Atlanta Braves in the 1992 NLCS, the Pirates haven’t been back to the playoffs, and haven’t had a single winning season. The franchise that had won five World Series with moments like Bill Mazeroski’s championship-winning homer, and players like Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell, was now a perennial cellar-dweller in the NL Central. But that was all before the 2011 Pirates turned it around.
Prior to this current season, the consensus view of the Pirates was the same one of every season in recent memory: they were going to stink. Competing in a division with the likes of Albert Pujols and Joey Votto, the last two NL MVPs, without any stars of their own, the baseball world just tossed any notion of Pirates’ success aside. The Pirates started the year 4-2, winning on Opening Day behind a Neil Walker grand slam, but struggled through the rest of April. Things seemed business as usual in the Steel City, but then something peculiar happened. The Pirates started winning. They improved to 38-37 in June, and with a win on July 8th the Pirates entered the All-Star break with a winning record for the first time since 1992. They had three All-Star selections in pitcher Kevin Correia, closer Joel Hanrahan, and outfielder Andrew McCutchen, marking the first time that the team had at least three All-Stars since 1990. To make the story even sweeter, on both July 15th and July 18th, the Pirates moved into first place in the NL Central, which is the latest they have been in first in the regular season since 1997.
The Pirates, who are currently 52-47, obviously still have work to do if they want to break the trend and reach the playoffs. Their extra-inning victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday moved the Pirates into a three-way tie for first place in the NL Central with St. Louis and Milwaukee, with Cincinnati sitting 3.5 games back. In such a crowded division, it will take a lot of stellar play through the dog days of August and pressure-filled moments of September from these young buccaneers to put the Pirates in the postseason for the first time since many of the players were kids. Nevertheless, they’ve got many rising stars like Hanrahan and McCutchen, and manager Clint Hurdle, who led the Rockies to the World Series in 2007. And, for the first time in a long time, they’ve got the support of a city that’s been longing for their baseball club to re-join Pittsburgh’s winning sports tradition.

Nyack/Valley Cottage Advances in Little League Tourney

The Nyack/Valley Cottage All-Stars defeated the Congers All-Stars 4-3 in Congers Sunday night in the District 18 Little League Baseball Tournament Loser’s Bracket semifinals in exciting fashion. Birthday boy Jack Anderson homered for the 2nd straight game, and pitched 3 scoreless innings to pick up the win. The scoring started for N/VC when Dalton Feely crushed a solo home run that hit the scoreboard in the 2nd inning. Anderson would help himself out with a solo shot of his own in the 4th to put N/VC up 2-0. Feely singled and went to 2nd on an error, and later scored on a Dillon Krok base hit. Krok later scored on a Matt Semon hit to put N/VC up 4-0 heading into the bottom of the 4th. Krok came in to relieve Anderson as pitcher, and got in some trouble when Conger’s star Michael Cassiopo smashed a solo home run over the left field fence to make it 4-1. After giving up a single, Krok recovered beautifully to strike out the side.
With the tension of the game already starting to increase going into the bottom of the 5th, a loud round of fireworks nearby made things tougher for N/VC relief pitcher Tommy Murator, with the umpires having to pause the game several times. Catcher Christian Disimone threw out a stealing base-runner at 2nd base, but Congers was able to load the bases with 2 two outs on a Cassiopo single. Despite the noise of the fireworks, Murator was able to create fireworks of his own by getting a strikeout on a 3-2 count to end the inning. Congers threatened once again in the bottom of the 6th, which is the last inning, by hitting a 2-run homer to make it a 4-3 game. Nevertheless, N/VC showed their resiliency once again by getting a strikeout to end the game and seal the win.
With the victory, N/VC advances to the Loser’s Bracket finals against Stony Point Monday night at Liberty Field. The winner of that game plays Pearl River in the District 18 final. N/VC would have to defeat Pearl River twice to win the tournament because they came out of the loser’s bracket. Stony Point won the championship last year, but most of their players moved up to the Juniors division. If N/VC were to win the whole thing, they would end up having played 5 days in a row. For N/VC to pull this off, they going to need to dig deep and fight to the very last out with everything they’ve got.