Pirates more tedious than Steelers camp
Only three more weeks. OK, so it’s actually a little over three weeks until the Steelers open training camp in Latrobe, but you get the idea. Steelers training camp can get pretty tedious pretty quickly, too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not as tedious as a half season of Pirates games. There was a time – a long, long time ago – when Steelers training camp was a distraction from the Pirates season and if you were a big time sports journalist, on most nights from late July until about three weeks into August, you had a tough choice to make. I can assure you that there will be plenty of press box elbowroom for the unfortunate few who have to cover the Pirates from July 23rd on.
It’s been 15 years of irrelevant baseball games in May, June, July, August and September, so it’s not like it’s anything new, but this season just seems more miserable than the previous 14. There’s not too much new ground to cover when it comes to covering the Pirates. Who do you want to bash? The players? The general manager? How about the manager? Red Smith and Grantland Rice combined would have a tough time coming up with a fresh way of doing that. If you’re the sports editor of a newspaper, do you really want to waste your time coming up with ideas for really compelling feature stories on our Battlin’ Buccos?
The sad thing, of course, is that having a major league baseball team is supposed to be a source of enjoyment. Under normal circumstances, any sports journalist or sports fan would rather watch a good, meaningful baseball game than a seven-on-seven drill in Latrobe. Baseball’s every day-ness can be one of the charms that set it apart from other sports. For the last 15 years it’s been a burden. At least it has for many of us who are required to pay attention to the Pirates.
So, when you see the inevitable over the top, wall-to-wall (to the point of being embarrassing) coverage that the Steelers will be getting in a little over three weeks, blame that on the Pirates, too.
– It sure was nice to be able to spend a little time talking about hockey this week, wasn’t it? The Penguins biggest problem now is living up to the unprecedented and mostly justified high expectations for the future. Nobody talks about this group winning a Stanley Cup someday. It’s about how many of them they will win. Pittsburgh may never have had a team with this much promise. I don’t think I remember one. Eventually all that promise and all those expectations will turn into pressure. These kids should enjoy it while they can.
– The Penguins shutting down their season ticket sales at 13,350 full season equivalents means that there’s a very good chance that they will sell out every game next season. It also means you can be sure that they will sell out every game at their new arena. How many of those 13,350 people who bought hockey tickets are holding Pirates season tickets that they know that they’re not going to renew?
– I’m still not getting NASCAR. Does this make me a bad person?
– I’m having a hard time imagining someone in Chicago paying $70 a ticket to watch Aaron Gray play basketball.
– It’s probably a good thing that the Pirates stink again. If they were a couple of games over .500 right now, the fans who have finally awakened from their slumber would be thinking that they had something to be excited about.
– Congressman John Dingle is fighting for the fine citizens of Michigan. He has decided to use his power as chairman of the energy and commerce committee to make sure that they can continue to see University of Michigan football games for free. The Big Ten Network has not been able to come to an agreement with Comcast and Time Warner and that could have disastrous results. Dingle’s constituents would be limited to two or three Michigan games on over the air, free TV. Oh, the humanity!
The Big Ten Network wants to charge every subscriber $1.10 per month to carry the Big Ten Network. Apparently somebody at Comcast thinks that his company is actually being asked to force its customers to pay $1.10 per month for women’s volleyball games. Comcast wants to put the Big Ten Network on its digital sports tier – which would mean that only people who request it would have to pay for it. Congressman Dingle apparently has found something in our Constitution that guarantees every American the right to watch every college football game for free.
He’s a great American.
– The big Ten Network only charges systems that don’t have a member school in its viewing area 10 cents per subscriber. Based on what I hear is going to be offered on the Big Ten Network, I think it should pay me at least a quarter to allow it in my house.
John Steigerwald is a sports anchor/reporter for KDKA-TV and hosts a radio show on 93.7 The Zone, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Contact Steigerwald at jsteigerwald@kdka.com.