Dave The Dastardly

Quick’s The Word And Sharp’s The Action Pirates Logo 1960-66 You gotta love the Pirates, if for no other reason than their team name and logo. I mean what kid hasn’t grown up playing pirates, jumping around the living room, slashing the air with a toy sword, maybe stabbing the kid brother a few times until he runs to momma crying like a baby? Advancing from playing pirates to becoming a Pirates baseball fan seemed like a natural transition for me back in 1960. You could say their logo shivered my timbers and because of that Pirate baseball cards were probably my first attempt at collecting anything. I’d save up my pennies (yeah, kids used to earn pennies for helping around the house back then) until I had enough dough to buy a five-pack of baseball cards for the princely sum of 25 cents. I’d slap my quarter down on the glass candy counter, rip open the card pack, pop the enclosed bubble gum into my mouth just to get it out of the way, then rifle through the cards with unconcealed excitement. Did I hit the mother-lode? Land one of the star Pirate baseball players; Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazeroski, NLMVP Dick Groat, Cy Young winner Vern Law, Roy Face, Harvey Haddix, or maybe even the colorfully named Vinegar Bend Mizell? Or had I been stuck with five unknown guys from teams I didn’t care about and who’d maybe already been banished back to the minor leagues? It was a feast or famine thing. Except for the bubble gum. And of course for the inevitable tooth cavities. My dad always swore baseball cards were invented by dentists. If the internet had been around back then he could’ve started another conspiracy theory for the weak-minded. This one might even have had a little bite to it. You know the drill. Arrrrgh! Sticking bubble gum aside for the moment, the 1960 Pirates was a heavily talented baseball team and when they met the Yankees in the World Series that year expectations for a nail-biting series were high. Few fans, however, expected the 1960 Series would turn out to be one of the weirdest World Series ever. Consider this: the Yankees outscored the Pirates over the Series 55-27, out-hit them 91-60, out-homered them 10-4, Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford threw two complete shutouts against them, and yet the Pirates won the title 4 games to 3. Arrrrgh! Other weird stuff: pitcher Harvey Haddix who won World Series Games 5 and 7 for the Pirates, was infamous for losing a perfect game in the 13th inning back in 1959; Game 7 is the only World Series game without a single strikeout by either team; Bill Mazeroski won Game 7 with a walk-off homerun in the 9th inning, the first (and maybe the only?) player to do so; the tapes for Games 1 thru 6 were erased when the Series was over (tapes were expensive back then so the TV studios reused them - and VCRs and DVRs hadn’t been invented yet) but Bing Crosby, who was a part-owner of the Pirates, was in Europe during the Series so he paid the Amex corporation to tape Game 7 at his California mansion so he could watch the final game when he returned home, but only if the Pirates won. Fortunately for baseball historians, the Pirates won both the game and the Series and after Bing came home and watched Game 7 on tape he tucked it away in his wine cellar where it remained, completely forgotten for 49 years. Rediscovered in 2009, its the only video record of any of the 1960 Series games. More weird stuff: Bobby Richardson, a member of the losing Yankee team, was chosen World Series MVP, the only time a player from the losing team was awarded the honor; Vinegar Bend Mizell, who went 13-5 for the Pirates during the regular season and took the loss in Game 3, was elected to the US House of Representatives after he retired from baseball; and Casey Stengel, the New York manager, was “retired” after this World Series for being too old and out of step with the times and thus made his famous comment, “I’ll never make the mistake of turning 70 again.” Oh, and Minnesota native (Winona) and former college pitcher for the Golden Gophers, Paul Giel, rode the bullpen pine for the Pittsburg Pirates during the Series and later spent a year (1961) on the Twins roster before retiring. Giel eventually became Athletic Director for the University of Minnesota where he served admirably for almost two entire decades. Nothing weird about that except Giel was a two-year (1952 and 1953) All-American football player for the Gophers and had turned down a $75,000 bonus to sign with a Canadian football team and instead was an MLB “Bonus Baby” taking a $60,000 bonus, a record at that time, to sign instead with the New York Giants baseball team. Arrrrgh! And now you know the rest of the story. Today’s story? Well, hopefully it won’t be as weird. But if the Twins go into ten innings again… Katie bar the door! On the Non-grassy Knoll Today, Two Shooters; Hurling for the Stars of Late Inning Histrionics: Michael Pineda 1-0 ERA 1.0 WHIP .72 AVG .159 Sword Fighting For the Swashbucklers: Trevor Cahill 0-2 ERA 9.69 WHIP 1.77 AVG .357 Just eyeballing the pitching match-up it looks like the Pirates will be walking the plank. But remember, weird, not bird, is the word. Today's Line-up Arraez Donaldson Cruz Buxton Kirilloff Polanco Astudillo Cave Jeffers

Maybe he'll catch that mysterious hamstring disease that's been going around.

Standard practice. Fools the opponents every time.

And the Turtle strikes again!!!!!

La Tortuga with the scoop. Turtles can do that.

After two innings: Brubaker 17 pitches, Happ 33. Rocco's looking for the EMT's

Is that Gibson on the mound?

I believe he scribbles "May the baseball gods forgive me".

Rumor I heard was Colome and Sano were kidnapped by irate California Twins fans and were shipped to Tokyo via a slow boat to China. The kidnappers apparently informed the Front Office of the snatch but Falvey's secretary burned the note. Rocco apparently hasn't yet missed either player because he thinks he gave them a week off.

"Bottom of the 6th, 10 - 7: Again, barring a bad matchup, why not ask The Driver to hold that lead when there are still 12 outs needed? If he allows runners on base, the high-leverage arms will be there; if he doesn't, those arms will only be needed for 9 outs (same applied to Duffey)" VivaBombaRivera The Driver - I like that! And your argument makes a lot of sense.

I'm not calling for anyone's head, but I am calling for everyone to start using their heads.

I hear the couch beckoning. Perhaps when I wake up I'll discover I've already been sleeping and this has only been a nightmare.

I bite. How bad is he?

I had a scoreless streak in college once. Dated an OCD girl that worked for the phone company; Anne of Clean Cables. I hung it up after three months.

If you could combine the batting averages of Polanco, Cave and Rooker you'd have one guy batting .362. Just saying.....

"Riddle is now on the COVID list for unspecified reasons," You mean it's like... a Riddle riddle?

unilateral leg disease - leaves the club without a leg to stand on

And Minnesota temperatures will stop running 20 degrees below normal and pigs will fly, which given the millions of pigs on factory farms will jam up the air traffic control towers, regular flights will have to be diverted to Flint, Michigan where the stranded air passengers will say, "Damn! This water tastes good!" and the raccoons that have been raiding my sweet corn patch will pass a background check, buy rifles and start shooting at me. Then Sano will get hot.

You know things are going to hell fast when nap-inducing golf is chosen over baseball. But right now I'd rather watch a game of marbles than the Twins. Knuckles down!

El Tortuga!

Okay, now we're getting serious; a .140 hitter for a .110 hitter. Here we go!

Shoooot ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm out. Going to join Shoemaker in the showers. Well, not literally.

Is this like reverse osmosis?

Wow! The kid's using the shotgun approach. Scatter those pitches!

Double steal coming up?