Peter Diana, Post-Gazette Starting pitcher Zach Duke and the Pirates got off to a rough start in their first home game of the season, losing 8-3 to the Dodgers yesterday at PNC Park. Click photo for larger image. Related articles Rush to judgment for Pirates fans? Keaton criticizes Pirates' owners before first pitch Repko, Saenz keep rolling vs. Pirates Pirates Notebook: Doumit still not catching on Cook: Tracy's outlook will be put to the test by these Pirates Audio Slideshow: The Vendor Game Statistics Provided by Forecaster Pirates vs. Dodgers box score Game play-by-play

Welcome, Jim Tracy, to Pittsburgh.

In most of Major League Baseball's 30 venues, the home opener brings with it an air of joy, the promise of a summer's worth of fun.

In these parts, to so many for so long, it is the Daytona 500, the beginning and end of the season all wrapped up in one event.

Small wonder.

The Pirates trailed within three minutes of the first pitch at PNC Park and fell hard, 8-3, to the Los Angeles Dodgers yesterday. That dropped their record in home openers to 3-11 since the string of 13 consecutive losing seasons started.

Even more disheartening for all concerned, the latest loss lowered the team's record in this fledgling but already fading season to 1-7, its worst start since 1974. A loss tonight would spell the worst start since 1-9 in 1955.

The reaction from the 39,129 who jammed the place?

A few jeered Zach Duke after he was sliced apart for seven runs in five innings.

A handful could be heard taunting Jose Castillo for twice failing at the plate with the bases loaded.

For the most part, though, and perhaps most telling, there was a palpable apathy. There were no sustained boos, no here-we-go-Steelers chants, nothing thrown onto the field. By the sixth inning, there was a steady stream of paying customers heading across the Clemente Bridge toward Downtown.

"I got the sense that there was a feeling of shock," third baseman Joe Randa said. "I think the fans were expecting things to be a lot different and were shocked. I think they were supportive, too, a lot more supportive than I thought they'd be with us coming in here 1-6. You know, I think the fans of Pittsburgh want to see good baseball, they want to see hustle, and they want to see wins."

He paused.

"Right now, we're hustling."

"The fans came here excited, but we didn't give them what they were looking for," first baseman Sean Casey said after his Pirates debut in his hometown. "I understand their reaction."

Tracy, also making his debut here, acknowledged getting a first feel for Pittsburgh's mood regarding its baseball team.

"You can appreciate some of the frustration. It's been well documented, 13 years in a row," he said. "But what I would ask is that we don't render this situation at 1-7 done. There's a lot of baseball to be played. A ton of it. Don't prejudge it too quickly."

The home schedule was eight pitches old when Duke knocked the wind out of the place.

He walked Rafael Furcal on four pitches, then served a two-strike fastball over the heart of the plate for Jason Repko to belt into the left-field rotunda to spark Los Angeles' three-run first inning.

Repko drove in two more in the next inning with a triple, and it was 5-0.

In the fifth, Olmedo Saenz lofted Duke's first-pitch cut fastball into the rotunda for a two-run home run and a 7-0 lead.

As happened in Duke's first outing last week in Milwaukee, where he was charged with one run in six innings, he struggled early in counts. He threw a first-pitch ball to 15 of the 25 batters he faced, and only 48 of his 94 pitches were strikes.

"It's just not me out there," Duke said. "I was rushing through my mechanics. I couldn't get my body under control."

Pitching coach Jim Colborn altered Duke's mechanics in spring training, speeding his delivery, but Duke dismissed that as a factor yesterday and reiterated his support for management's decision.

"I'm always attracted to the possibility of being better," Duke said.

Tracy was asked why the Pirates would alter anything about a pitcher who was 8-2 with a 1.81 ERA last season.

"I don't know that we'd be asking that same question ... he had a start in Milwaukee that was awfully good," Tracy said. "He had a tough time today."

Through two starts, Duke has allowed eight earned runs, as many as he gave up in the first seven starts last season.

Tracy used mostly the same lineup that lost six of the first seven games, and it once again fell short of producing a big hit. The Pirates scored all three of their runs from the sixth to eighth innings, but they needed 10 hits to do so and twice left the bases loaded. In all, they stranded 13.

Chris Duffy remained atop the order, where he went 1 for 5 and is 4 for 28 with 11 strikeouts on the season. He has scored two runs and has yet to walk or steal a base.

Meanwhile, Freddy Sanchez, who is 7 for 14, and veteran power hitter Craig Wilson -- who could play left field if Jason Bay moved to center -- remained on the bench.

Tracy's plan is to allow Duffy to climb out of his slump, while occasionally spotting Nate McLouth in center.

"We know what kind of defensive center fielder Chris Duffy is," Tracy said. "To get him going offensively, it's not going to do us a lot of good, eight games in, to keep going back and forth."

Tracy shook his head.

"We had 14 hits. I don't know how much lineup changing you want to do. We just want to keep trying to get men on base and know that, sooner or later, we'll get untracked. What we need to do is stop digging such deep holes for ourselves. We were down, 5-0, before Jeromy Burnitz came to bat."