Darn, got my hopes up yet again Wednesday, only to see them dashed.
I really thought they would do it this time. Was prepared to hit the North Shore, South Side and Lawrenceville bars all night long in celebration.
But then the Pennsylvania House voted 127-73 against Gov. Tom Wolf’s latest spending plan, leaving the state still without a 2015-16 budget, 103 days into the new fiscal year now.
Some may have thought those opening paragraphs referred to Wednesday night’s wild-card game, in which the Pirates lost at home to the Cubs. Yes, that seemed bad at the time, too. But upon further review, there are so many silver linings in the Pirates being knocked out of the playoffs early ... again.
Here are 21 of them, a number that is, of course, no coincidence, as we use it to honor Steelers special teams captain Robert Golden:
1. No more arguments about how to pronounce Jung Ho Kang’s name.
2. When I see Root Sports baseball analyst Bob Walk bundled up in a winter coat on TV in October, it makes me feel really cold.
3. I’m one of the few people who looks fatter in black instead of slimmer, but it’s the only color the Pirates seem to allow anyone to wear to these postseason games.
4. When other teams’ fans cheer in my ballpark, it makes me want to hurt them. Now that won’t happen for at least six months.
5. Lots of leaves will need to be raked soon, and no sporting event should ever take precedence over that.
6. For the 125,000 or so Pittsburghers who say they were at the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, no other Pirates victory could match it, so why bother?
7. If I watched Pedro Alvarez botch one more play at first base, I’d be liable to lash out violently at whatever object was nearby, which would probably be unfair to my frail aunt.
8. I always worry that those blimps hovering over the Golden Triangle for yet another big nationally televised sporting event will be punctured by a nearsighted bald eagle and fall on me.
9. I don’t like it when the out-of-town TV broadcasters remind everyone that before their recent success the Pirates experienced 20 straight losing seasons. Why can’t that just be our little secret?
10. The Steelers always feel shortchanged when the main Post-Gazette sports page features fewer than three football-related articles in autumn in order to make room for a Pirates story.
11. Now the relatives from St. Louis won’t get a chance to crow at holiday dinner about the Cardinals beating the Pirates in the playoffs — only in the regular season.
12. Just don’t want to hear Francisco Cervelli’s walk-up music, because I prefer Connie Francis’ version of “That’s Amore” to Dean Martin’s.
13. Am boycotting home playoff games anyway until the Pirates are willing to combine a fireworks night with one of them.
14. If I’m going to be overcharged for a beer, I’d prefer it be by some Belgian craft microbrew import outlet.
15. There was no chance of Andrew McCutchen’s dreadlocks growing back for the National League Championship Series, but it could happen by April.
16. I’d feel sorry for all the talk-show cranks who love griping about the Pirates if the club actually finished its season on a high.
17. If baseball were meant to be played in the Northeast in November, which the World Series will almost certainly stretch into, God and Abner Doubleday would have invented it as a game on ice.
18. After he was berated by fans for starting Sean Rodriguez at shortstop and first base in the past month, there’s a chance that a defiant Clint Hurdle would spite everyone by having him pitch the second game of the World Series.
19. No chance now of running into scheduling conflicts and missing out on the Discovery Channel’s “Alaskan Bush People” while watching baseball.
20. Over-protective parents wouldn’t let their kids watch the Pirates anyway whenever reliever Antonio Bastardo came in to pitch.
21. If you get depressed about losing a winner-take-all wild-card game, just imagine how it would feel to lose a winner-take-all World Series game seven.
Gary Rotstein: grotstein@post-gazette.com.
First Published: October 12, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
