The Bucs Are Back

What I looked like the last time the Bucs were winners.

Raise the Jolly Rodger!  It's over.  The Pirates will have a winning season.  Finally!  

The evening of October 14, 1992 still torments me.  Being a baseball obsessed 13-year old boy, I tried everything I could conceive of to convince my mom to let me stay up for the entire NLCS Game 7.   It didn't work and I was sent to bed with the Pirates leading the Braves 2-0.  Thoughts of seeing a Bucco World Series appearance danced in my head and there was no way I could sleep.  When the coast was clear I turned the television back on and watched in horror as the series collapsed.  I cried myself to sleep.

I never imagined that the next 21 years the Pirates would be so crappy.  One losing season after another.  In those two decades since the Bucs had a winning season I graduated high school and college, got married, moved out of PA and traveled around the world twice. Throughout the past 21 years I've remained optimistic every year.  At least until around June when the Pirates ship would start slowly sinking into the depths of another losing season.  I'd receive text messages on my phone informing me of yet another lose and yet another season where my favorite team would be the laughingstock of the baseball world.  

During these bleak times I've never abandoned the team.  I could have jumped on the Red Sox or Yankees bandwagon, Lord knows the Pirates traded enough of their talent to both teams over the years every trading deadline.  I never stopped wearing my Pirates gear.  Never stopped going to the games when I lived in Pittsburgh to see a horrible team play in a beautiful cathedral.  I never stopped root, root, rooting for my hometeam. 

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this streak ending is how it is happening.  I've always envisioned the Bucs would end the streak with a victory on the last day of the season and everyone would celebrate inside PNC Park.  Fortunately that is not the case.  This team is striving for way more than that and hopefully will break another streak that has been going the entire time I've been alive; 34 years since the last World Series title.

Let's Go BUCS!