Welcome Home Buccos

Tonight brings a mixed bag of comments from the Buccin' Ear, and none of them will have to do with Ben Rothelisberger, other than to say we hope he is all right and that he will consider playing football with a helmet this fall.

As for the Pirates, the subject of this blog, there has been plenty of good news since the last post, most notably the come-from-behind 7-5 win in San Francisco Sunday, which brought them their first winning road series of the year and, logically enough, their first winning road trip of the year, at 4-3. The outcomes of the game, the series and the trip were all improbable. The series finale turned on a grand slam homer from Jose Bautista, which brought the Pirates back from a 5-2 deficit in the seventh. Mike Gonzales went against recent form by pitching a perfect ninth for the save. The win was the team's third straight in the series, capping a recovery from a 1-3 start that featured two of their patented one-run losses. All in all, the game marked a high point of a season that has featured very few bright spots.

The return to Pittsburgh and tonight's game against the Cardinals, bully boys who routinely kick sand in the face of the scrawny Pirates, featured a return to form from on-again but mostly off-again Oliver Perez, who rebounded from two straight horrific starts to hurl seven strong innings. He gave up just two runs and walked only one, but unfortunately he was matched against Chris Carpenter, who treated the Pirates like Little Leaguers, as he nearly always does, shutting them out over seven innings while striking out 13, and dropping OP's record to a dismal 2-8. If I were a Carpenter, I'd want to pitch against the Pirates all the time.

Typically, the Pirates scored a run in the ninth, enabling them to notch their 19th one-run loss of the year, 2-1. The game was notable otherwise only for the return of Joe Randa, who started at third, meaning that Jose Castillo, not Freddie Sanchez, was pushed to the bench. Randa had a hit, but Freddie had two.

If the Pirates are going to prove that their recent improvement isn't a fluke, this is the series to do it. They began this modest run with a series victory over Houston, another persistent tormentor, but the Astros were playing poorly at the time. St. Louis (38-25) is the best team in the division, but they are Pujols-less, which means a lot more than being Bonds-less, which the Giants were this weekend. The Buccin' Ear is looking for Zach Duke to make a statement on the direction of his season tomorrow night. Can last season's bright and shining hope prove he wasn't a flash in the pan? Wednesday is a good night to state his answer.