October Ollie

News item (from the Associated Press):

"The New York Mets are handing the ball - and their season - to Oliver Perez in Game 7.

"That's right, Oliver Perez, who was demoted to the minors by lowly Pittsburgh less than four months ago.

"The erratic lefty who went 3-13 with a 6.55 ERA in the big leagues this year. The guy who couldn't seem to throw a strike earlier this season."

So it's come to this. The pitcher who maddened the Buccin' Ear, the Pirates and the rest of Bucco Nation for a year and a half with stuff that alternately delighted and dismayed departs the team in disgrace and suffers the indignity of starting a game that could take his team to the World Series.

Best of luck, Mets.

The Buccin' Ear watched Ollie's Game 4 start, in which he displayed the same unpredictable behavior we all came to know and loathe when he was a Pirate. People seem enamored of calling Perez's stuff "electric." Well, it's certainly shocking, that much can be conceded. No one seems to know where it's going, much less him. Sunday, Perez put the ball up, down, outside and inside, fell behind, baffled hitters, flummoxed his catcher and put up an all-too-familiar line: 5 2/3 IP, 5 ERs, 9 hits. Okay, he got a win, not much of a feat when your team scores 12 runs.

But we Pirate fans know all too well that Ollie's M.O. is to confound, so we probably shouldn't be surprised if he goes out and throws a gem on Thursday. He's ornery that way.

Should the Mets win, by the way, the World Series will feature not one, but two players who began the season as Pirates, Sean Casey having already made it as a member of the Detroit Tigers, although he may not play due to injury. Then there's Jim Leyland, he of the resurrected career, who will guide the Tigers through the last leg of their storybook season. Leyland's presence alone dictates that the Buccin' Ear will abandon National League allegiance for the Series in favor of Detroit.

The rise of the Tigers from nearly 20 years of obscurity to the cusp of the championship of baseball tempts the dreamer to imagine a similar turnaround for the Pirates, but the Buccin' Ear's goals are more modest. This time next year, if references to Our Team are not routinely prefaced by "lowly," "downtrodden," "hapless, "beleaguered," "miserable" or other like appellations, your humble correspondent will feel that a corner has been turned.

Friday the 13th: The Buccin' Ear failed to commemorate the 46th anniversary last Friday of the most famous hit in Pirates history, Bill Mazeroski's Series-winning homer in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series. For reasons all Pirates fans understand, the Buccin' Ear's favorite number is 336.