I should have walked out on this relationship years ago. I should have known that all of the promises of change were false. I should have been smart enough to see though the lies, and should have known that we couldn’t be happy together again. I wish I wasn’t so damn loyal!

Naturally, I am talking about the Pirates.

At this point, the Pirates (and their interminable string of losing seasons) are the deadbeat husbands of baseball. Every year, they promise that things will be different. In some ways, it is an honest promise. Jim Tracy is the fourth manager since 1996, and the roster seems to turn over every two or three years. Of course, the losing continues (and that is the point of the promise to change, isn’t it?).

If I had given up on the Pirates in 1993 or 1995, nobody would have blamed me. I had every right to be upset at my team for losing a 30-homer guy and a 20-game winner in consecutive seasons. I could have bailed on the Bucs after they tried to sell me on the notion of building around Carlos Garcia, Tim Wakefield, and Orlando Merced. But I was just a kid, and I believed in all of the pie-in-the-sky guarantees.

Then that damn 1997 team had to come along and be popular. They just had to give everyone a glimmer of hope for a brighter Bucco future. After that I was trapped. I believed in Jason Kendall’s Pirates. They should have been at least .500 in 1999, but finished 79-83, largely because Kendall broke his ankle at mid-season. They should have been able to build on 1997 and 1999 heading into the 21st century, but a bunch of things went wrong between the end of the 1999 season and 2001. There are probably too many to recall, so here are my top 10:

1. Jason Schmidt decided to play at 50% until he was traded to the Giants. After the trade, he magically started striking out ten per game.

2. Lloyd McClendon. Worst manager ever.

3. The Cam Bonifay All-Stars: Pat Meares, Kevin Young, and Operation Shutdown.

4. Kendall and Giles took the California attitude and “chilled” until they were traded.

5. Doug Strange

6. Mike Benjamin

7. Chance Samford

8. Josias Manzanillo, who left the Pirates in search of more money. He’s still looking (and talking to himself, and, presumably, serving up gopher balls).

9. Abraham Nunez, Luis Sojo, Enrique Wilson and...

10. Jimmy Anderson

After the 2001 season – 100 losses and a franchise attendance record – the Pirates knew that they could really start to slap their fans around. They knew that people like me would stay loyal to them if they traded their best young hitter for a can of beans (Aramis Ramirez, 2003) or let a potential 20-HR rookie get snapped up in the Rule V Draft (Chris Shelton). Worse yet, McClatchey and company know that they can probably milk another five years out of selling PNC Park as an experience and a beautiful setting, and another three or four seasons out of the potential of their crew of lefty starters. By then, they can sell the team for five or ten times what they bought it for and go home richer than ever.

And saps like me will keep forking over money to see a shitty baseball team. Obviously, I am not very optimistic about this season. Or next.

But I do have tickets to six games already.

Anyone want to catch a game?

----Dr. Burgher

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