If you go to a Little League game, and your kids are on one team, and your step kids are on another, you secretly root for your kids. You are nice and root for your step kids as well, but you want your kids to win. I find myself in a similar situation this week, as the Pirates and Nationals square off for a 4 game series here in DC. The Nationals are my step kids, but the Pirates are my kids.
We went for a longtime without baseball here in Washington, over 30 years. The main reason for the ridiculous amount of time, Peter Angelos, majority owner of the Baltimore Orioles. Angelos did not want another team so close to his market. Many DC residents were, and many still are, Orioles fans. For years, the only way to go to a live game was to drive to Baltimore. Now I am not sure how familiar you are with driving in the DC area. Trust me, it's rarely a pleasure. A trek to Baltimore on a game day was a 2 hour haul, if you got lucky.
Then Major League Baseball wised up. They saw the huge potential for baseball in the heavily populated DC area. Between the two cities, there are plenty of fans to support two teams. MLB negotiated a deal with Angelos, grabbed the Montreal Expos out of their dying market, and brought them to Washington. It was great!! Baseball was finally back in the nations capital!! We all embraced the Nats. I love going to the games. And I do root for the Nats, unless they are playing my Bucs. When it comes to professional sports, I bleed back and gold.
This series will be a pitching based. The Nats are slumping and not hitting very well right now. And both the Nats and the Pirates have low team batting averages, .240 and .243 respectively. The clincher will be the Pirates league leading team ERA and strong bullpen. The Pirates strong pitching staff should make the difference and be enough to take 3 of these 4 games. I'll be tweeting (@wvutimmy) live from 2 of the games. First on Tuesday night as our rookie Garrett Cole takes apart the Nats. And then on Thursday afternoon, while A.J. Burnett goes up against Gio Gonzalez, a great pitching match up. If you are going to either game, look for me on the Big Red Porch. I'll be the guy in the free Hernandez hat! Just kidding. ; ) Let's Go Bucs!!!
