Oh what a night

Well, I was very much afraid of a storm, but it was a great night for baseball in Pittsburgh!!

We sat in right-center field, in the fifth row, just to the right of the "Pirates"-shaped bushes. I LOVE these seats, sitting right behind Chris Duffy and Brad Eldred.

Ian Snell was not at his best but he still managed to throw seven scoreless innings. That's not a joke; he wasn't dominating. He just got outs at the right times. Marte had a great 8th inning and Torres, although it was one of the worst successful saves I've ever seen, had a successful save.

The Pirates are now 11-10, second place in the NL central. We've won 5 in a row. Let's win the series, boys!

Gorzelanny is our man tomorrow night. Can he keep up his dominating season and get the fourth win? I think, as the season progresses, our offense will begin to rally around good starting pitching and Gorzelanny and Snell and Duke/Maholm sometimes will be racking up wins.

The radio guy had some interesting things to say about Sanchez and LaNewGuy. I'll share my thoughts on their slow starts in the next couple days.

Go Bucs!

16 innings later

Hey, we won! Just before midnight! Torres blew a two run lead in the ninth. Everyone else in the bullpen made up for him with EIGHT scoreless innings.

We have won the series. The Pirates are now 5-0 against the Astros and 4-10 against everyone else. Tomorrow the brooms will be out in full "swing." The 9-game homestand is off to a great steart. With 7 games left and at 9-10, I expect the Pirates to be at .500 by the time we go back on the road! (Here's hoping.)

What happens when you leave early

It was an interesting opening day.

First, my condolences to my fellow bloggers. Rough starts for your teams.

Second, MLB.TV sucks hardcore. Apparently, New Concord, Ohio is in the Pittsburgh market and I cannot watch Pirates games on MLB.TV from here because of local black outs. Now, don't miss this: The Pirates game was not in any way available to me on TV. Whether there's some secret TV package I can obtain to watch it I do not know. But all I have is college cable. We get Indians and Reds and Cubs games. So MLB just hates me I guess. That's okay, because they won't be getting my money any more.

Oh well. I listened to the game on MLB Audio. At the middle of the eighth, I had to leave to pick up a friend who was stranded at Olive Garden. Zach Duke had given up 2 runs in 7 innings to the improved Astros. Very impressive, Zach!!!

Anyhow, I had resigned to the loss. This is fine. The Pirates do not have the offensive talent to put up runs against aces like Roy Oswalt (especially with Sanchez on the DL). I thought they played well.

So then, I get back and find out that with 2 outs in the 9th, Xavier Nady, who missed much of Spring Training with a stomach problem, hit a tying home run! Then, in the tenth, Bay hits the go-ahead home run and Torres earns his first save with a perfect half inning! Hooray! What a great start!

The only thing that concerns me is that we hit 3 home runs and got a total of 4 runs. This is the typical Pirates way, although hopefully when Freddy is back next week, we can end that kind of nonsense.