RMJ 145 July 10

THURSDAY, JULY 10 ● Pittsburgh, vs Pirates

I had to rest up from my vacation, and I did a pretty good job of it. No drinks, ten hours of sleep.

 

When I got to the ballpark, I told The Perfessor that I wanted him to join me during the pitcher conferences. Being a college man, he couldn’t wait. We knocked out three or four of them early, but then we had extra hitting and we never got back to it.  

 

Gerry came by and we talked about the player move we would make when Shane Reynolds is activated on Monday.

Blas Minor is the odd-man-out. He really hasn’t pitched poorly, but his stuff is marginal. He doesn’t throw hard enough to afford many mistakes.

At times, he has an excellent split-finger pitch. And when he has it, he’s tough at any level. He had it most of the time at New Orleans.

Since he’s been here, his work has been sporadic, and he really hasn’t had good command of any of his pitches. Still, he got a big save for us in Chicago, and it really doesn’t seem fair to demote him. But fair is not a part of our vocabulary in the big leagues; we have to put our best team on the field every day.

As some great coach once said, “Winning isn’t the most important thing. It’s the only thing.”

 

Fortunately we got back into the swing of things immediately.

Darryl Kile started for us, and he unleashed his All-Star Game frustration on the Pirates.  

He already had the lead when he took the mound, thanks to a double by his All-Star teammate, Craig Biggio. That’s all the support he would need, but he got a lot more: Biggio, Gonzalez, and Bell went off, and we scored seven runs. Kile finished with a six-hit shutout.  

The win brought us to within one game of the .500 mark, and into a tie with the Pirates for first place.

If we have to worry about the Pirates in the second half, we’re in trouble. They are a scrappy, confident team, but they just don’t seem to have enough talent to hang in there for 60 more games.

I would rate their catcher, Jason Kendall, about even with Brad. We have the advantage at every other position. Their pitching staff has been effective, but I don’t think it is any better than ours. They hit the skids a couple of weeks ago but regrouped nicely, sweeping the White Sox and the Cardinals. Perhaps this win will turn them back around.

 

Pirates announcer Steve Blass invited me to play golf tomorrow. My old teammate with the Astros, Dave Giusti, is going to join us, and Cubby will round out the foursome.

Giusti had his glory years as the closer for the Pirates of the 1970s. He is a terrific athlete and a bright guy.

I still remember one story he told me about his Little League days in Syracuse.

“I was about 5”9” my last year,” he said. “I was already shaving, and I weighed about 170 pounds; no fat. Almost every time they pitched to me, I hit a home run. By the end of the year, they weren’t pitching to me at all.”

That story reminded me about the legend of Rusty Staub. Rusty, Dave, and I were prime prospects in the late Sixties. Rusty was from Jesuit High School in New Orleans.

The story is that Rusty hit .300 his last year in high school — on home runs alone.