The Chris Shelton (Non) Watch

As of last night, the Pittsburgh Pirates have won a mere nine of thirty-three games played.

Sigh.

The impossible dream-- .500-- will not live to see June this year.

Instead, Pirate fans everywhere will have to turn elsewhere for their baseball-related intrigue. In particular, they may find themselves turning to the AL statistical leaders on a regular basis to dream about what might have been.

He's slipped back a bit to the rest of the pack in the past two weeks, but if you'd gone to the AL stat leaders page at espn.com a couple of weeks ago, the batting average, home run and rbi leaders were all denoted with a singular picture of an earnest, eager, smiling young man whose middle name is apparently "Bob."

#26 Chris Shelton
Height: 6-0
Weight: 215 lbs.
Age: 25
2006 Salary: $365,000
AVG .296 HR 10 RBI 21 OBP .364 SLG .661 OPS 1.025 (As of 5/08/06)

The story begins here, with some real and still unsettled confusion over whether the home team understood that it could protect three more players. And I don't even want to consider sifting through the names of some of the stiffs and suckers who were deemed worthy of 40-man roster protection while the assembled executives laughed audibly in the midst of plucking free, raw talent from the Tree of Ignorance.

Being a Pirate fan over the past thirteen years has meant being offered a succession of consolation prizes as incentive to go out to the park. Come and see tomorrow's (potential) stars today! (Several years) Come and see the last season at Three Rivers Stadium! (2000) Come and see the freak show with the $9M payroll that's flirting with .500! (1997) Come and see baseball's greatest new park! (2004, 2005) Come so you can see the All-Star Game! (1994, 2006)

Of course, for at least the next few years, the consolation prize is that you get to see Jason Bay, Jack Wilson and Zach Duke. Some nights that will be enough. On many other nights, fans with even the slightest imagination will look out at the team in the field and imagine a scene where Shelton is playing first base and where Aramis Ramirez wasn't given away to the Cubs to make short-term payroll. That's a scene where signing declining players to stopgap one-year deals doesn't happen.

My hope now is that Shelton regains his early season form and slugs his way onto the AL All-Star squad, where he can get the PNC Park welcome he so richly deserves. And Dave Littlefield and Kevin McClatchy can quietly judge the crowd after the disproportionate applause dies down.

So, yeah. With our shared weekend package, I'll be catching ten to fifteen games. A running diary to follow.

GAME ONE Saturday, April 15, 2006
Pirates 2 Cubs 1.
Nice game. Zach Duke turns in a great performance. The crowd was driven to frenzied ecstasy by the distribution of JASON BAY 2005 ALL-STAR bobblehead idols. The very day it's announced that Sean Casey's out for months with a broken back, Craig Wilson steps in and is the catalyst for the two runs. Of course, the front office tried desperately to trade him before the season started, so only their failure to do so kept him on the team to step in for Casey and produce these runs. YEEHAW.

GAME TWO Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Pirates 12 Cardinals 4
Even better game. Jeff Suppan is tagged for a half-dozen runs in less than three full, but this time he isn't wearing a Pirate uni. The Wilsons tee off, Jeremy Burnitz actually picks up a couple of hits and Oliver Perez pitches well and has a big enough lead that the crowd actually enjoys a mammoth HR off the bat of Albert Pujols. We're sitting in the left field bleachers while on the annual Lutheran Student Fellowship outing rather than our usual right field seats, so the three HRs mentioned above all land in the general area of where we are. Leah and Ruby get some quality Jumbotron tims, and all are sent home happy with an ALL-STAR COLLECTIBLE PIN #2.

GAME THREE Sunday, April 30, 2006
Phillies 5 Pirates 1
Lousy game, gamewise. Beautiful day, daywise. The sunburn I felt on Monday stung nearly as bad as Oliver Perez's lackluster pitching. I'm not even sure the Pirates took bats to the plate. However, having four or five chances to get a thirty-foot view on the scoreboard of
Sal Fasano's 'stache made me glad the Phillies won. Only that facial hair and the fact that this game coincided with KIDS' BASEBALL GLOVE DAY made the day a raging success.

More to come...