I remember the first week of the 2007 baseball season. It was only a few months ago, but that's not why I remember it. The Pirates were doing good. Not good by the standards that most have begun to view them, which would be winning around a third of the games and having two players make it to the all-star game. Not as starters. They were doing good by normal baseball fan standards. I must have heard thirty people say, "Wow! The Buccos are doing good! Did you know that their record is better than the Yankees'?"

I was stoked, to say the least. It had been an up and down year in the city of Pittsburgh as far as sports went. The Steelers had been defending Super Bowl Champions, leaving us with extremely high expectations at the beginning of the season, only to have a less-than-par run at consecutive championships. They didn't even make the playoffs. It only seemed that things would get worse. The Penguins, who had been having a rough go of it for the last few years and hadn't won a Stanley Cup since 1992 were rumored at the beginning of the season to be uprooting and heading for Kansas City or Vegas. This coincided with the onset of my first winter in the brutal climate of Erie, PA. I was far from home attending school with a bunch of kids that supported the Buffalo Sabers. In other words, I was in sporting Hell.

My expectations for the Pens were not great, but I wasn't ready to turn my back on them and buy a Hartford Whaler's jersey just yet. I was in a state of fierce depression that could only be lifted by some amazing feat that could only come from the sporting world. I snapped out of it really quick whenever the Pens made the playoffs and were promised a new arena in the city.

I was still riding this high when the baseball season kicked off and the Pirates were tearing up. I tried to tell myself not to get so excited, because this happened almost every year. They would start out with a few wins and then fizzle into the bottom of the league, and watching them had become so torturous that I'd find myself flipping a coin over watching my hometown baseball team or a movie starring Queen Latifah.

Though I tried to keep my guard up, I became enamored with the Pirates success. I'd become addicted. I should have been content with the Penguins' success and called it a summer. But I found myself watching whole games in my dorm room every night, and getting excited to go home and go to tons of games. I even worried that since now they were "good," I wouldn't be able to get bleacher seats for ten bucks, and if I had to pay over fifteen, I wouldn't be able to buy my Quaker Steak and Lube wings. They wouldn't fit into the budget.

I didn't have to worry about it for long, though. Things came crashing down before long. They held on for a while, but at this rate they will almost definitely be in last place by the All Star break and Jason Bay will be auditioning for a role in Taxi 2

Ladies and gentlemen, the Pirates suck again.

I still love them, though. I hear so many complaints about their road to less-than-mediocre that it makes me sick. These guys have to be down on themselves if they ever watch tv or listen to local talk radio. What they need right now is some support. They aren't the most talented team in the world, which is why it makes it more difficult for them to come out of a slump than say, the Yankees, who have more money than Bolivia and Colombia put together and doubled.

I know that radio hosts and writers get paid to be critical, and that's what they do, but saying that they only go to Pirates games to check out the new stadium is extremely harsh. It's not even the case. These guys go to games because they love baseball (or they would not be writing or talking about it for a living), and everyday the Pirates take the diamond, they play baseball. You don't hear as much from them as from lots of professional sports teams. None of them are accused of taking steroids (which may be a big factor in their continuous lack of success), they don't publicly lash out at one another, and they don't take their MP3 players into the outfield with them.

They play baseball, for better or worse, and it looks like they may not get better for some time. So, our complaining about it is not going to light a fire under their ass and raise the collective batting average to .500. Things will remain the same.

In a country where you have to pay almost three dollars for a gallon of gas that in turn pollutes the globe causing global warming that will have us up to our necks in floods produced by glaciers in the next five years, people complain about something fun. The American passtime, if you will.

There are higher things at stake right now, I think. Give the guys a break. I know they get paid a lot, but so does the president and he doesn't always to the best job.

Well, at least I can still afford my wings.