Ahoy there, maties and soon-to-be maties! It be I, John Wehner, radio broadcaster for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the dirtiest scalawag to ever take a tinkle in the Allegheny! Arrrr!

Hahaha – just kidding! Anyway, I’m here to talk to you about the Pirates, probably one of the more misunderstood teams in all of baseball. It’s been a dry couple of years in Steeltown, sure, but things are looking up for the yellow and black and red (and sometimes white)! Now, before a bunch of you go ahead and call the paddy wagon to cart me away in my very own strait jacket, hear me out. I’m sure that after you read my reasons for Pirate pride, you’ll jump on the Bucs’ dinghy and buckle your swash! Here we go!

REASON ONE: Feared slugger Adam LaRoche will adjust to the NL Central pitchers.

Everyone always talks about how hard it is for hitters to adjust from the blazing fastballs of the National League to the corner-pickers of the American League. However, what’s never talked about is trying to switch between divisions. For Adam, he’s going from facing soft-tossers like Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez nineteen times a year to hard throwers like Carlos Zambrano, Roy Oswalt, and Bronson Arroyo. After years and years on that sort of pitching diet, it’s not easy to speed up your bat – it could take months and months of practice to get used to the high chesse that’s served in the National League’s central division. With the summer months just around the corner, I’m sure LaRoche is ready to swing the lumber the same way he did last year, when he slugged 32 homers for Atlanta. I guess the Braves think home runs grow on trees, as all they wanted from the Pirates was enigmatic hard thrower Mike Gonzalez. Come September, we’ll see what’s growing in the lush greenery of PNC Park.

REASON TWO: Ian Snell and Tom Gorzelanny are finally learning how to win.

Growing pains are tough, as anyone that’s been through puberty will tell you. They’re even tougher when you’re trying to rebuild your pitching rotation over the course of the baseball season. Folks are seeing dividends, however, as young phenoms Snell and Gorzelanny are pitching their hearts out every single start. Fact is, though, that’s not going to be enough.

A pitcher can’t just go out to the mound and do his best – he has to do better than that. It’s a hard lesson to learn, and the fact that these two kids only have 11 wins between the two of them (in 26 starts!) tells me they need some schooling. It tells me that they’re pitching just good enough to lose, which, as anyone that knows wins from losses can tell you, is never good enough. To be a good pitcher, you have to win, no matter what happens. If you expect your hitters to score you enough runs to win every start, then you’re going to get disappointed. I’m not saying Snell & Gorz need to be perfect every time out. I’m just saying they need to be almost perfect.

REASON THREE: X really is gonna give it to ya – a full season of Xavier Nady is a good thing.

When Dave Littlefield pulled the trigger on grabbing Xavier Nady from the Mets for the lost cause that was Oliver Perez (more on him later), I was over the moon. Here’s a guy with 30-40 homer power, riding the bench for the first place Mets? Who couldn’t use that sort of power in their lineup? Littlefield knew that the Pirates could use that sort of sluggiosity in their lineup every day, which is why Littlefield’s such a crafty GM. So far, X has not disappointed – he’s popped 10 round trippers, and driven in 36. He’s the perfect rightie complement to Jason Bay’s right-handed power, and he’s equally almost perfect with the glove – only one error so far while covering all OF positions! It’s a shame that we had to give up Oliver Perez, and I’m glad he’s doing so well in New York, but you have to give up quality to get quality, and there aren’t many guys of Xavier Nady’s quality in the major leagues.

REASON FOUR: Zach Duke actually trusts his coaches.

Baseball is a game of adjustments, both physical and mental. One of the reasons the Pirates felt comfortable in trading Oliver Perez is because he stopped making adjustments. After the coaching staff tried to perfect Perez’s pitching motion, he hit a brief speed bump for a few season, and you could tell in his body language he just started tuning his coaches out. Former phenom Zach Duke is going through the same growing pains. A lights-out machine of devastation in 2005, the coaches tried to maximize Zach’s potential. Results so far haven’t been great, but that’s to be expected. After all, if you could make omelets without breaking eggs, then hens would go extinct. I know The Duke is in good hands, and I know Duker knows he knows he’s in good hands. Talent always rises to the top; sometimes it just likes to take the scenic route.

REASON FIVE: Jack Wilson is an All-Star, and he knows it.

2004 was a great year for Jack Wilson. 41 doubles, 12 triples, 11 home runs, 8 stolen bases, and 82 runs scored, all career highs. He was the spark plug that kept the Pirates’ car running clean and fuel-efficient. But sometimes that engine won’t turn over, no matter how hard you try. He deferred his star status to Jason Bay, and found it hard to escape the monstrous shadow that Bay cast. He overcompensated by trying too hard, and it showed in his results, both at the plate and in the field. And then he let the numbers get to him, which dragged his numbers down even further. But Wilson’s entering the prime of his career. He’ll be thirty this December, and with age comes maturity. Watch Wilson play. And watch carefully – it’s not easy to see if you don’t know what you’re looking at, but I can tell you it’s probably there. He’s finally playing within himself, confident in what he can do, and (more importantly) what he can’t do. And he knows that the only stats that matter in baseball aren’t in the RBI column, or the R column, or the E column. They’re in the W column, and they’re especially in the L column. And Wilson, as you can tell by his initial, is all about the W.

REASON SIX: It’s the NL Central, stupid!

If you told me that the Brewers would still be in first place in the middle of June, I’d take away your keys and call you a cab. If you told me the St. Louis Cardinals would win the World Series after getting only 83 regular season victories, I’d drop you off in the emergency room to be checked for alcohol poisoning. And if you told me that the Chicago Cubs – the team that made the biggest off-season splash by shrewdly signing Alfonso Soriano, Mark DeRosa, Ted Lilly, and Jason Marquis – would be under .500, then I’d be writing your eulogy and founding BADD (Buddies Against Drunk Driving). What does this all mean? It means the division is wide open, and one little ten-game or fifteen game winning streak could catapult the Pirates from second-worst to second-first. All it takes are a few extra home runs from Bay and LaRoche, a few steals from superstar-in-the-making Freddy Sanchez, a few wins from Snell and Gorzelanny, and who knows? Maybe it’ll be Jim Tracy – one of baseball’s greatest minds, and one of its better guys – licking champagne off his lips while hoisting the greatest trophy in all of sports. The rest of the world is head over heels with pirates. Why shouldn’t Pittsburgh be the same?

Hey, you never know. Stranger things have happened.

John Wehner averaged over one plate appearance a game in his eleven-year Major League career.