Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette put up the Bat-sign last week, and eventually the Pittsburgh-born novelist Stewart O'Nan stepped forward, writing:

Yes, I'm the guy who clapped when I first noticed Eric Hacker, wearing the vaunted 17 of Dock Ellis and Bob Walk, making his way to the mound the other night. But give Bucs fans a little credit. Even as he struggled to find the plate, the remaining thousand or so faithful were calling out, ‘Come on, Hack!' and ‘Go get 'em, Hacksaw!' And, of course, ‘Throw strikes!' I'm sure we would have given him a grander welcome if he wasn't entering a badly-played game that had long been over, at the end of a badly-played season that has long been over, but we were very aware that this was his debut, and we were pulling for him

Hacker threw an inning, giving up three hits and two runs to the Reds in a 10-4 Pirates loss. I'm not sure what's sadder: that only one fan clapped, or that the game was so thinly attended — paid attendance was 16,492, but Kovacevic estimates that a third of those showed up — that finding the one fan took only a matter of days.

Morning links: Hacker Clapper revealed [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Rob Neyer]

According to the Associated Press, paid attendance was 15,892, but turnstile count was about 3,000, and even that seems generous. Attendance was so sparse that the Pirates closed off the upper deck at PNC Park. Daddy's Sugar Ball posted some more photos from the game and then proceeded to thoroughly lose his shit:

As a Pirate fan I have laid claim to seeing rock bottom on several occasions. But this one takes the cake. I know that the G-20 summit is wrecking total havoc on the city and even if you had tickets to today's game you are not going to fight the traffic snarls to get a seat to see this ball club. They are 3-22 over the past 25 games. That is a .120 winning percentage. If the Pirates lose today's 12:35 game they will have been swept (again) by the Reds (again). Things have been characterized as "epically bad" and "historically terrible" for the Pittsburgh Pirates for so long that you begin to forget just how bad things really are.

[...]

It just pains me to watch this team be so inept. There was an opportunity for today and they blew it. After drawing a total of 4,000 fans (that's butts in the seats) for the last two games combined, they should have thrown open today's gates and given the seats away for free. No one was going to come anyway. If you live on the south or eastern side of the city you can't get to the North Shore and PNC Park but the news would have shown up to talk about it. Western PA has G-20 fatigue. They would have appreciated the gesture even if they could not or did not take advantage of it. Bring back Buc' night for today's day game (one dollar soda and one dollar hotdogs). Anything...do anything to make people care! Just quit being so fucking BAD at running a baseball team… Please I beg you. I'm not sure I can take it any more.

The Pirates lost, 4-1.

So where were all the Pittsburgh sports fans today, you might wonder? Well, it seems a few of them dropped in on the G-20 protests to scream impotently about global capitalism and, simultaneously, celebrate the Penguins. Witness:

THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY AND HOCKEY TROPHIES LOOK LIKE!!!

Protest photo courtesy reader Jackie

Rock Bottom [Daddy's Sugar Ball]
Not many watch as Reds beat Pirates 4-1 [Associated Press]

* * * * *

Thanks for your continued support of Deadspin. Barry Petchesky is running the show tonight. Sent from my iPhone

Sept. 30, 1990, was a bright, early autumn afternoon in Pittsburgh, a Sunday in which the Steelers were playing the Miami Dolphins at Three Rivers Stadium.

Only nobody cared.

The record shows that 54,691 were in attendance – roughly 5,000 short of capacity-and I was one of them, age 15. But the actual crowd was far less.

Aside from the weather, two distinct memories from that afternoon stand out: Bubby Brister throwing three interceptions, and the wild cheering that suddenly ensued as a result of something that didn't even happen in Pittsburgh, let alone on the field at Three Rivers.

The Pirates were playing in St. Louis that afternoon, and just after Doug Drabek got Denny Walling to bounce out to second, with Jose Lind flipping a throw to Sid Bream for the final out, Drabek jumped with joy into Bream's arms. And the crowd at Three Rivers, a number of whom had brought radios, finally had something to do other than yawn or boo.

True story: A Steelers game was played with chants of "Let's Go Bucs" coming from the crowd. The Pirates had clinched the National League Eastern Division title, their first championship in 11 years, and the first of what would be three division crowns in a row.

The Steelers? Shit, this was end of the Chuck Noll Era, and the Steel Curtain by that time had become weathered and rusted – it was Week 4, and after losing 28-6 that day to the Dolphins, the Steelers still had not scored an offensive touchdown that season.

It all sounds like so much fiction now, the Steelers being an afterthought while the local television news stations were flooding the zone at places like the Clark Bar – located on the ground floor of the old candy factory, just across the parking lot from the stadium-for slurred, IC Light-soaked baseball commentary from delirious yinzers like Stanley from Polish Hill.

These days, yinzers like Stanley wouldn't know the Pirates still played in Pittsburgh except that there has to be something to do at PNC Park in the three hours or so before somebody gets around to setting off the fireworks that Dude at Work had promised him when he gave him the tickets. Dude at Work, of course, had initially received those tickets as a birthday gift from his girlfriend but didn't want to use them because, well, let's face it – he had better things to do. Even in Pittsburgh.

Yesterday, the 2009 Pirates lost their 82nd game, clinching the franchise's 17th consecutive losing season – a record for North American professional sports teams, and a staggering feat of futility for a franchise that really does have five World Series titles to its credit. Oh, but it's true: eternal suckitude has a home, and it's located in the same posh neighborhood as the reigning Super Bowl and Stanley Cup champions. Just try not to stare as you pass the blighted property with the broken windows, the overgrown lawn, and the tattered Jolly Roger flag, OK?

The Buccos' long, lamented losing skid dates back to the last of those three straight division titles, to the night of Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series against the Braves. A 2-0 lead to start the bottom of the ninth that night had dissolved into a 3-2 defeat, and while it was generally understood that that was it for that group of Pirates – Drabek and Barry Bonds were certain to leave via free agency – no one in their right mind could say for certain that, by 2010, the team would still be trying to get back to .500.

But here we are. What a day.

It is widely assumed that baseball's economic imbalance is to blame for the Pirates' woes. And while that explanation had some merit to it in the years after 1992, it no longer suffices.

Consider: Since '92, every other team in the Major League Baseball except for two – the Nationals (nee Expos) and the Royals – has made the playoffs. Two of the teams that didn't even exist in '92 – the Marlins and the Diamondbacks – have won the World Series, with the Marlins having done so twice. And the other two that weren't born yet – the Rockies and the Rays – have won pennants.

Yep. The playing field has more or less evened out.

But the Pirates still suck.

This, after all, is the team that could have acquired Ryan Howard for Kip Wells or Kris Benson. And passed on both offers.

Two former general managers-Cam Bonifay and then Dave Littlefield-were notorious for holding fire sales in the name of keeping the team's costs down, but they were also guilty of giving a singles-hitting catcher like Jason Kendall a $60 million contract when they were bidding against themselves, and for dealing for Matt Morris at the trade deadline – when Morris was 33-years-old, couldn't pitch anymore, and earned more than $10 million per season.

It's as if management were trying to prove it was better to be stupid than cheap.

You would think a team that drafts in or around the top five every year for nearly two decades would have something to show for it. And the Pirates do: A collection of pitchers who developed arm trouble before ever reaching the big leagues. In 10 drafts from 1998 to 2007, the Pirates took pitchers in first round eight times. Other than Paul Maholm, none has had anything resembling real success at the big-league level. And several didn't even make it that far.

Things were so bad at one point that other teams actually laughed out loud at the Pirates during the infamous 2003 Rule 5 draft, when five of the top six picks were simply plucked from their system right from under their nose. Like beggars passing the hat, the team collected $250,000 as compensation and tried to spin the entire affair as a positive.

"I heard the laughs coming from back there," Pirates farm director Brian Graham said. "Realistically, it's a compliment. You don't want to lose players, and it's not a positive for us. But it is a compliment."

He really said that. With a straight face.

The closest the Bucs have come to being competitive in all these years was 1997, when the "Freak Show" — so-called because their payroll was a mere $9 million — finished 79-83 and wasn't eliminated from playoff contention in a weak NL Central until just before the last weekend of the season. Francisco Cordova and Ricardo Rincon combined for a no-hitter one night that summer against the Astros, and more than 44,000 were in the stands to see it happen. Truly a magical time.

A lot of Pirates fans — and there are plenty of us dumb enough to add up to "a lot" — have developed a routine every summer. Every time there's another trade, the text messages and e-mails announcing the deal(s) start going around, followed by the usual sighs of resignation and anger. And there's always at least someone who takes the bright side by declaring any deal a good one — as if, after 17 years of this crap, the Pirates somehow deserve the benefit of the doubt when swapping a seasoned veteran for another batch of unproven prospects.

Finally, there are my friends, the ones lucky enough to root for teams like the Phillies and the Yankees, teams that actually play games that matter after Memorial Day. They do things like send me texts saying, "What r u up 2 tonite? This chick I'm with is colder than the Pirates' chances at making the playoffs. Hit me up if u go out."

I laugh at stuff like that, and I play along, taking comfort in the knowledge that at least My Pittsburgh Pirates aren't baseball's equivalent of truly sad-sack franchises like the Detroit Lions or the Los Angeles Clippers.

Nope. They're actually worse.

Dom Cosentino also writes here and here.

Charles Trimble, who happens to be a Reds fan, took his wife and 4-year-old grandson to see Cincinnati at Pittsburgh on August 23. He had seats, but scalped tickets so he could trade up to the club level—probably not that hard to do in Pittsburgh—and ended up seated near Dr. Christopher Post of Allegheny General Hospital. When Trimble turned white and slumped over, Post leapt into action, signaling Pirates staff who quickly grabbed the team's portable defibrillator. With the help of an EMT and a nurse who were also seated nearby, this rag tag group of medical heroes saved Trimble's life and got him to a hospital alive, where he made full recovery. The survival rate of someone whose heart stops outside of a hospital is less than 10%, so yeah, he's pretty freaking lucky.

The Pirates lost the game, natch.

Fan's Heart Stops At Pittsburgh Pirates Game [WTAE Pittsburgh]

•The Coyotes are staying in Phoenix. The NHL turns down $212 million bid for the team, accepts Jerry Reinsdorf's offer of $64 million less. And yet, Bettman says "this had nothing whatsoever to do with the relocation issue." That's actually believable, considering the commish has made his career on terrible financial decisions.

•Omar Minaya is "this close to being out of baseball," says Mets exec. That's not much of a threat, since what he's put together can hardly be called "baseball."

•ESPN Radio host quits after being muzzled over Big Ben. The Roethlisberger controversy has claimed its first victim. Besides, you know, the woman claiming to be the victim.

•Matt Garza plunked Mark Teixeira last night, and no one would have thought anything of it until he told reporters it was on purpose. Enjoy that 6-game suspension, Matt.

•Sam Bradford, signing babies at the Big 12's Media Days. Yes, he's big news, but is he good enough to be the first player to win two Heismans before becoming an NFL bust?

•Pirates trade away whatever they had left. For posterity, here's their starting lineup from yesterday's game: Andrew McCutchen, Andy LaRoche, Delwyn Young, Garrett Jones, Steve Pearce, Brandon Moss, Ramon Vazquez, Jason Jaramillo. I...I don't even have a joke here.

Washington swings through PNC Park next weekend, and ticket sales are, shall we say, not brisk. So the Pirates launched something called "You Score As The Bucs Score." For every run they scored in this past weekend's series against the Diamondbacks, the team would take a dollar off the price of their $24 seats against the Nats.

Making free baseball tickets look like a possibility, the Pirates lit up the D-Backs for 10 runs Friday night. They didn't score again the rest of the weekend.

A $10 discount sounds pretty good, until you phrase it as paying $14 for bad seats to watch the Pirates and the Nationals. Then it sounds like the tenth circle of hell.

So who's the big loser here? Is it Pittsburgh fans, promised essentially free money, and getting stuck with a thanks-but-no-thanks discount? Or is it the Pirates, who only had to put up a few runs to make their fans love them for the first time this season, and failed miserably. Obviously, the real loser is the Washington Nationals, the fat kid picked last for kickball.

Pirates To Offer "You Score As The Bucs Score" Promotion For Three Games of Diamondbacks Series, July 24-26 [MLB]

The Astros' May 5th game at Washington was called on account of rain, with the teams tied 10-10 in the eleventh. When the game resumed yesterday—in Houston this time, before their regularly scheduled game—Elijah Dukes was on first base and Joel Hanrahan was the pitcher of record for the Nationals. There were just a couple of snags. Dukes is in the minors and Hanrahan plays for Pittsburgh now.

Hanrahan, who pitched a scoreless top of the 11th inning for the Nationals back on May 5, was traded to the Pirates for Nyjer Morgan last month. Morgan pinch ran for Dukes in this game and promptly scored the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning. That means Hanrahan got the win—his only one of the season—even though he's not on the team anymore and the man who scored the decisive run was playing for Pittsburgh when the game started. Interleague play is so confusing!

So if two of the worst teams in the National League combine their rosters, they're just good enough to beat Houston. I think I see a plan here ... or at least a hilarious sitcom.

Hanrahan earns victory on day off [MLB.com]

Snell, who had been struggling all season in the majors, actually requested to be sent down to AAA Indianapolis last month and responded by striking out 17 batters in 7 innings in his first game down. He's tearing up minor league hitters now, but has no desire to be called back up because that would require playing more games for a city that he doesn't like and hasn't been too kind to him in return.

"Sometimes people do stupid stuff and I had to fight it, not to do something stupid and take my life for myself and from my family and my parents," Snell told the station.

Ok, that's ... ominous. So a happy Ian Snell is an effective pitcher, but it's pretty much impossible to be happy when you play for the Pirates. Maybe if they demoted the whole team then the Indianapolis Indians could win the NL Central.

Indians' Snell deals with depression [The Indianapolis Star]
Related: What Is Wrong With Our Fragile Baseball Players? [Deadspin]

Each went an inning in relief for the Bradenton Pirates. Rinku gave up one run and two hits, while Dinesh pitched a 1-2-3 inning with a K.

Update: apparently, I think all Indian people are brothers. Apologies.

Pirates' Indian-born pitchers make pro debuts [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

Another thing that may have gotten lost in the shouting over the Pirates' admittedly embarrassing defeat to the Lancers; the Pirates big leaguers were playing the Reds in Sarasota at the time. Manatee was opposed by Triple-A players for the first four innings, and then a Double-A squad thereafter. Still ...

"We're a junior college, they're professionals," MCC coach Tim Hill said. "I think it's a very big accomplishment. Not to take anything away from their guys, but they do that for a living ... and we're not used to seeing the type of pitchers we saw, and this was the first time our guys used wooden bats. I thought the kids did a great job against some great personnel out there."

Other Miracle On Grass facts:

• The Pirates' squad featured Jose Tabata, whose wife was accused of kidnapping a baby at a health clinic last month.

• Other top Pirates prospects in the game were Andrew McCutchen, Neil Walker and Virgil Vasquez, the latter who gave up three earned runs on five hits over 4 2/3 innings. Vasquez nearly made the Pirates' major league rotation this year.

• Manatee used nine pitchers, one each inning.

• The second-to-last of those pitchers is the wonderfully-named Johnny Lingo.

• Manatee CC has a total enrollment of 7,502.

• Lancers second baseman Derek Luciano had a triple, double, single and four RBI.

• Manatee graduate: Joe Mays.

• Pirates '11-0' T-shirts being shipped to Nicaragua as I type this.

Photo: Bradenton Herald

Miracle On Grass: Lancers Beat Pirates [Bradenton Herald]
Junior College Lancers Defeat Pirates 6-4 [Sarasota Herald Tribune]

Also, he had no idea when he married her (at a check cashing outlet) that she had spent nearly three years in prison for her part in a robbery. Are you starting to feel sorry for this guy? I confess that I am.

Pirates prospect Jose Tabata, reading from a statement in Spanish, said his wife lied to him about being pregnant and then showed to him a baby that she later handed over to authorities, who arrested her on charges of child abduction. He said Amalia Tabata Pereira, 43, also never informed him that she spent two years and nine months in prison in connection with a fraud and arson case in the same Tampa area where they met and wed while he was a member of the New York Yankees' Class A affiliate there.

"The truth is that my wife told me many lies that, until this whole situation began, I did not know," Tabata, 20, said early this afternoon before taking the field in Pirate City, returning to baseball activity with the Class AA Altoona Curve after taking two days off since the arrest of his wife of 14 months.

"As you and Pirates fans get to know me, you'll understand that, when this is all over, I will never be able to forgive her for her cruel actions. You will also understand that I will do everything possible, with the support of God and my family here with the Pirates, to overcome this craziness. The truth is I would never wish this situation on anybody, but I know that life has its good and its bad, and I know that the good times are not too far off in the future."

Many assumed, I'm sure, that a marriage between a then-19-year-old from Venezuela to a 43-year-old who happens to be a U.S. citizen must have been for purposes other than true love. But Pereira was able to convince Tabata that the kid was theirs, meaning that the relationship must have involved more than paperwork. Either that, or Jose badly failed health ed.

But hey, it's time for Tabata to put all of this all behind him, and chalk it up to being a funny story he can one day tell the fake grandkids.

Pirates' Tabata Says Wife Lied About Being Pregnant [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

Jose Tabata, OF. Hit .348 with 3 HR and 13 RBI in 22 games with Altoona (AA) in 2008. Has wife 23 years his senior. She is accused of abducting a baby from a Florida health care clinic, and returning it the next day, explaining herself by saying "Oops." Mother of four teenagers born before she met Tabata, she spent nearly three years in Florida prison for stealing $20,000 from a paycheck advance store, then standing lookout as an accomplice set a fire to conceal the theft. Enjoys gardening, macrame.

Or as Plant City sheriffs department spokesman Dave Bristow summed it up on Wednesday: "It was a weird deal."

We know most of the details of the abduction (the baby is back safe with its parents), but we may never know all the details of Tabata's marriage to Amalia Tabata Pereira, 43, also known by such aliases as Amalia Segui and Amalia Maldonado, among others. While police say that Jose Tabata was not involved in the kidnapping in any way, he apparently was less than truthful with the Pirates regarding his wife. In the team's media guide, she is identified as Mayita Tabata.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Ms. Pereira's relatives told Tampa-area news agencies that she is a mother of four who was born in Puerto Rico, raised in Chicago and moved to West Tampa about two decades ago. She spent two years and nine months in a Florida state prison stemming from a 1999 incident in which she was accused of stealing $20,000 from a Paycheck Advance where she worked in the Temple Terrace neighborhood north of Tampa, then staging a fire at the business to conceal the theft, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

She also, apparently, has a gambling habit; a fact that her attorney used to try and get her sentence reduced in the robbery case.

Tabata was 19 1/2 last year and playing for the Trenton Thunder, a Class A Yankees affiliate, when he married Pereira at a check-cashing and tax outlet called Amscot, the Times reported.

So, some sort of citizenship issue, I'm guessing. She's from Puerto Rico, and has been in the U.S. for several years. He's from Venezuela. More on this as things unravel.

Pirates: Police Say Tabata Not Linked To Abduction [Associated Press]
Police Trying To Decipher Curious Case Of Tabata's Wife [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
Jose Tabata [Altoona Curve]
Woman Suspected in Plant City Baby Kidnapping Is A Felon [St. Petersburg Times]

The two-month-old was returned unharmed on Tuesday, one day after allegedly being taken from its parents by Amalia Tabata Pereira, 43, who is the wife of Pirates' minor league outfielder Jose Tabata, 20. Hmm. Jose is closer in age to the baby than he is to his wife. But I'm not judging.

Tabata Pereira apparently posed as a health care worker, telling the mother, Rosa Sirilo-Francisco, that she was about to be deported and that she could help with the infant. There is no indication that Tabata himself was involved. From ESPN:

Jose Tabata addressed the matter in a statement released by the team. "I was shocked to be told today that my wife has been arrested for kidnapping. I am hurt, frustrated, and confused by her actions," Tabata said. "I have and will continue to cooperate with law enforcement officials in anyway that I can. Until I have all of the facts, I cannot comment any further."

The Tabata File: He's from Venezuela, and hit .314 for the Gulf Coast Yankees in 2005 when he was only 17. He was traded from the Yankees' organization to the Pirates' in July 2008 with three other minor league prospects for Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte, and last season was with the Class AA Altoona Curve. Oh, and according to one blog, he's been dubbed Mini-Manny "for having quick hands and great bat speed, but also for his bad attitude."

Sorry that this is your first spring training news of the season, Pirates fans. We'll make it up to you somehow.

Police: Baby Snatched From Fla. Clinic OK [Pittsburgh Post Gazette]
Tabata's Wife Suspected Of Taking Baby [ESPN]
Plant City Parents Reunited With Baby [Tampa Tribune]

On Tuesday, Rinku and Dinesh reported on their blog that they had been fleeced by a Topps baseball card representative, who convinced them to sign a contract under false pretenses. Not so said Bernstein, the "JB Sir" referenced so often in the Indian teenagers' blog, Our Baseball Yatra.

"They misunderstood that Topps guy and have since amended their blog; Topps did nothing wrong," Bernstein told me by phone. "They mistook his saying that he knew me, as me saying it was OK to sign. Very harmless, and they are sorry to have caused any trouble. I've been working with Topps for many years, and they are far above this."

Bernstein is a little concerned, however, that Rinku and Dinesh are signing any piece of paper that's shoved in front of them. "I thought I had them trained better than that," he said. "I'm actually kind of worried that I'm going to find out that Rinku signed a contract to appear naked in a circus act somewhere. Or that they gave money to someone from Nigeria who promised to pay them a million dollars from a frozen bank account. It's an ongoing process with these guys. But it's all good; they are two of the best kids you could ever want."

Rinku and Dinesh are currently playing at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla., where they will enter extended spring training as soon as the major league roster is set. They will start out with the Rookie League's Gulf Coast Pirates.

"The goal is to get them into as many game situations as possible," Bernstein said. "They will be used in short bursts, just to give them game experience. Hopefully they can make it to high A or double A by the end of the year. They will also probably play winter ball."

Bernstein says that the two love it in Florida, get along well with their teammates and have even learned to play pool. But that's where the similarities with American teenagers pretty much ends.

"There's a big difference between an 18-year-old kid with their background and an 18-year-old from the U.S.," Bernstein said. "Rinku and Dinesh weren't slumdogs in India, but they grew up in a world where you worked from sunrise to sunset farming food. They didn't play video games or go out and get a fake ID. When they were working out for scouts last year, they're probably the only kids to have spent three weeks at USC on sorority row and never seen a girl. They aren't here to drink beer, they're trying to save their families, change everything in their village at home.

"And it's not like they criticize American teenagers for the way they live, but they realize that they're a decade behind everyone here, baseball-wise, and they have to catch up. So they work out, and then it's back to the dorm studying baseball."

Million Dollar Arm the Indian reality show where the two were discovered, begins its second season in November. That will produce at least two more Indian pitchers, who will come to the U.S. and try and catch on with a pro franchise.

"And it could be more than two," Bernstein said. "We've already got hundreds of thousands of requests to be on the show. It's really become popular."

And now we leave you with a word from their blog.

Coach Bonilla very good teaching us. We both feeling we inproving pitching here Pirate City. We very thankful for Pirate City, players and coaches. All peoples there very nice me and Rinku. Some players wanting take us to the saloon but we not doing this thing.

I would also recommend staying at least 200 yards from Jeff Reed at all times.

Our Baseball Yatra
The Million Dollar Arm