My friends know that it would take quite a lot to get me to think anything baseball. The Nuttings taking advantage of the league and the city of Pittsburgh while lining their own pockets with gold has killed ANY sense of interest or loyalty I have to the local ball club, and I am just not cut out to root long term for another city's team. But, for the first time in probably a decade, a situation made me recall my former interest in America's past time. As I read a lot of the post mortems of yesterday's debacle at the Consol Energy Center, and wrote my own post noting the fact that the Lightning have beaten Pittsburgh 13-3 in their two wins, and also noting how much more success they have had scoring on the power play (8-1), and thinking of their general advantage in offensive firepower, it conjured up memories of another Pittsburgh series that wound up in favor of the good guys. The 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates played a loaded up Yankees team in the 1960 World Series. The series took place between 10/5 and 10/13 1960, and the Pirates won in 7 games, thanks to Bill Mareroski's 9th inning home run in Game 7 to win 10-9. In that series, the Yanks outscored your Battling Buccos 55-27, outhit them 91-60, outbatted them .338 to .256, and out homered them 10 to 4, with 3 of the Pirates' home runs coming in the decisive Game 7. The Pirates three losses were 16-3, 10-0, and 12-0, while their 4 wins came as hard fought one or two run victories, short of one 5-2 win. Does this sound similar to the 8-2 and 5-1 lossses where the Penguins looked overwhelmed, while 2 of their 3 wins thus far have been nailbiting one goal affairs, one coming in double overtime? And ironically their other win came by the same 3 point margin, 3-0 in Game One, as the Pirates 5-2 win against the Yankees. Yes, it means NOTHING in the overall scheme of things other than the fact there is a frame of reference involving another local team winning a strange series by pecking away in their 4 victories, while getting blown out in their 3 losses. Guess what, they were still the Champs when the smoke cleared, and Bill Mazeroski's home run is one of the more famous moments in Pittsburgh sports history. I hope this series never becomes that dramatic, but food for thought folks.......and the bad news for those who cannot take drama..........Game 6 of that World Series was the 12-0 drubbing at the hands of those Yankees. Okay, the earth will go back to spining on its axis, and I can assure you that you will never, ever see me mention baseball again on this blog, but those mornings as a young kid drinking my orange juice out of the Arby's World Series glass collection actually resulted in some reference 35 plus years later! I cannot claim to remember the exact scores as a result of those mornings marvelling at the huge losses, but I did remember most of the rest from them. Two quick thoughts, Engellend for Niskanen and Tangradi for Connor...First, Engelland may make it a little less comfortable to stand in front of the Penguins net creating screens, and looking for rebounds.......and with regard to ET, well he was in front of the opposing goaltender for each of the last two RARE PP goals by the Penguins.....put Kunitz on the top unit in place of Staal, and Tangradi on unit two in place of Kunitz.......... Go Pens!
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