The tease is on

Time now to check in with the Blob's favorite baseball team, the stubbornly mediocre Pittsburgh Pirates, which means it's time for all of you to say things like "No!" and "Not again!" and "Nobody cares about the stupid Pirates, so enough crying and whinging!"

("Whinging," by the way, is a wonderfully under-utilized word, in the Blob's opinion. So I thought I'd throw it in there just give it a little love.)

Anyway, all you bellyachers out there, dummy up. As I frequently remind you, this is my Blob, so my rules. Them that don't like it can just high-tail it on outta here.

Back to the Pirates.

When I looked up this morning they were not battling it out with the Reds for last place, as expected. They were seven games over .500 (24-17) and tied for first in the NL Central with the Brewers. They're a game ahead of both the Cardinals and the Cubs, for heaven's sake. And it's mid-May.

This will not stand. I know, everyone knows, that the Pirates are not this good. I know, everyone knows, that eventually they're going to revert to being the Pirates again, which means sometime in, oh, mid-June or July they're going to go into a horrendous slide, lose eleventy-hundred games in a row and wind up fighting it out with the Reds for last place in the Central.

The Reds, by the way, are 14-29 and 11 games out. But after an inexcusably pathetic start which put the much-anticipated Battle for the Cellar in serious peril, they're winning a few games now. In fact, until they dropped their last two, they'd won six of their previous eight games.

Of course, as of this morning, the Pirates have won seven of their last 10.

Tempters, I tell you. Cruel, cruel tempters.