Whine time

And to those of you already asking "Is this going to include more bitching and moaning about your bleeping-bleep Pittsburgh Pirates?" ... 

Well, yes. Yes it is. 

Here's a hall pass. You are excused to the library for the duration of this post.

Which, you bet, is today's edition of  Why Does God Hate My Baseball Team More Than Any Other Baseball Team? Also, What's So Special About The St. Louis Cardinals, God? Is It Because They're Called The Cardinals, Or Because Stan Musial Was One Of The Best Humans Ever To Play The Game?

Opinions vary, but for sure there's something unduly blessed about the stupid Cardinals. Who else gets an All-Star third baseman (Nolan Arenado of the Rockies) for, not even a song, but three bars of a song? The stupid Cardinals get Arenado for some minor-leaguers and one halfway decent pitcher, and -- get this -- they also get $50 million from the Rockies to help with Arenado's buyout.

That's not even three bars of a good song. That's three bars of "Watching Scotty Grow" by Bobby Goldsboro.

Cubs fans, of course, will do their usual sorrowful compare-and-contrast about this, because the Cubs have been the Rockies this offseason. They're practically giving guys away, like Yu Darvish, their best starting pitcher. The Big Reset is on for a team that, um, won a division title without it last year.

So Cubs fans will whine in their best woe-is-us why-does-God-hate-us fashion, and fans of the cruddy Pirates, like me, will LAUGH IN THEIR FACES. This is because, while the Cubs are owned by Joe Ricketts' bratty kids, at least they're not the Pirates owners.

Who have taken their team's nickname entirely too much to heart.

The Pirates owners, see, don't really want a major-league team. Major-league teams cost too much. So they're content merely to serve as a de facto farm system for actual MLB teams that are actually trying to win. They trade for minor-leaguers and develop them and then, when some of them become Gerrit Cole or Josh Bell, they trade them before they have to pay them real money. 

Then they put their latest Dollar General team out there and keep raking in their share of the MLB's TV dough, even though they're not putting an MLB product on the field. It's damn disgusting. 

And this is the part where I always think how awesome it would be not to be a Pirates fan. But no other team had Roberto Clemente, and the Pirates did, so here I am.

Boo-hoo for me.