By Dejan Kovacevic | 12:45 a.m. Monday
LOS ANGELES -- Waiting here at LAX for the final flight home of the season, it occurs to me that our coverage today, in addition to spreading across the continent, looks at both the past and future of the Pirates: I wrap up things in San Diego, and Colin Dunlap tracks down Pedro Alvarez in Bradenton.
(Let me guess which one you will read first.)
Before we get to that, a couple housekeeping items: I will do a final Morning Links for Tuesday as well as another post at the same time and, then, upon the commencement of formal hibernation, will create a bunch of blandly titled Advance-Timed Posts with a date. They will show that they are created by me, but that will be the extent of my involvement. The moderators, of course, will remain in touch. This way, the blog never gets too slow (hold laughter, please) because it takes a long time to develop. (I said hold the laughter.)
Linkage to the general coverage ...
Pirates 6, Padres 1: In addition to stuff about the Adam LaRoche and Steve Pearce home runs, some of the athletes and John Russell talked about how their season changed so dramatically on July 31.
Audio: LaRoche talks about the "few steps backward" the team took with those trades.
Other news: Alvarez tells Dunlap it is time to focus on baseball, and he will begin doing exactly that this morning with workouts at Pirate City.
Video: Dunlap the detective tracks down Alvarez.
Opinion: Columnist Bob Smizik writes that management's task is monumental.
Notebook: Andy LaRoche becomes the second player this month to use the term "embarrassing" to describe a performance. Only he is talking about his own.
UPDATE 6:22 a.m. from CHARLOTTE, N.C.: Above is the aircraft where the people heading to PIT will be boarding in about an hour. This will be a good thing. Last flight of the year always a large occasion.
And from other realms ...
The LaRoche home run is the second-longest I have seen in person by someone with the Pirates. The other was a Jason Bay shot in Phoenix a couple years back to straight away center that simply must have approached 500 feet. As it was, the first baseman's yesterday was pretty good. And Pearce's was not bad, either.
The Padres avoided 100 losses this weekend but had nothing else to take from it, writes Tom Krasovic in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Salomon Torres, Jason Kendall, Dale Sveum and the Milwaukee Brewers are in the playoffs, first time since 1982. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has plenty, as might be expected.
In troubled times like these for the Mets, one can always count on the New York Post for some earthy perspective. "They are losers," opens Joel Sherman's column. And check out the tab headlines to the right.
On the brighter side, Oliver Perez acquitted himself well in a big game.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Bryan Bullington did "a nice job" against the White Sox in a game that attracted a few TV observers in the visitors' clubhouse at Petco.
In the blogosphere, Mondesi's House drums up support for Maz.
Posted
Sep 29 2008, 12:45 AM
by
Dejan Kovacevic