Thanks to a big, big bump yesterday afternoon from Charlie that put WHYGAVS past Steelers Depot, the Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament Finals is a matchup of two Pirate blogs; WHYGAVS and Bucs Dugout. There is a certain amount of vanity and silliness that comes in publicly asking for votes in a thing like this, so I’d like to take another track here.
When I saw how the bracket for this thing lined up about two rounds ago, I really, really wanted to see two Pirate blogs in the finals. That was really a lot more important to me than the specifics of which two (there were still four in the running at that point, with Raise the Jolly Roger and Pittsburgh Lumber Company joining to make the Elite Eight half Pirate blogs) made the finals. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of people trying to guilt me into quitting as a Pirate fan and implying that because people like me still support the team, it’s my fault that the team is terrible. I know and you all know that there are still a lot of passionate Pirate fans out there; people that love baseball and can’t be anything but Pirate fans. Blame Kevin McClatchy, blame Bud Selig, blame Dave Littlefield, even blame Frank Coonelly and Neal Huntington and Bob Nutting if you like, but please don’t blame the fans for not caring about the Pirates and please please please don’t suggest that the fans that do care about this franchise have enabled other people to screw it up. That’s not how this works.
In any case, vote however you want in the final. Charlie had been blogging at VORB for about a year when he started Bucs Dugout, which was founded about two months after WHYGAVS. Six years doing anything on the internet seems like a long time, but six years blogging about the Pirates is an eternity. I have a lot of respect for Charlie, the work he’s done at Bucs Dugout, and the great community he’s built there. It doesn’t matter to me who you vote for, so long as you vote to let people know that Pirate fans are still here, waiting for our turn.
