Pittsburgh Pirates Playoffs Appearance

Yes, you read the title of this blog post correctly....."Pittsburgh Pirates Playoffs Appearance". After a 20 year absence from the playoffs, the Pittsburgh Pirates are back in the playoffs. They play the division rival Cincinnati Reds in a one game Wild Card game on Tuesday 10/1 at 8:07 PM ET on TBS.

The pirates came into the season having missed the playoffs for 20 consecutive years which is a North American record for missed playoff appearances by a professional franchise. The pirates got to the point they are now when they hired General Manager Neal Huntington away from the Cleveland Indians. That moment on, we have slowly been working our way to our winning ways by trading away veterans and capitalizing on our acquisitions. After the 2010 major league baseball season, the pirates signed Clint Hurdle to be the teams new manager. In every year since he has been here we have improved our when total. He has not only changed the culture around the Pirates organization with his positive attitude in turning this into a winning organization again.

My prediction for the Wild Card game is the Pirates win 4-3 in the battle of the bullpens.

LETS GO BUCS!

Steelers Downfall

If you are a Steelers fan and watched there most recent game against the Minnesota Vikings like I did then you probably are disappointed in the way the team has been playing. While I can say that I am disappointed in the teams play, I can also say that I kind of expected the team to play this way just not this bad. When the season began some four weeks ago, I did not think the Steelers were a playoff team. I felt that the Cincinnati Bengals and Baltimore Ravens were far more superior teams. I felt that the Bengals had a good nucleus of young talent and the Ravens were coming of the Super Bowl Championship.

The Bengals and Ravens each have built through the draft and have signed some key free agents to help them out while the Steelers have built through the draft, they have not signed any free agents. The Steelers that I am accustomed to watching through the 1990's and 2000's have built through the draft and have come up on a lot of potential future Hall of Famers in Tory Polamalu and Ben Roethlisberger.  While the Steelers keep drafting on potential, other teams are going for almost surefire talent in the free agent market that puts there team over the top.

Unfortunately, I don't see an end in sight for the Steelers losing ways this year. Its going to continue to be a long year. There comes a time when every team must rebuild and I think the time is now for the Steelers to start the rebuilding process.

Introduction

Welcome to Dave's Sports Zone. My name is David Mottura and I was born in Houston, Texas and called it home for the first 11 years of my life. I then lived in Buffalo, New York for about 18 months before my family decided to make a move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  After graduating in June of 2010 from Freeport Area High School, I decided to attend to Butler County Community College to complete my basic college courses then I decided to continue on to Slippery Rock University to study in Sports Management. By the end of my college term, I hope to achieve a job working for a professional sports organization in the Pittsburgh area.