Since I live in the Youngstown television market, I also get FSN Pittsburgh on my cable package, so tonight I’m going to mix things up a bit. Tonight I’m going to watch the game on FSN Pittsburgh and give you a perspective through the eyes of Bob Walk and Tim Neverett, the Pirates tv announcers for tonight’s game. I thought it would be interesting to see what they had to say about the Tribe throughout the game, and what FSN Pittsburgh does a little differently than STO.
Some things that caught my script “I”:

-Bob Walk was pretty complimentary to Grady Sizemore. He said despite the low average this year, he’s a great overall player/athlete when healthy. That’s debatable if you want to factor in average and high strikeouts, but here’s hoping he finds his stroke.

-There was a fan on the right side of home plate wearing a “Irate fan” t-shirt, the t-shirts fans that tried to protest the Pirates losing ways by leaving a game in the 3rd inning a couple years back wore. I almost forgot about that til I saw that shirt.

-FSN Pittsburgh does a few cool things during games, they had a Pirates player mic’ed up, they had a commercial promoting upcoming games that was a spoof of the sham-wow and other infomercials that featured a blue background with the number to call and the credit card logos at the end. And they do a pretty good job promoting current and former players by featuring them in commercials.

-The Pirates rotate tv and radio announcers, when Bob Walk and Tim Neverett are doing the tv play by play, Steve Blass and Greg Brown are doing the radio and vice versa. I think it’s unique, and I think that Blass and Brown are more interesting and funny, and unfortunately tonight they are on the radio.

- Carl Pavano has well, sucked every other inning, giving up three runs in the 2nd and five in the 4th. He has also given up 11 hits in 3 2/3 innings, I say the Indians should move him to the bullpen with those kind of numbers.
-When asked one time who people thought he looked like, Pirates shortstop Jack Wilson said Steve-O from Jackass, or Dancing With the Stars for you older readers.

-Andrew McCutchen will be an All-Star in the near future.

-Pitchers hitting should be banned, National League baseball is boring, bring it on purists!

-Jensen Lewis has two pitches, yuck and poo, and Carl Pavano taught him how to throw them.

-Eric Wedge does need to go, but it’s not all his fault. Mark Shapiro has been mediocre at best as a General Manager, and I’m calling for him to be fired too. If you agree, please join my page on face book calling for just that: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=89823427695&ref=ts. It’s probably a coincidence, but it’s funny at least to me that Bill Livingston was critical of Shapiro a couple days later after I started this page, both in The Plain Dealer and on All Bets Are Off.

-Even being a Browns fan I must say that if you’re going to go to the Pirates game in Pittsburgh wearing a Browns jersey, you deserve any flack you get wearing a Jeff Garcia one. What an embarrassment! As if the Indians weren’t doing enough of that for us without this hump adding fuel to the fire.

-The Indians pulled a opposition-like 9th inning scoring five runs, but it was too little too late.

Well unfortunately the Pittsburgh baseball perspective was a lot like the football one tonight when it comes to Cleveland. I’m really tired of Indians games being over in the fourth inning, or being blown anytime after a starter leaves the game. Why Eric Wedge still had a job going into this series is beyond me. What’s it going to take? I thought we would be able to say that at least we had one professional team better than Pittsburgh’s, but if we lose tomorrow we can’t even say that. This game was like a Browns-Steelers game, not close, and over early.

Brad VanFossan is a freelance sportswriter who lives between Cleveland and Pittsburgh who hates most if not all things black and gold. Feel free to email him at bvee10@gmail.com and check out his blog http://www.clevelandindiansnews.com/bradvf101/weblog/.