God I hate it when Paul Meyer writes the stories...

"The Pirates have won 14 of their past 20 games to inch to within 81/2 games of the lead in the National League Central crawl.

'We're still playing significant baseball,' Tracy said. '[Eight and half games] is not an insurmountable task. Obviously, we've got to win a lot, but we've been playing our best baseball of the season over the past three weeks.'"

Yes, they're "only" 8 1/2 games back.  With 31 games to go.  So they have to go about 24-7 while the other FOUR teams ahead of them all play under .500 (well, the top three at least)...almost mathematically impossible considering everybody plays each other about 20 times down the stretch...suggesting at least one of those teams will win more than they lose...but ALL IS WELL!  Gag...let's just go ahead and sign Littlefield to a massive extension now...end the suspense...