Pirates win first spring training game, 3-2

Clearly, the Pirates' run to the 2013 World Series has begun! The Bucs beat the Rays 3-2 in their spring training debut Saturday, definitively proving that their 2012 collapse was a fluke and that they're poised to begin the first of several championship runs.

Jeff Locke firmly established himself as the favorite for the 2013 NL Cy Young award by pitching three hitless innings, walking one and striking out one. Chris Leroux, Bryan Morris and Mike Zagurski, whose 2013 campaigns will all stand alongside Dennis Eckersley's 1990, Mariano Rivera's 2005, and Eric Gagne's 2003 among the great reliever seasons of modern times, all then pitched scoreless innings of their own. Then Duke Welker pitched, and then something bad happened with Vin Mazzaro. I don't know exactly what it was, because GameDay crashed in the bottom of the seventh inning, thus definitively proving that seventh-inning stretches ruin lives and that the eighth inning does not really exist.

Along the way, Starling Marte scored when he singled, stole second, went to third on a force out, and came home on a grounder. Then, in the sixth, Chase D'Arnaud singled, Felix Pie tripled him home, and Darren Ford brought in another run with a single. All that made me feel great, thus definitively proving that pie is good for you. Also, both runs were charged to Mike Montgomery, definitively proving that the James Shields / Will Myers trade was a terrible idea and that Andrew Friedman is merely the second coming of Chuck LaMar.

Anyway, that's all for now. It's sunny outside, so I've got to find my umbrella and throw it in the trash.