Twenty four years and about three weeks ago, a slender, graceful and much-touted prospect made his debut at Three Rivers Stadium for the Pirates. His name was Barry Lamar Bonds and a recounting of his early days can be instructive as we watch the growth and development of Pedro Alvarez, who will make his Pirates debut tonight batting sixth and playing third base.

There has been some comparison between the debut of Pedro Alvarez and Barry Bond and don’t think Barry hasn’t taken notice.  The Pirates are in the midst of an 11 game losing streak and are 20 games under .500.   The last time the Pirates won a game was on June 5th.

June 5th 2010 collective soul rocked PNC park on SkyBlast night.

Bigfoot was spotted.

A UFO was spotted.

A tornado was spotted.

June 5th, 1985

Barry Bonds signs with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Curse level is being moves to level black!  Not sure if the Pirates will ever win another game.  Feel the wrath of Bonds!

There is still time to vote for Pedro Alvarez to be in the 2010 All-star game.  Also the Pirates are still being cursed by Barry Bonds.

Thank you to the 3 people who bought the 17 consecutive losing seasons t-shirts.  I earned $4.81 that will help us get back on track with the effort to stop the curse of Bonds!

The Pirates could also obtain Red Sox catcher/first base/outfield prospect Jon Still.

There are also rumors that the Pirates are in talks to bring embattled outfield prospect, Greg “toe” Nash back to the majors.

Former Pirate Kevin Young lives happily in Arizona. 

In other news you may have seen that Ross “Super Genius” Olendorf is interning with the USDA.  It should also be noted that Charlie Morton took an off-season job working at Medieval Times.

Carmelo Anthony is set to produce a Roberto Clemente Biography film.

Our only suggestion is to give former Pirate, Robinson Diaz, some consideration when casting Clemente.  He has some considerable acting chops.

Finally, we would also like to acknowledge Real Clear Sports for using our 17 losing seasons graphic in Top 10 Worst Sports Streaks story.  The Pirates current streak ranked as number 4.

Can’t wait to hear this song blasting at PNC Park late October 2010!

Here the two are together at the international gold chain convention.  According to Wikipedia, Iwamura is commonly referred to as “Aki” and he has also been called by the nickname “Gan-chan”.  I googled Ghan-chan and came up with this:

But most importantly to this blog Aki does have supernatural abilities which could help break the curse of Bonds.  Midway through the 2008 season, Iwamura got a mohawk haircut, thus inventing the “Rayhawk”  hairstyle which soon spread to many of his teammates and Rays’ fans. The team went on to become American League Champions.

Can’t wait to see what hairstyle he comes up with to propel the Buccos to victory. My suggestion “The Bucco Bowl Cut”

Bob Smizik summed up October 14 in a recent blog post “The inning that will live in infamy”

Take some time and read the whole summary of the game but here is an excerpt.

The Pirates were one out from the World Series.

Francisco Cabrera batted for Jeff Reardon and the rest, as they say, is history. Barry Bonds fielded Cabrera’s softly hit ball in short left-center with remarkable efficiency and got the throw off very quickly. Unfortunately, Bonds did not have a strong arm and since he was throwing against his body could get his full strength behind the throw. It was slightly off target, just enough for Bream to slide in safely and give Atlanta a 3-2 win and the Pirates 17 consecutive losing seasons.

So beware the eve of the Ides of October!

In a season dominated by the number 17 — the years of losing, the losing streak to Milwaukee and the 17-2 loss in Chicago — another was added: The Pirates were shut out 17 times, the most since 19 in 1985.

Also Jalapeno Hanna lost 17 races.

So now that counting down to 17 losing seasons and counting up to 100 loses is over it time to get back to keeping track of the Bonds Curse threat level.  For the time being the curse threat to the Pirates is being set at its lowest level “Not Bad.”

With the Pirates season over Bonds may have been at least partially to blame for  keeping Jim Leyland’s Detroit  Tigers from making the playoffs tonight by losing a tiebreaker game with the Twins.

The Tigers end of the season meltdown was historic they became they had a seven-game division lead with three weeks remaining.  But tonight they became the first team to fail to clinch a division title after leading by three games with four remaining.  Perhaps it was the Curse of Bonds on Leyland but that is not likely.  Maybe it was because Miguel Cabrera was drunk.  Or maybe it was the SI jinx.

The Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx is a myth that states that individuals or teams who appear on the cover of the Sports Illustrated magazine will subsequently be jinxed (experience bad luck).

Last time the Pirates were featured on the cover of Sport Illustrated  May 04, 1992.

Since that time we all know what has happened.

The Pirates have won a few games and are now only one win away from avoiding a 100 loss season, thanks in part to mother nature.  First Cubs players were attacked by the ivy at Wrigley, this also could have been the work of Brandon “Mossman” Moss’ special plant communication abilities.  Secondly last night’s game was canceled due to rain.  Is Bonds’ curse on the Pirates weakening?  Or does he just not care anymore?  Is mother nature a Bucco fan?  Or does she just hate Barry Bonds?

The Pirates plan to be more aggressive in free agency than last year, general manager Neal Huntington said yesterday, and that could include a pursuit of recently traded players.

“We will look into the free-agent market, and we have some money to apply to the right situation,”

“We are open to all avenues and, just because a player left here, we haven’t closed the door on anyone,” Huntington said. “Without getting into specifics or tampering, we’re open in all areas to bringing some players back if there’s the right financial fit and they think it’s the right fit for them.”

Neal is a genius trade players away get some other players that might be good, avoid paying some of the money to your teams best players because you traded them, then sign some of the same players that you just traded away back as free agents with the money you saved by trading some of those same players away!  Not really sure if am completely smart enough to understand how brilliant this is.

Here is our projected 2010 opening day line up.

Outfielders

Jason Bay

Andrew McCutchen

Lastings Milledge

Infielders

Andy LaRoche

Jack Wilson

Freddy Sanchez

Garrett Jones

Catcher

Ryan Doumit

We assume Paul Maholm will start and John Grabow will make an impact in there somewhere.  Also Andy LaRoche will be traded when Pedro Alvarez is ready.

In 100 loss news the Pirates would need to go .500 over their final 14 games to avoid the 8th 100 season in franchise history.