Your guide to the stretch run, part 1 Pittsburg(h)

With a little over 2 months left in the season the NL Central appears to be headed for a four team race. Here is your handy cheat sheet for the teams and their corresponding cities. You decide who has the advantage.  First we look at Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Pirates

• Loveable America's darlings
• Last time they were relevant I didn't have a driver's license yet (19 years ago)
• Had the first home run in World Series history (Jimmy Sebring)
• Lost the first World Series in 1903 setting the stage for the next 108 years
• Won the World Series in 1909 1925 1960 1971 and 1979
• There was no steroid testing in 1909 1925 1960 1971 and 1979
• Original name was the Alleghenys
• Alleghenys is a stupid name
• Naming a stadium after rivers is much more awesome
• Three Rivers Stadium imploded in 2001, I suspect it was an inside job
• Chris Snyder's wife got attacked by a wacko on a scooter
• Chris Snyder's wife is hot
• Chris Snyder is on the 60-day DL
• Chris Snyder is in fact on the Pirates (who knew??)
• Aubrey Epps had a career .750 average and 2.000 OPS (way to go out on top)
• Honus Wagner was in the first Hall of Fame class in 1936
• The others were Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson...who??
• Honus Wagner is still more known for his baseball card 
• Cy Young was 8th in the voting and had to wait until next year, just like Roberto Alomar did this year
• In 1909 the first baseball stadium, Forbes Field, was built in Pittsburgh, followed soon by similar stadiums in Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and New York.  
• 3 of those teams have been in a World Series since then, the other one is the Cubs....check that it was Comiskey not Wrigley they all have

Fun facts about Pittsburgh

• Pittsburgh ranked in the top five Most Livable Cities in the 1983, 1989 and 1985 editions of the "Places Rated Almanac."
• I'll take your word for that, those were down years
• Pittsburgh was renamed Pittsburg in 1891, but after 20 years of protest, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names relented and the "h" was restored. 
• whew
• The Smiley :-) was the first Internet emoticon, created by Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Scott Fahlman.  
• :-p
• A Pittsburgh city councilman during the first World War, Robert Garland devised the nation's first daylight savings plan, instituted in 1918.  
• still messing with our sleep twice a year 93 years later
• First Banana Split - 1904
  Invented by Dr. David Strickler, a pharmacist, at Strickler's Drug Store in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.  
• Banana Splits and Rolling Rock for everyone!!
• not quite Pittsburgh but close enough
• In a 2011 ranking of 277 metropolitan areas in the United States, the American Lung Association ranked the Pittsburgh metropolitan area as having the third-worst pollution by short-term particle pollution, as well as the seventh-worst pollution by year-round particle pollution and the 24th-worst ozone pollution
• yay pollution!!
• Famous people from Pittsburgh
• Beano Cook (!!)
• Jay Mariotti (ew)
• Dennis Miller
• Jenna Morasca (hottie from Survivor)
• Bret Michaels
• Christina Aguilera (I thought she was hispanic??)
• Perry Como (old)
• Coolio (older)
• Wiz Khalifa (rapper...ok)
• Gene Kelly (dead guy)
• Andy Warhol (also dead)
• Sid Bream (bahahahahahahaha...sorry Pittsburgh)
• Josh Wilson (ugh)
• Ken Macha (DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE)
• Mark Cuban
• Kurt Angle
• A whole ton of football players (I don't have enough time)
• Billy Mays (dead guy)

Next up Cincinnati, I'm excited for that one.


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