Something happened this season for the first time in 20 years and I am really excited about it.  The Pittsburgh Pirates had a better than .500 record for the first time since 1992.  In fact, they finished the season 26 games over .500 and made the playoffs as a wild card.

This is great news for Pirates’ fans and baseball fans in general since Pittsburgh hadn’t seen the playoffs since Barry Bonds headed to San Francisco.

Their stay in the post-season may be short-lived thanks to baseball’s new playoff format however.  This is the second season where each league has five playoff teams, including two wildcards.  The wildcard teams square off in one game to decide who gets to face the best team in their league in an actual series.

That game for the Pirates comes this evening when they face the Cincinnati Reds in Pittsburgh for the right to advance to the divisional round.  I for one would love to see the Pirates win tonight and make a push in the playoffs so that we can continue to talk about them and what they have done as a small Market team.  That will be easy for me to do since me team wasn’t even close to making the playoffs this time around even though they spent 70 billion dollar in the off-season acquiring talent.  It also doesn’t hurt the Pirates have Canadian players which I always cheer for no matter who they play for.

If you are a baseball fan but don’t have a team left to cheer for my suggestion is to jump on the Pirates bandwagon.  They are built with young home-grown talent and plenty of guys who were busts in other places.  There are so many stories of redemption on this squad that you could make a few movies.