Uhhhh... Now what?

Well... the day has finally come. We finally have an ETD for Kevin McClatchy.

Now, I want to be very careful here to temper my excitement because I want to be fair to the man. I'm sure that, for many fans in Piratedom, this specific piece of news will be cause for much celebration and so I just want to take a moment to remind us all of the good that he has done. Let's not forget that, without Kevin McClatchy, the Pirates could very well be playing baseball in Florida, Arizona, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico or any one of a dozen cities in California with joneses for a Major League Baseball franchise.

When his ownership group bought the team in 1996, they were already in the third year of a "rebuilding" process and had no immediate prospects for improvement. Of course, the expectation was that new ownership would bring a renewed zeal and determination to win. Unfortunately, things don't always work out the way we hope they will. Obviously, the Pirates haven't been made into a winner under McClatchy's watch, but they're no longer bordering on bankruptcy and they play in what is arguably the premier sports venue in the United States. Let's give the man his due. He may not have produced a +.500 team but he may very well have put the franchise in a position for his successor to do so.

I give him credit for stepping down now, even if many of us believe it's 3 or 4 years overdue. Now the pressure is really on Bob Nutting to choose a new CEO. When Nutting took over as principal owner this winter, he insisted that changes were coming... let's just hope these changes lead to improvements on the field. It all starts with this decision. Will Bob Nutting become the next Art Rooney or the next Kevin McClatchy? Only time will tell, but Pirates fans have run short on patience after the last 15 years.

Speaking of improvements on the field: Everybody seen Adam LaRoche lately? S-I-C-K... I think it's OK to stop booing him now.