The Pirates Organization Has Lost its Mind

If the Pirate ship is sinking, and it had been for a while, perhaps the crew should be ready for anything, right? Trained like Navy SEALS, perhaps.

I was going to save this for Thursday's links, but this is too rich.

Have you heard what the Pittsburgh Pirates – you know, that team with 20 years of futility – is doing to their prospects? They're putting them through hell, as in Hell Week like the Navy SEALS.

Writer Dejan Kovacevic has the report today on TribLive.com.

What in the name of Jolly Roger is going on in the Pirates organization? Do they really think treating their prospects, many of who are high-round draft picks, as Kovacevic points out, is the way to break out of the doldrums and return to the glory days of Bonds and Pop Stargell?

Check out Kovacevic's full column, but if you don't have time immediately, here is and excerpt:

On Oct. 14 at 11:45 p.m., the Pirates’ minor-league coaches and instructors broke the midnight silence by banging on dorm rooms throughout the complex shouting, “It’s Hell Week! It’s Hell Week!” Players were told to be dressed in 20 minutes and to meet outside by the batting cage. Waiting there were Kyle Stark, the assistant general manager and architect of the team’s “Hoka Hey” ways, as well as Larry Broadway, the first-year farm director who never before held any instructional position at any level of baseball. Look it up. Broadway told the assembled players this would be their “rite of passage” to become Pirates, then sent them on a two-hour scavenger hunt for envelopes hidden across the complex. (Don’t ask. No idea.) At 5 a.m., after a wink or two of sleep, they were bused over to Bradenton Beach for a two-mile run, followed by relay races in which they ran back and forth filling garbage cans with sand. (Don’t ask. No idea.) At 1 p.m., after more non-baseball drills back at Pirate City, they played an actual game against Toronto’s prospects.This garbage — pardon the pun — went on all week.