SAN DIEGO -- The most challenging part of winning a championship is one the Pirates have had in the bag for nearly a dozen years now. That happened more than a dozen years ago, when Ed Creech, the scouting director under Dave Littlefield, voiced the loudest support for a skinny teenaged outfielder from Fort Meade, Fla., named Andrew McCutchen.
Acquiring truly elite talent, through whatever form but especially at the amateur level, is paramount.
The Super Steelers of the original dynasty began with the drafting of their greatest player, Joe Greene, in 1969, then took off with the greatest draft in human history, the 1974 class with four eventual Hall of Famers: Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth and Mike Webster. The next generation of champions began with the drafting of Ben Roethlisberger.
Without Mean Joe, without Big Ben, no championships.
The Penguins' first two Stanley Cups began with the drafting of Mario Lemieux but found full bloom with the drafting of Jaromir Jagr the same season as the first Stanley Cup. The next generation of champions began with the drafting of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
Without those four, they've got as many Cups as the Caps.
I'll repeat this: Those were the hard parts of their respective equations. They were the rare ones, the special ones, the most difficult to obtain. Some came through shrewd analysis. Some came by luck. The very best among them came by tanking a hockey season. But it can't be debated that nothing mattered more than their acquisitions.
I'll repeat this, too: The Pirates got their guy in 2005.
Because I think that bears repeating as we watch Cutch soar through maybe the peak performance of his career with these two-plus tantalizing months, capped by the three home runs he slugged Sunday here at Petco Park, the third of which moved Bill Center, the San Diego Union-Tribune's longtime beat man on the Padres, to remark in the press box to no one particular, "That man's going to be in the Hall of Fame."
Yeah, old friend, he will. And Pittsburgh's beyond blessed to have him.
But it's a damned shame his story won't have the same finish as all the other gentlemen cited above. Not in our city. Certainly not under this penny-pinching ownership and passive front office.
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