Anger and apathy are oil and water. If one is angry, per Merriam-Webster, one is "having a strong feeling of or showing annoyance, displeasure, or hostility." If one is apathetic, one flat-out doesn't care.
There's no room for overlap or mixing there, right?
The current fuss and flap over the Pirates trading Andrew McCutchen is very real. And it's righteous, for all the reasons I laid out in the initial column and for so many more. Our city's generational baseball talent was basically dumped for two prospects and about $12 million in savings, this in the same calendar year the team will reap a $50 million windfall from Major League Baseball. It's greedy. It's misguided. It's dishonest.
It's infuriating, if I'm being blunt. Or at least it is from this perspective.
But it won't amount to anything. I'm a lifer here, born and raised, and I've seen, heard and read countless times over the past quarter-century of failure from fans vowing that they're "done with this team." Heck, I witnessed cases of people saying they were "done" with the Pirates after the Gerrit Cole trade, then, two days later, saying they were "done" after the Cutch trade!
How many times can one be done?
This won't be a popular stance, but I'm not buying it. Certainly not on some mass scale.
Very early in Neal Huntington's tenure, he and I were talking about Pittsburgh's relationship with baseball, though I was doing most of the talking since he was fairly new in town. When I told him that our city was a "latent monster," as best as I can recall the term I used, what I meant was that if and when the Pirates would ever win again, the fan base would be unlike anything he'd ever experienced.
The GM expressed significant surprise, and that was understandable. He was able to cite off the top of his head the franchise's all-time attendance record -- only once over 2 million -- and wondered aloud what that meant for the future.
Well, guess what?
And then, guess what again?
We care. We've always cared, and we always will care.
Which is why we're collectively angry, even amid the immediate aftermath of a supremely disappointing loss by the Steelers. We're taking this, at least from my gauge, that much worse.
So, why am I anticipating zero action related to this anger?
Plain and simple, there's no precedent. Because we care, we're going to prioritize being at the home opener -- a lot of people have streaks for that sort of thing and fly from around the country to attend -- over making some kind of statement. Because we care, we're going to melt at the first sign of something positive, maybe a weekend sweep or a small winning streak. Because we care, and because PNC Park is a jewel, we're going to buy tickets and watch, thinking that staying away wouldn't make much difference.
We're terribly soft in this regard. Don't deny it.
When the University of Tennessee recently was on the verge of hiring Greg Schiano -- in spite of his having never spoken up while working at Penn State alongside Jerry Sandusky, not to mention other dubious traits -- students, alumni and other fans burst into an uproar that gained national attention. Donors vowed to stop donating. NFL players and celebrities from the school spoke out. Petitions and protests followed.
Pow!
Just like that, the university pulled back. Schiano was out.
In Cleveland, the hardy people who just might be the most dedicated fans in all of professional sports, packing a 73,000-seat stadium every Sunday to freeze through 15 or 16 losses every winter, organized a parade to march around the building after the 16th loss of this one. Most of the 6,000 or so participants showed good humor, but it brought bona fide embarrassment to the management team that was the intended target.
They care, too. Only they, like the Tennessee supporters, additionally took a stance.
It won't happen here. It just won't. There won't be a petition or a parade or a protest of any kind. The politicians will stay silent despite public money -- and trust in a civic institution -- having been badly mismanaged by Bob Nutting, Frank Coonelly and Huntington. Sponsorships won't be withdrawn. And no, the fans won't stay away. Not in any meaningful percentage.
Or, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this time is different.
• Ben Roethlisberger and Todd Haley need a breakup in the worst way.
But it'll be a genuine shame if Ben's painted as some coach-killer in the aftermath, as he seemed to be aware might happen with his remarks Tuesday. Because the fact is Haley's lack of imagination -- or worse, his insistence on trying to display imagination in situations that didn't remotely require it -- have held back the Steelers' offense for most of his half-dozen years as coordinator.
Don't just point to the 42 points Sunday. Most of those were the result of heave-and-catch brilliance, as has been the case for the better part of Haley's tenure. Good coordinators, never mind great ones, develop offensive identity and rhythm. Haley never did anything of the kind.
That's not the quarterback's fault.
• When Roethlisberger hit Martavis Bryant on a 42-yard pass to the Jacksonville 5, there were 47 seconds showing on the clock. The Steelers trailed by 10, so they needed two scores to at least tie. And thus, they'd need at some point to try an offside kick and gain possession.
Which means one of two things needed to happen:
1. Get a touchdown very quickly.
2. Kick a field goal right away, weird as that might look, then try the onside kick.
Neither, of course, occurred. Instead, the Steelers moved at a near-conciliatory pace while attempting three passes -- all short of the goal line, two incomplete -- before Ben finally found JuJu Smith-Schuster in the end zone.
With four seconds left.
Which meant that not even a recovered onside kick could make a difference because time would be expired.
Mike Tomlin was asked about this sequence Tuesday and didn't exactly offer much of an explanation: "The pace was necessary. Obviously, it was uncomfortable because of the game circumstance. Sometimes you’ve got no control over it because of positions that you put yourself in. We were moving at as good of pace as we could, but obviously the position we were in was not ideal."
The chance that the Steelers could have pulled this off was infinitesimal. But for the chance to have been ignored -- or worse, not recognized -- is inexcusable.
• Change can come in many forms. It won't happen at head coach. It just won't. So Art Rooney II's focus should be on how to improve who and what supports Tomlin. More on that in just a bit.
• The most poignant narratives always win out after a hard loss, but nothing, nothing, nothing influenced that outcome from the Pittsburgh viewpoint quite like the surreal disappearance of the Steelers' defensive line. I still can't believe I saw that.
• Mike Hilton's return will be one of a long list of reasons William Gay won't be back. Wonderful human, but he had nothing left, and it showed again Sunday when he was miles off the ball repeatedly.
• Biggest upset of 2018 in local sports isn't Jaguars over Steelers. It's Duquesne basketball being hotter than Pitt.
• Don't fire Kevin Stallings. At least not unilaterally. Heather Lyke needs to approach Pitt's boosters to pay up to buy him out. They're the ones who were way too complicit in running off Jamie Dixon.
• The hardest part of being a head coach is not winning in the postseason, contrary to popular misperception. It's simply getting to the postseason. Absolutely anyone in the business will attest to that. It's true in the pros, but it's particularly true in college, where winning in wide-open recruiting is critical. And yes, I'm comparing some of the outcry about Tomlin to what happened to Dixon. Tomlin's great at the hardest part. He clearly needs better help with the rest. And maybe Jamie did, too, in the NCAA Tournament. But it's infinitely better than not getting there at all.
• Forty-five flipping points! Against an opponent that had been 1-4 in the ACC!
Losing Ryan Luther hurts, but let's not pretend he was about to break out. This Pitt team might not win a solitary game in conference play.
• The Dukes are braced for so much more success in the near-term future than even their most diehard fans could know right now. What Keith Dambrot's achieved on the Bluff in such a short time almost defies belief.
• What if Scott Barnes hadn't lazily leaned on a search committee and settled for a retread? What if he'd been half as smart as Dave Harper and done the legwork to land someone like Dambrot? If Barnes hadn't predictably bolted Pitt at the first opportunity -- I predicted that right around the time I infamously asked him to "come clean" about the Stallings hiring process -- he'd deserve being fired all over again.
• Spare me the nastiness, please. "Come clean" was an awful word choice on my part. I stated that then, and I'll state it every time it arises. But there's zero regret over having been completely correct about everything at the time related to Barnes being an abysmal fit for the university and to the basketball program being senselessly blown up.
• Not going to lie: I miss the Pete the way it was. It was consistently the best sports atmosphere anywhere in our city.
For now, I'll have to settle for that other campus down Forbes Avenue where I slept through most of my classes for several years.
• Drop the bleeping puck already. Not a great time to wait for a West Coast faceoff, huh?