The Dust Settled...2012 part 1

When A.J. Burnett was approached in the Pirates' locker room and asked about his National League Player of the Week Award, he nodded a couple lockers to his left.  "They should give it to Rod Barajas. He's the reason, he should get Player of the Week," Burnett said.  "All I know," Barajas said, "is when I was catching Curt Schilling (with Arizona in 2000-03) and he was named Player of the Week, he gave me a watch."  "He gave you a lousy watch because he didn't need it," Burnett came back. "He thought, 'What the heck am I gonna do with this $5 watch. I know what -- I'll give it to Barajas.'"  "It's the thought that counts," Barajas said.  "We need to quit this heckling," Burnett said. "People are going to think we like each other."  Gee, how would anyone get that idea?

The Summer of ZOLTAN!

    It was the best Summer of my life, it was the worst fall of my life, it was the age of McCutchen, it was the age of the Pedro Bomb, it was the epoch of belief in we can do this, it was the epoch of Zoltan, it was the season of "Finishing", it was the season of collapse, it may become the "spring" of hope, it became the winter of despair and disbelief, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going directly to playoff heaven, but we were all going directly the other way - in short, the season was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for AJ Burnett and Drew Sutton and Starling Marte or for Rod Barajas and Clint Barmes and Jason Grilli, in the superlative degree of comparison only.