When the Penguins beat the Red Wings on Friday, there was one moment in the game that was particularly gratifying for me as a Penguin fan. It wasn't just beating the Red Wings at the Joe or seeing Sidney Crosby hoist the Stanley Cup and Evgeni Malkin holding the Conn Smythe or Marian Hossa's tears of unfathomable sorrow. It wasn't seeing the joy on Mario Lemieux's face when he finally got to kiss the Cup again or seeing Sergei Gonchar finally get to hold the best trophy in all of sports in the air. All of those moments were amazing, spine tingling moments that reminded me why I'm a sports fan, but none of them topped Marc-Andre Fleury diving across the crease to stop Niklas Lidstrom's last second desperation shot like he was diving in front of a bullet bound for the Prime Minister of Canada.

On Saturday, October 10th, 2003, I walked from Duquesne to the Mellon Arena to wait in the Student Rush line for tickets to the Penguins' opener. Everyone there that night already knew it was going to be a lost season for the Pens, but we all also wanted to see the guy that the Penguins had just drafted with the first pick in the draft only four months earlier. We'd all heard amazing things about Marc-Andre Fleury, who at 18 was only two months older than me, and my friends and I all wanted to see him play.

Fleury's rookie season was an incredibly trying one for a young goalie, but his first start was electric. He made 46 saves against the Los Angeles Kings, including an amazing save on a one-timer (check this old school DK article about the save) and, if my memory serves me, a save on a penalty shot. As I walked out of Mellon Arena that night, I'd never heard of Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby was a mythical prodigy that I'd only read about in Sports Illustrated, the Pens were 5 1/2 years and seemingly a million light years away from a Stanley Cup, but I thought to myself, "Wow. Fleury is special. If we're going to win a Cup again someday, he's going to be a part of it."

Fleury struggled over the rest of the season and was eventually sent back down to the AHL. In his second season, he was good but not great. The season after that, he had a great season but melted down against Ottawa in the playoffs. Then, he followed up a great playoff run with by allowing some disappointing soft goals against Detroit in the 2008 Final. This year, he was shaky against Washington and shaky in Detroit leading up to Game 7 and was gaining a rap as a goalie that couldn't win a big game. Anyone that knows me, though, will tell you that I've always defended Fleury, and the reason for it lies in that first game that I saw way back in 2003. When Fleury made that huge save to preserve the lead and clinch the Cup on Friday, a huge rush of validation washed over me. All of the times I'd stuck up for the guy were worth it. I HAD seen something special on that night almost six years ago.

This sort of thing is exactly why I keep going as a Pirate fan. Fleury isn't really my favorite player on the Penguins, but seeing him play in that first game is always going to be something I remember. We latch on to players now, and when things finally turn around it's an even better feeling. After we traded for Andy LaRoche last year and he was terrible for two long months in a Pirate uniform, I tried to stick up for the guy. He didn't make it easy with his even worse start this year, but every time he gets a hit in 2009, it feels like some kind of small personal victory for me, even if I don't have anything to do with it.

Alternately, this is what makes trades like the McLouth trade so hard. We all latch on to these guys, hoping that each new batch of Pirates will be the ones that break the cycle and it's more than a little heartbreaking when they don't. But that's the nature of being a Pirate fan; Al Martin becomes Jason Kendall becomes Brian Giles becomes Jason Bay becomes Nate McLouth becomes Andrew McCutchen, and the cycle will continue on until it's broken. It's not fair to McCutchen to say he's definitely going to be the player that puts the Bucs back on the map, but watching him transition effortlessly to the big leagues, watching him change games with his speed, well, he's something different than anything we've seen in a long time and he's going to be here for a long time because despite what the tin-foil hat crowd will tell you, we control his rights for six years and it's unfathomable that he'll be traded in the next five years if he keeps performing.

When Marc-Andre Fleury arrived in Mellon Arena in 2003, only two of his teammates at the time (Brooks Orpik and Rob Scuderi) would hoist the Stanley Cup with him 5 1/2 years later, but his arrival signified a changing of the guard in the Penguins' organization. Maybe, just maybe, we've got our own Fleury at PNC Park in Andrew McCutchen.

I was recently approached by a representative from TicketStumbler.com, a new search engine that lets you compare ticket listings from sites like StubHub, RazorGator, etc. all in one place, about setting up a ticket giveaway for a future Pirate game. If you're interested, you can also check out their Pittsburgh Pirates' page. I'm not actually getting anything from this, but it's a cool service and if you guys are going to put up with disgusting weight loss ads and obtrusive banners (Oh, you haven't seen those yet? They're coming.), you should reap the benefits of my selling out every once in a while.

Anyways, the tickets I have to give away are two bleacher seats for the Friday, June 26th game against the Royals. If you're interested in being part of the drawing, e-mail me with the subject line "WHYGAVS Ticket Giveaway" by Thursday at 5:00 PM. If you leave your request in the comments, I will not consider it. Once the entries close on Thursday, I'll assign each entry a number and use random.org to choose a winner and notify the winner by e-mail. Get ready for the fine print.

Each participant is only eligible for one entry and family members of WHYGAVS bloggers and Ticket Stumbler employees are not eligible. No purchase is necessary and purchase does not improve odds of winning. This contest is subject to all local, state, and federal laws, and void where prohibited.  By submitting an entry, contestants agree to the rules of the contest and state that they are legally allowed to enter the contest. Contest rules are subject to change at any time.

There was once a point in my life when I never understood how people failed to be on time. Somewhere along the lines, though, I suppose I grew up and now I feel like I'm constantly late for everything. This came to a head this afternoon, as I weaved through the streets of Pittsburgh only to find my favorite parking garage had converted to leases only and attempts to find somewhere else to park yielded closed streets for various reasons (parade, Arts Festival, construction) and the typical Pittsburgh one way streets. By the time I parked, I could hear Bill Guerin and Sidney Crosby being introduced with the Stanley Cup and it certainly looked like everyone that had gathered for WHYGAVS Day had vacated the bar. If you were waiting for me and didn't find us in the stands this afternoon, I sincerely apologize.

Luckily, Brian thought to wear his vintage 2008 WHYGAVS shirt and I think most people who were planning on coming to the game managed to congregate around him and they all headed to the bleachers where I managed to find everyone as Andrew McCutchen was drawing his first walk of the afternoon. Shortly after I arrived and handed out shirts, the fallacy of moving our meetup to an afternoon game, then giving everyone black shirts became apparent. It was frigging hot out there.

Yeah, we all look thrilled to be alive. I think Ann's arms are actually catching on fire as this picture was being taken. I know mine are, you just can't see them. I also have a Jim Tracy sunglasses tan, which I find to be terrifying. Actually, though, we kind of were excited because there were these other professional Pittsburgh athletes at the game with this big piece of silverware.

You know that cop wants to touch it.

As if me being late and it being ten billion degrees out weren't complicating things enough, it was also turn back the clock day. This is a brilliant idea in concept; the teams wore old uniforms and the scoreboard was completely turned off except for an old-timey graphic. There were no side scoreboards, no pitch counts, no between inning contests, nothing. This sounds really cool, and is confusing as hell in execution because when you're in the bleachers you have to turn around the whole game to see the count, the batter (who was only identified by number), or any other sort of detail you might be interested in as the game progresses. Caroline kept score, which was pretty much the only reason any of us had any idea what was going on.

I don't have a good shot of the Pirates' uniforms, but the highlight of the 1909 uniforms was definitely Nyjer Morgan, who was rocking pants and a jersey so baggy that Kevin Young and Derek Bell were jealous, all with a popped collar. The difference between him and everyone else today was that he made the throwbacks look good. As we all sat in the bleachers and joked about Daryle Ward and wondered whether Andrew McCutchen or Nyjer Morgan would win a foot race and whether the grounds crew is cutting the grass longer with so much speed in the Pirates' lineup, my mom (who took all of these pictures) went on a quest around the ballpark to answer the longstanding question that inspired this website.

Oh, there he is.

As for the game, APK was right when he said it was one of those games that really seemed like the Pirates were going to blow after they only cashed Dontrelle Willis's eight walks and six hits in for six runs (they ended up leaving 14 runners on base). That didn't happen, though because Ross Ohlendorf turned in a good start and other than Steven Jackson's rough outing, the bullpen was good enough to close out the win. Andrew McCutchen got on base four times and scored twice (and made playing center field look easy) while Robinzon Diaz turned in the big hit of the game, a two-out, bases-loaded single that scored the fifth and sixth runs for the Pirates in the fourth inning. Eric Hinske turned in what is probably my favorite line of the year; he went 0-for-1 with a strikeout, four walks, and an RBI when he drew a bases loaded walk from Willis in the weird first inning where we kept loading the bases and scoring without actually getting a hit with the bases loaded.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, despite being roasted alive, and I think we can safely say it was a successful WHYGAVS Day, especially given the late day change. Of course, a big thanks goes out to everyone who made it out today and waited for me to navigate my way to the park. I sure hope you all had as much fun as I did. On a more personal sidenote, if I don't make it back to PNC this year (it's looking unlikely right now), this will be the first time since 1990 that the Pirates went undefeated in games I attended in person. This, along with the fact that the Steelers, Penguins, and Tar Heels have all won major championships this year pretty much makes the Pirates a lock for the playoffs as far as I'm concerned.

Wanted to put this up to remind people that the meetup for WHYGAVS Day is going to be around 12:30 at Firewaters on Federal St. If you've never met me before, just look for the guy in the shirt with the logo up in the sidebar (or alternately, the guy carrying a bunch of those shirts). After we all congregate, we'll buy tickets and head into the park. If you can't make it early or you can't find us at Firewaters, we're more than likely going to try and settle in the bleacher GA section, so you can look for us there.

The game itself is Ross Ohlendorf and Dontrelle Willis. Willis has made a couple decent starts since his return to the big leagues, but he's mostly been pretty rough around the edges, especially when it comes to control. Ohlendorft has been pretty inconsistent bordering on pretty bad in his last few starts, so it'd be nice to see him get himself back on track and close our a second series win for the city over Detroit today.

I actually have a longer Road to 17 post to write up about the whole Penguins winning the Stanley Cup thing, but for now let's just say that I got up at 6:45 AM today to get a t-shirt and a copy of the PG and Trib to laminate and put on my wall next to my Steeler papers.

The official six-week Pirate season begins tonight, because the Penguins are done and the Steelers don't start camp until late July. Zach Duke gets the start against Armando Galarraga. Duke's coming off of one of his worst starts of the season, but those bad starts seem to be isolated to games against the Braves. Which means that either he's going to have a good start tonight, or I just jinxed the crap out of him.

First things first: DRAFT POLL IN THE SIDEBAR.

Second things second: Tony Sanchez signed a deal with a $2.5 million signing bonus with the Pirates and is expected to report to West Virginia by the end of the month or so.

Third things third: Rick Porcello and Ian Snell take the mound tonight to start the 100th anniversary and while I'm a little sad to be missing Porcello's start, it's probably a good thing that we didn't have WHYGAVS Night during an Ian Snell start, because I feel like we might've rioted if he didn't pitch well. (Reminder: WHYGAVS NIGHT IS ON SUNDAY, NOT FRIDAY.) Regardless, Snell seemed to pitch pretty well in light of the Charlie Morton threat in his last start, so hopefully he can keep that trend up tonight against a team that doesn't suck as bad as the Astros do.

Honestly, it's pretty hard to keep my mind on baseball today. I'm considering watching Sudden Death this afternoon, which should tell you what kind of mindset I'm in right now. Accordingly, let's just drop some links and go back to worrying about hockey.

Actually first, let's do a WHYGAVS Night Afternoon announcement. WHYGAVS Night Afternoon will begin at 12:30 at Firewaters on Federal St. on Sunday. If you're not down for drinking in the mid-afternoon, that's cool (I'm not either, I have to drive home when the game is over and by home, I don't mean Hermitage), but it sees as good a place as any to gather up. I'll probably mention this a few more times.

Tim Williams at BuccoFans absolutely killed it during the draft. He's got writeups for every day and info on tons of players.

Keep an eye on Wilbur Miller's site for his take on the draft. I seem to recall he had writeups for every player posted pretty quickly last year.

I'm sharing the link for this week's Futilitywatch here because of how fascinated I was by the players who have hit two triples in one of the first five games of their career.

On the "Game 7" side of things today, PSAMP is rocking the Pens links, and don't forget to check The Pensblog. And if you're not psyched up enough for the game yet, watch this.

I will post a gamethread tonight, even though I don't really expect anyone to be using it.

Sometimes, when a game is on a moment feels like a defining moment. It's never actually easy to diagnose these sorts of moments while in the moment and maybe in the long run they don't mean much, but they feel huge when they happen. Today's ninth inning rally was certainly one of those things that seemed like a huge event for this team when it happened. Time will tell if it means anything more than a tally in the win column, but for now it's a sweet win to savor.

It started with Andrew McCutchen. I'm not sure if I remember a rookie with the Pirates ever looking more immediately in place than 'Cutch does. Even on the nights that he struggles, he just looks like he belongs in the big leagues. This afternoon, he lead off the ninth inning with an 0-for-3, two strikeout day weighing down on him with a lights-out right-handed reliever (Rafael Soriano) on the mound. After taking two strikes, he fouled a pitch off and then took a slider in to right field for a leadoff single. I couldn't see, but from listening on the radio it sounded like a great piece of hitting for anyone, not just a guy that's been in the big leagues for a week. As soon as he got on first, I thought to myself, "He's scoring." After a sac bunt by Nyjer Morgan moved him to second and a groundout by Freddy Sanchez moved him to third, the Braves chose to walk Adam LaRoche to get to Andy. Can you imagine a more motivating situation? Ninth inning, tie game, go-ahead run on third, and if that weren't enough, they intentionally walk your brother to put you in position to win the game.

The younger LaRoche fell behind 0-2 as well, but managed to work the count full before getting fooled on a 3-2 slider and somehow still getting his bat on the ball to flip the ball right up the middle and score both runners. Suddenly, the Bucs were in position to split the series and when Matt Capps closed things down in the ninth, they did. But the important thing was that the two biggest hits in the game for the Pirates were two great pieces of hitting by two young guys that are going to form the core of this team for the forseeable future.

It's also amazing what a ninth inning rally like that can do. It ensured that Paul Maholm's eight-strikeout start didn't come in vain. It erased the frustration created by watching guys in black and gold flail at Javier Vazquez all day. It got the split with the Braves, which feels like a big deal because of the McLouth situation.

The Pirates and Braves wrap their four-gamer at 1:00 this afternoon with Paul Maholm and Javier Vazquez on the mound while the draft wraps up the final 20 picks that will mostly be composed of guys none of us have ever heard of before. Meanwhile, I'm rockin' out in the Shenango Valley this afternoon, which means that I can't see the Pirates' game because it's on Sports South. Feel free to use this thread to post any info about the late draft picks, if you have it, or to talk about the game.