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Posted By: Bob Manning

Jodi:

i was raised in Pittsburgh! I got to watch, well, not Dixie and his friends, but their successors, the Rickey Dinks, the '52 Pirates, whose record of 42-112 has caused them to be identified as The Worst Major League Team ever. (Yes, even including the expansion Mets, mainly ecause the Bucs had no excuse like an expansion roster to hold them back. But probably not including the sorry spectacles they've fielded since the early '90s.) I can't imagine how much more fun they'd have been to watch with Billy Cox on third and Preacher on the mound. (No knock on any of the aces of the pitching staff that year -- Murry Dickson [14-21], Howie Pollet [7-16] and Bob Friend [7-17].) It's hard to imagine that any pitcher could have done well with that bunch of clowns backing them up. But if anybody could have come close, it would have been Preacher.

Bob