Playoffs in Pittsburgh -- in October?!

If we were talking about the Penguins, this topic would make no sense at all, since the season starts in October,  If we meant football, it would be possible, provided it was almost Halloween and the rest of the division had managed a collective two wins by the midpoint of the football year.

But Hockey hasn't yet started, the Steelers are 0-3 (a very correctable 0-3 to be fair, but winless nonetheless), and there is one...more...team here...right?

The Pirates are a baseball team located in Pittsburgh.  To any other baseball fan outside of the region, The only other fact they know about the Pirates is "Twenty Straight Seasons".  As in, "Twenty Straight Seasons of losing records" or "Twenty Straight Seasons of Defining 'Suck'".  This is a team that, over several seasons,  had lineups with the likes of Andy Van Slyke (still my favorite player of all time, partly for my love of, and skill at, center field), Bobby Boninlla. Barry "A'fore The Roids" Bonds, Jay Bell, Tim Wakefield, Denny Neagle, Bob Walk, Doug Drabek, Kirk Gibson, Orlando Merced, Llyod McClendon, Al Martin and Gary Varsho.  None a star at the time in their own rights, but all good enough to make it to multiple consecutive National League Chamionships.

Sound familiar?

Take Andrew McCutheon out of the occasion and if's almost the same.  Contributions from young guys like Starling Marte, Gerrit Cole and Andrew Lambo, plus leaders like A.J. Burnett and Jason Grilli have been enormous.  Burnett's record is, in no way, indicative of just how phenomenally he has played this year.  And the newcomers!  Justin Morneau and Marlon Byrd have been astounding.

Here is the bottom line, though: September 23, 2013 will forever go down in Pittsburgh lore as the night that the streak became ancient history.  It had already been broken -- a week prior, the team secured its first wining season since 1992.  But now that news is doing nothing but wrapping up dead fish to be taken home from the market.  Now the news smells not of halibut, but of champagne.

Because my your our Pittsburgh Pirates are playoff-bound.

So it's now approaching October, and the Pirates are relevant.  They even have an outside chance of still winning the division they led by a significant margin this summer.  But with the core they have -- possibly sans A.J. Burnett, but that's another story for another day -- the best news is that this is not a one-and-done team.

There could be a lot more where this came from.

Maybe 20 straight  years of records in the black?

Maybe,  Just maybe,,,