Break out the green weenie, the rally caps, the “We Are Family” T-shirts and every other good-luck charm you can think of because baseball season is here and the Pittsburgh Pirates opened the 2022 season in St. Louis on Thursday.

They actually made headlines across the sports world on Opening Day for baseball and also the opening round of the Masters. And it wasn’t for playing baseball under par, although that would be a good expectation for the blundering Bucs.

They did it by signing one of their better players to what is considered a huge contract in Pittsburgh. It is hard to relate to the numbers that sports heroes get paid, but third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes certainly is a rich young man as of this morning. He signed a contract for a reported eight years at $70 million with options that could pay him more.

But even in doing so, the hapless hackers of Pittsburgh showed once again why they are so far behind the other teams. The new contract which the Pirates brass was bursting buttons over was the first one to exceed the contact with Jason Kendall in 2000. Think about that. The puny-hitting Pirates haven’t had a lot of superstars, but surely a few were better and deserved more than a catcher who had no power but was a decent singles hitter.

Maybe Josh Bell or Andrew McCutchen? Or how about Gerrit Cole, the now New York Yankee superstar who we traded for the proverbial handful of beans that Jack’s mother threw out the window. Nope, not a one of them could make Bob “hold ‘em tight” Nutting release his grip on those dollars. Not even as the value of the franchise grew to exceed $1 billion did he blink and lose a nickel. So as the fans celebrate the long-term contract executed Thursday, which makes certain future generations of Hayes family members will be able to afford Pirates season tickets, the rest of the league chuckles at the reality that something must be wrong with Ke’Bryan or he never would have accepted such a low offer.

Maybe there was a zero missing from the check. Maybe his wrist injury has caused him to permanently lose the power in his swing that was going to create more homers than even Kendall hit (Kendall hit 75 home runs in his career with a single season best of 14 in 2000). Or maybe he is a believer in enough is enough, and he decided $70 million was enough to play a game for eight years.

Most likely, there is an underlying reason why he came cheap, but since cheap is the pitiful Pirates franchise’s favorite word, they didn’t dig any deeper looking for the Pirate Treasure Chest of gold, or Pandora’s box of injuries. Surely the ineptitude of the worst franchise in sports can’t cause them to lose forever. Maybe this is that breakthrough year that our friends Grace and Scott always hold out for season after season. If not, we’ll get ‘em next year.

— RV