At least Pirates fans can get cheap beer

It’s been another sorry season for the Pittsburgh Pirates, as their streak of consecutive losing seasons reached a record 17 years. At least Pirates fans have one thing to rejoice about: bargain beer prices.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the higher a baseball team’s winning percentage, the higher beer prices tend to be. A study of major league clubs showed that a team with at least a .600 winning percentage charges about $1.30 more per 16-ounce beer than a team floundering with a .400 winning percentage.

The bottom line: “At least the Pirates allow their fans to drown their sorrows at a decent price,” the Journal’s Justin Merry wrote. The Pirates’ PNC Park charges $4.75 for a 21-ounce beer, while at Fenway Park the Red Sox charge a whopping $7.25 for a 12-ounce brew, “a rate that is, ounce for ounce and win for win, the worst beer value in baseball.”

Trivia time

Who has the higher career on-base percentage, Manny Ramirez or Alex Rodriguez?

Hero no more

Now that Argentina is in danger of missing next year’s World Cup in South Africa, Argentina’s soccer Coach Diego Maradona is getting roasted by media and fans.

Considered one of the game’s greatest players, Maradona led Argentina to the World Cup title in 1986 and was named national coach 10 months ago. But the honeymoon period is over.

“This Maradona has shown dramatically that he wasn’t born to coach, that his glorious image was useful at first, but no more,” the Diario Popular newspaper wrote this week after Argentina lost to Paraguay in a Cup qualifier.

Meanwhile, Argentine sports daily Ole wrote: “We’re going nowhere.”

Pitching in the Capitol?

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling still hasn’t decided whether to run for the Senate seat left vacant after the death of Edward M. Kennedy.

On Thursday, Schilling told a Boston radio station: “How many opportunities are you presented with in your life to change the world, to make a difference, on a global scale?” He also said he didn’t want to run just to get a token number of votes. “One of the things I don’t want to do is have this be a joke.”

If Schilling is elected to the Senate, he’d join Hall of Fame pitcher Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.). Schilling would also set an arcane record: most big league wins by a U.S. Senator. Bunning won 224 games in his career, but he never pitched in the postseason. Schilling won 216 regular season games, plus 11 more in the playoffs.

Trivia answer

Ramirez at .411, compared with Rodriguez’s .390.

And finally

From David Letterman’s Top Ten list on surprises in President Barack Obama’s message to students:

“Urged kids to put their allowance on Packers this weekend.”

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