Everybody's talking

I don't listen to any sports talk radio, mosty because I'm out of signal range to get Rob Egan and Joe Shuta.

Sports talk in Pittsburgh comes with a lot of attitude, and a lot of the same people saying the same things over and over. I don't have a preset saved for either of the two all-sports stations. My only exposure to telephone sports talk comes from the 10:35 p.m. show on the CW, which is the low budget operation that  KDKA-TV runs out of its basement.

I mostly watch that one because my friend Ron Cook is a regular, and I can ridicule him for driving into town after 10 o'clock on $4-a-gallon gasoline to listen to people who don't have a clue. The paper pays them a $50 appearance fee, which hardly seems worth it.

Anyway, I'm watching the other night and a guy calls with the solution to the Pirates' problem. Keep the lineup intact, but spend some money and go out and buy a 20-game winner. Brilliant. They can probably get one at the 20-game Winner store, maybe take advantage of a buy-one, get-one sale.

Here are the facts: Nobody has enough pitching. The Yankees don't, and the Yankees could buy New Hampshire if they wanted to. So the odds that the Pirates are going to buy a 20-game winner are not real good.

That call trumped the one I heard a week earlier. The discussion was centered on the Steelers' ownership situation. A caller suggested that fans could donate $50 each so that Dan Rooney would have enough money to buy out his brothers and keep the franchise. Yes, a telethon for a multi-millionaire. Makes perfect sense.