Bill Robinson’s aim is true

As promised, the update on the 1977 Pirates in Jeff Polman’s Play that Funky Baseball is after the jump.

I’m not sure I could’ve written a better start to the season than the three game sweep of the real-life NL East champ Phillies that my pseudo-squad opened the season with. John Candelaria out-dueled Steve Carlton in the opener, tossing a complete game shutout for the 3-0 win, then Bill Robinson lost his mind with three homers and nine RBI over the next two games, leading the Bucs to 18-4 and 8-4 victories to close out the sweep. I have already begun distributing the following picture to those responsible for voting on the MVP, on the pretense that it’s 1977 and so presumably they will have never seen anything like this and will both give Robinson the MVP and me some kind of Major Award.

Unfortunately, the bats went cold in today’s home opener and we were shut out 5-0 by Paul Moskau and the carcas of the Big Red Machine managed by long-time blog-friend-of-WHYGAVS, Amanda of Red Hot Mama. Can this pseudo-version of the Lumber Company find their bats? Can we hold off the eventual real-life National League Champion Dodgers, who have also started 3-1? There’s only (only!) 150 games left to find out for certain.