Packed my bags last night, pre-flight

I’ll be headed out of RDU for Fort Myers tonight and since I’ve got a lot of things to take care of before then this will probably be my last post before then. Once I hit F-L-A tonight, you’ll be able to find real-time updates from wherever I am via the constantly updated WHYGAVS Twitter feed. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be pretty much wherever the Pirates are on the Gulf Coast through next Thursday (actually, I think there might be one game I don’t have tickets to, but I’d have to double check with my uncle because he has the tickets) and I’ll post nightly updates with lots of pictures, but since this is also doubling as my vacation I may not post immediately every day. If you’re in Florida and you see this guy (well, soberer, probably, and definitely with shorter hair, but possibly in the same shirt and hat; you get the idea) wandering around, feel free to say hi.

Anyways, some traveling day links:

RJ Anderson at FanGraphs thinks giving Kevin Hart a spot in the rotation is worth the risk for the Bucs. Also at FG, the Pirates have four of the top 50 NL prospects.

Also, Brian Giles retired yesterday. In some ways, he’s like the Ralph Kiner of the last 17 years; an incredible talent that was trapped on an awful team. He was incredible to watch at the plate in his 4+ years with the Bucs and he provided some amazing memories (the grand slam off of Billy Wagner, the amazing leaping catch over the short wall in left, etc.). In other ways, he’s got quite a reputation as a huge jerk, and I’m sorry that I felt the need to compare him a classy guy like Kiner, who’s place in Pirate history has been unfairly buried by the bad teams he played on. Seriously, we need to get that guy a statue better than that weird hand-thing that sits under the stairs in PNC’s main rotunda.