Laurels & lances: Baseball and social media
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Laurel: To kicking things off. It’s here. The start of the Major League Baseball season. All across the country — and Toronto — people are getting psyched for the boys of summer to start playing ball.
Pittsburgh Pirates fans have an uncharacteristic reason to be enthusiastic.
In a normal year, the big excitement would be food-related. And hey, PNC Park is offering a footlong Renegade Dog topped with pot roast, pierogis and more, so the culinary thrills are still on the menu.
But here we are a week into baseball season and the Pirates are … not bad? We hesitate to court chaos, but right now the Bucs are seven games in and have lost only once. Is it that Andrew McCutchen is back? Is it work in the offseason? Was there some kind of deal with the devil? No one knows.
Yet the home opener against the Baltimore Orioles is imminent, and whether through hard work or prayer, the Pirates are first in their division. In fact, they have have the best record in the whole National League.
It feels like a trick. History tells us it won’t last. We’ve gotten resigned to finishing in the bottom come fall. For right now, though, we are willing to live in the present and hope for the best.
Lance: To a questionable choice. Allegheny County Department of Emergency Services is doing the right thing by keeping the explosion in Plum’s Rustic Ridge neighborhood in the forefront of investigations.
It is important to get answers about the Aug. 12 blast that destroyed three homes, damaged others and killed six people. That is particularly true given other explosions in the region. Unanswered questions and unresolved concerns do not make people feel safe.
But on Monday, Allegheny County Police went to the public to get information. They released Aug. 9 doorbell camera footage from the home of Paul and Heather Oravitz, where the explosion originated. It showed a bearded man in a ball cap walking up the steps, with a pickup in the driveway.
The social media post said police and the county fire marshal were “seeking assistance from the public in identifying this individual in connection” with the investigation. Within 92 minutes, the post was updated. The man was identified and “investigators are in contact.”
The police could have done more to promote what was in the second post in their thread. “This individual is NOT suspected of any wrongdoing,” the post stated. Good to know, Allegheny County police. Let’s hope everyone saw that — except we know they didn’t. The original post had 4,703 views. The second? Just 1,388.