Laurels & lances: World Series, sirens, singers

Laurel: To having a long memory. Can you cast yours back far enough to recall when the Pittsburgh Pirates were more than a perennial paperweight for Major League Baseball? This year marks 40 long, long years since the Bucs took Pittsburgh to the big dance and brought home the title of World Series Champions.

Baseball fans in the Steel City may have gotten used to saying goodbye to the boys of summer come October, but the luster doesn’t fade when you remember a team — and a city — that played and celebrated like a family. Pittsburgh will always be the City of Champions, no matter how long it takes to pick up another title.

Lance: To unfortunate side effects. A fire siren is loud. No two ways about it. And that’s the point. A siren is meant to grab attention.

It’s not surprising that it does just that for people who live near the West Point Volunteer Fire Company siren on New Market Drive. And it is understandable that a mom like Brittany Waterhouse would be distressed by the noise and the effect on her small children.

The fire company is testing the siren’s decibel levels, which are supposed to be loud but safe, and it has been turned off temporarily to fix problems.

But the siren has a job to do, and the whole community is safer when it gets done.

Laurel: And speaking of sirens, here’s to the kind that sing. When Carrie Underwood came to town, it was easy to think Saturday’s show was going to be all about the superstar, especially when she breezed into Pittsburgh with Dick’s Sporting Goods bearing $100,000 worth of funding for girls sports programs at five local schools.

But she shared her spotlight. Molly Papp, a 2018 Norwin grad, got a chance to pick up Ludacris’ part in Underwood’s “The Champion,” dedicating the performance to her mother, Joan, who has fought multiple sclerosis for 30 years.

“This disease could knock her down and break her, but she always manages to come out stronger,” Molly wrote in the essay she submitted with a video. “My mom is my biggest champion.”