In the wake of Dave Littlefield being cut loose, SportingGurus.com has obtained an early-revision transcript of the statement Bob Nutting intends to give at the press conference he has called for this afternoon to formally announce Littlefield’s canning:

“To the fans of Pittsburgh, who are somehow still loyal to the team despite the fact that the team has been raping and pillaging you ceaselessly for fifteen years and counting: As owner and president of the Pittsburgh Pirates, I owe each and every one of you an apology for permitting Dave Littlefield to work here. Dave is really a very nice man to have around, and always did what we asked him to. Well, except win. Or even come close to winning. Or even take any rational step whatsoever in the general direction of winning. But if I asked him to show up for work at 7, he was there at 6:58.

“I considered offering Dave a reassignment within the organization, because of his team spirit and optimistic attitude, but then I realized that if I put Dave Littlefield in charge of, say, the peanut vendors, it would take him, what, 3 months before we would have the most comically bad peanut vendors in the world? 3 months, maximum. The man is a waste of oxygen in any managerial context. Worse than that.

“I spent the last week looking over Dave’s work since he took over as General Manager, and slowly it began to dawn on me: The franchise would be in much, much, better shape if it simply had no management whatsoever. If McClatchy had simply hired some random kid from Pitt University at $15 an hour to draft players straight out of the Baseball America Prospect Handbook, our farm system would be exponentially better today. If we had never made a single trade during the past seven years, our team would be better today, and not even the Jason Bay heist could possibly have changed that, and if we had never signed a single player to a single contract, we would still be a better team today. With the possible exception of George III during the 1770s, I have never in my life heard of such spectacular mismanagement of anything, at any level, as Dave has perpetuated.

“I am a relentless cheapskate, and to be perfectly honest I don’t especially care how well or badly the team does, as long as I get my 35 million dollars at the end of the year, which I always do. But even I’m ashamed to even have my name attached to this. Dave’s performance has been consistently, in a word, embarrassing, and given his track record, I sincerely would not hire him to manage third shift at a Sheetz gas station. Justin Zeth of SportingGurus.com, among other fine writers, has been charging me with intentionally losing so as to protect my profits. While I wish to make it very clear that this is not the case–because the current collective bargaining agreement guarantees my profits no matter what I do–that the franchise could be this terrible over this extended a period of time does seem logically impossible.

“I don’t know who I’ll hire as the next General Manager, but I can assure you he will be a thoroughly experienced baseball man who no doubt will have already established himself as a failure, because I am certainly not about to pay the going rate for a young, up-and-coming executive or, heaven be still, an established success. I am excited about the coming dramatic improvement in our front office that any sentient life form is certain to provide over Dave Littlefield, and I hope you are too. This is a great day to be a Pirates fan. Please reserve your 2008 season tickets now. Thank you.”