PITTSBURGH—After losing their fifth straight game Monday, the Pittsburgh Pirates were mathematically eliminated from Major League Baseball, having fallen to a 36-69 record that officially disqualified the team from ever playing the sport again. "Eventually it comes to a point where there just aren't enough future games to turn things around for a baseball team," manager John Russell said following a 4-0 loss to the Reds that ended the Pirates franchise. "I had high hopes that we would go deeper into our regular seasons, but truthfully, we've been playing so lousy for the last 18 years that even if we got to our 106th game we wouldn't have been able to contend." In response to the Pirates' getting knocked out of professional baseball forever, Pittsburgh fans said that they were frankly relieved.