If old-school and new-school baseball fans ever had a class warfare, pretty clear where the battle lines would be drawn. Two things drive the traditional fan nuts:

• The DH
• The automatic removal of starting pitchers, regardless of how well they are doing or how many/few pitches they have thrown, when it’s closing time.

Today’s game gets underway, Jose Tabata steps in as the Pirates’ leadoff batter against Travis Wood, kisses a ball off the center-field fence for a triple … and I have this thought:

Jose Tabata is this wonderful season’s Dick Schofield.

History, at least baseball history, always repeats itself. Baseball life is cyclical, we’ve always heard. And here it is again.

On Sept. 6, 1960, while leading the Pirates’ pennant charge and on his way to earning National League MVP honors, shortstop Dick Groat is plunked on the left wrist by a pitch from Milwaukee’s Lew Burdette.

Groat is lost for the rest of the season, a devastating blow to a long-time doormat trying to win its first pennant in 33 years.

But — Dick Schofield, with only 39 at-bats all season until then, steps in for him and goes on to hit .381 (24-for-63) the rest of the season, helping the Bucs to a 12-8 finishing kick that raises the flag.

Flash forward 53 years … 

Starling Marte is stepped on by Arizona third baseman Martin Prado on Aug. 18, when the Pirates are holding onto a slim NL Central lead, suffering a badly-bruised right hand from which he has yet to return to the starting lineup.

This is potentially a devastating blow to an even longer-time doormat trying to win its first pennant in 34 years.

But — Tabata is Marte’s primary replacement both in left field and atop the lineup, and in 23 games since has hit a hard .281, with eight extra-base hits, helping the Bucs to a 15-8 surge that keeps them tied for the division lead.

I love a deja vu like that, don’t you?

Yeah, I’ve got an affinity for nicknames, as anyone who reads me even semi-regularly knows.

Well, I’ve got another one for the Pirates:

The “Carrie Corsairs.”

You know, how in the Brian De Palma movie of Stephen King’s book, Carrie keeps leaping back in your face when you think she and the movie are over?

Okay, that’s the Bucs.

They still may not be able to reclaim first place and have to make do as a Wild Card playoff team, but, regardless, the sense they wouldn’t be able to recover from the St. Louis mugging is officially wrong.

Not only have they responded with two wins against a difficult foe in a difficult park, but the manner in which they knocked off the Rangers twice is the stuff of peerless resilience, nerve, and ice-blooded cool.

This is the time for certain baseball teams to play out the string. Clearly, the Pirates’ string is attached to a yo-yo.

Oh — and Gerrit Cole is really good.

Everyone into, or part of, baseball jokes about “today’s game is the biggest … until tomorrow’s,” because a season has so many of them.

But for the Pirates … today’s game IS the biggest.

A combination of things makes the season’s penultimate game against the Cardinals the one wall the Bucs have to knock down to have a shot at the division title:

• Lose once more, and the ’82′ will be towering over you and jumping at you in your sleep. Clint Hurdle said being stuck on 81 isn’t on his players’ minds, because the 20-year non-winning streak just isn’t their bag. Lose once more, and it will be.
• Jeff Locke. A strong return start by the All-Star would be a fantastic final push. He’ll face another ace — Adam Wainwright — who has been going through a lull. The edge in this duel of dulled aces will be huge, going forward.
• A couple of times, the Bucs have been able to fight their way back on top after falling out of first place. I don’t see it happening a third time. Keep it, or forget it.

Anita Baker tells us, “Love has a rhythm, and Mother Nature has a rhythm and love … oh, yes, love has a rhythm.“

So does baseball. One of the things that attracted me, as a youngster, to the sport was its rhythm. A baseball game gradually builds to a resolution, its crescendo. Like a long, escalating drumroll breaking into The Noise.

Football games give you the two-minute warning. Basketball games give you the Manic Final Minute.

A baseball game gives you Infinity. It’s not over until a pitch, or yet another hit in a rally full of them, says it’s over.

September is like that. It rolls down a hill, kicking up a dust storm, keeping secret who is what and where until it cross the line and the dust settles. September is like the last five minutes of a Hitchcock film.

Now, MLB.com is doing a wonderful daily job of capturing, displaying and celebrating the  Pulse of the Postseason. Check it out and feel the rhythm.

Make no mistake about it, being sent to the Minors is a bitter pill for Jeff Locke — with no assurance it will have hoped-for results.

It matters little that the Pirates sent him down, giving him down-time in more ways than one, knowing they can get him back in a matter of days, since rosters will expand on Sunday.

But while the Bucs will be playing the Cardinals for the division lead this weekend, Locke will be in Altoona. That’s a heck of a comedown for an All-Star. But Clint Hurdle could not afford throwing at St. Louis a guy with a second-half opponents average of .340.

This is a risky gambit with Locke. It gives him more time to deepen his mental funk. The down time gives him more time to think about things, after over-thinking had already been a problem.

And, there really is no comparison to what James McDonald went through the second half of last season. As we now know, McDonald was dealing with physical issues that were unknown at the time, but from which he is still trying to recover.

Still, on the sheer numbers, it is a bizarre reoccurrence. Enough so that I don’t know whether to call him James Locke or Jeff McDonald. 

If the Pirates hang on to win the NL Central, it could be a four-gone conclusion.

The Bucs have had amazing success in one of the increasingly odd quirks of modern baseball scheduling — the four-game series. It’s a trend that has already continued in San Francisco, with their wins in the first two games of this four-play with the Giants.

This is the Pirates’ eighth four-game series of the season — and they’ve won six of the first seven, with a split of the other.

So their won-loss record in four-game series, up to the minute, is 22-8.

That includes the back-to-back home-and-home Interleague two-game sets with Detroit. But it doesn’t even include the recent five-game set with the Cardinals, of which the Bucs won four.

Great news: Two more four-game series remain on the schedule, consecutively against the Cubs and the Padres Sept. 12-19 in PNC Park.

The veteran outfielder has been binding his time in Indianapolis, watching a procession of younger players ride to Pittsburgh shuttle.

On Wednesday, it was finally time for Felix to get his piece of the Pie.

Pardon the pun — but the Bucs called up Felix Pie from the Indians this morning, and immediately installed him as the leadoff hitter and left fielder for the series finale against the Padres.

The need for help arose with Starling Marte still nursing a bruised right-hand, and being joined in the  trainer’s room by Jose Tabata — he complained of tendinitis in the left knee following Tuesday night’s game.

Marte and Tabata may both be available off the bench Wednesday.

“But why push it from a starting position?” manager Clint Hurdle reasoned. “That’s why Pie is here.”

Pie came with a .251 average in 105 games with the Indians — and 38 steals, which had him fourth in the International League.

“The kid’s full of energy and effort, and has experience. The last month, his swing has started to play better,” Hurdle said.

Pie: “I can play defense, hit, steal a base — I’ll do the best I can.”

The 28-year-old Dominican makes his return on the second anniversary of his last Major League appearance: On Aug. 21, 2011, he was in Baltimore’s outfield for the Orioles’ game in Anaheim. That was the left-hander hitter’s 398th big-league game.

Ever get the feeling you’re stuck in a “Twilight Zone” episode? So help me Rod Serling, I’ve had that sensation for nearly two years now, since returning to Pittsburgh to cover the Pirates for MLB.com.

Flashback: As a kid rooting for the Bucs, I would often base my faith in divine powers on getting answers to prayers such as, “If there’s a God, please let Virdon hit one out here.” Bear in mind, just the messed up ramblings of a very juvenile mind. Did it work? Well, I still consider myself pretty devout. Anyway, I got the impression the Pirates couldn’t win if I wasn’t looking over them.

Again, the perceptions of a juvenile mind. Except, stuff like that tends to stick with you, and starts messing with your adult mind (this is where the Twilight Zone comes in).

Like everyone else, reporters get occasional time off. Unlike most people, ours isn’t a Monday-to-Friday world, so the off days come in chunks of series.

In my two years of covering the Bucs, I’ve seen them go 123-91. When I have not been on the scene, they have gone 26-39.

I got into the irrational dichotomy last season, the Pirates’ 20th straight with a losing record. Not as far as I was concerned: I saw a 65-61 club (which made them 14-22 without my presence).

So it became somewhat of a running gag.

But it isn’t funny any more. The numbers this season are 12-17 … and 58-30.

The only four series I’ve missed the last six weeks are the only ones they have lost. Two sweeps since the first week of the season — in Atlanta in June and this past weekend in Colorado. Yep, wasn’t at either one.

I’m on my way to St. Louis. Don’t plan on missing any more games. Ridiculous? Call the loony bin? Felony supersition? 

All of the above. But Rod and I are going all the way on this one.

Is this the Pirates team you will be telling your grandkids about?

As a kid growing up in 1960 Pittsburgh, I’ve got faint recollections of old geezers telling me about the 1927 Pirates — the last ones to appear in a World Series. They kept talking about “33 years being a long time to wait.”

34 years is even longer — but that is how far 1979 is in the rearview mirror.

Is this the Pirates team you will be telling your grandkids about?

The thing that made those ’60 Pirates such a compelling story — I would image fans in AARP still flash on that team before thoughts of the ’71 or ’79 champs — is that they rose from years of muck.

Three years before that ’60 season, the Pirates had a 92-loss season — dotting an eight-season stretch in which they had averaged 97 losses.

Three years ago, the Pirates had a 105-loss season — dotting an eight-season stretch in which they had averaged 95 losses.

Is this the Pirates team you will be telling your grandkids about?

Pretty soon, you will not be the only ones talking about them. America loves rags-to-riches and underdog stories. The Bucs’ only remaining competing suitors for America’s heart are the Kansas City Royals. Once the Tigers pull away from them in the AL Central, America will be smitten with these Pirates.

There will be a bandwagon convoy — just like in 1960, when every magazine from LOOK to LIFE featured them in cover stories that were odes to their gutty, never-say-die, comeback-addicted personality.

Is this the Pirates team you will be telling your grandkids about?