Tour of Despair: Pittsburgh
‘If you’re miserable now waiting in line, you’re going to be really miserable in hell.’
One team in Pittsburgh played like a .500 team fighting for their postseason lives. The other played like a team with a ripped sail and no rudder.
The Pittsburgh Pirates looked good. The Boston Red Sox did not.
Welcome to the Tour of Despair. Four ballparks. Five days. Bad baseball. Lots of coffee.
Fair warning — This post is longer than mobile email clients allow.
I won’t spoil it, but if you’ve never visited Pittsburgh, as I hadn’t prior to last week, you need to enter by way of I-376 and the Fort Pitt Tunnel. You can thank me later.
PNC Park is the best ballpark in the major leagues. The only people who claim otherwise are those who have never been. The park is immaculately maintained, a self-contained museum of the Pirates’ — and Pittsburgh Crawfords! And Homestead Grays! — storied past, situated in an eminently walkable riverfront (that is, when the Clemente Bridge isn’t being rebuilt) and only a slightly-longer walk to the Mexican War Streets (a spectacular neighborhood for amateur architecture nerds like myself.)
While I’m here, a big thank you to the folks at the Commonplace Coffee at Buena Vista and Jacksonia for letting me hang out there for the afternoon before the game.
The little boy playing in the reflection of the window delighted me, playing on and around the bike rack without a care in the world. He also made me miss my boy back home.
Concession prices at PNC aren’t outlandish, the in-park Wi-Fi is solid, the sightlines are tremendous (though I completely understand why media grumbles about their positioning at the top of the park) and the only qualm I could find was that there are no cell phone charging stations to be found anywhere in the main concourses. Even Cincinnati figured this one out, guys. Come on.
Also, this. I mean, seriously.
This is a city smaller than Milwaukee, half the size of Detroit, yet it plays up. Pittsburgh is aspirational in a way that Cleveland and Detroit aren’t and Milwaukee and cities further into the Rust Belt and Midwest can’t be.
Pittsburgh, I am smitten. I can’t wait to come back. I also need to give Primanti Bros. another chance. It was good, but I feel like I was missing something from the experience.
Your baseball team is steward of some of the greatest players and moments in baseball history. Honus Wagner. Bill Mazeroski. The [original] Great One. Pops. Cobra, boppin. We Are Family. Doug Drabek’s mullet. An ascendant Barry Bonds. MVP-era Cutch.
And whatever Bob Nutting is doing with this franchise now. More on that in a bit.
I’m all out of order here, but after entering the city via Fort Pitt, I knew where I wanted to go first.
On the Pitt campus, with the Cathedral of Learning looming overhead and students moving in for fall semester, what’s left of Forbes Field — a portion of the outfield wall that survived a fire in the early 70s (as noted on the historical marker above) — sits nestled between a dorm and a classroom building. The part of the fence that didn’t survive — the most famous part of the fence — is memorialized by paver bricks along the sidewalk.
In case you are for whatever reason unaware:
A little league field sits behind the fence. Mazeroski Field. Pretty cool.
A couple older gentlemen wandered around the fenceline, along with a father and his kids. The boys weren’t entirely sure what they were doing there. We all made eye contact; did the man-nod. If you’re on that specific spot on campus on Roberto and Vera Clemente Drive, there’s only one reason.
After paying homage, getting lunch and then getting coffee, I was able to get parking directly across the street from PNC. I was worried about demand for this game against the Boston Red Sox: Sox fans travel well, as I discovered a few years ago in San Diego, as Padres fans were pretty much outnumbered at a packed Petco Park. What I should have been more worried about was dollar dog night.
I stood in line for a water, missed the first pitch and Bryan Reynolds’ [first] home run while other patrons were ordering as many hot dogs as humanly possible. The five-wiener limit posted at every register was merely a suggestion; I routinely saw drink carriers loaded with six or more wrapped tube steaks stacked like cord wood.
When I finally got to the register, the exasperated middle-aged lady looked at me and asked me with no shortage of indignation in her voice, “How many do you want?”
“None.”
Her eyes widened and was all to happy to hand over a liter of Smart Water. In good fun, I noted that while I’m a big guy, it was presumptuous to assume I was there for the hot dogs. She apologized. It really wasn’t a deal.
Sugardale hot dogs are garbage, anyway.
I love getting to the ballpark, any ballpark, when the gates open. I want to feel the fading quiet, the dwindling quiet of workers making their final gameday preparations, the crescendo of fans’ excitement for the game. I enjoy strolling around the concourses, taking in the sights and sounds and smells. PNC lends itself remarkably well to the pregame constitutional. The riverwalk along center and right fields is special; face one direction and you’re treated to batting practice. Face the other and you get a spectacular view of the Allegheny and downtown.
Then there’s this guy.
There’s no shortage of things to see along the riverwalk. Every home run that hits the river is commemorated.
Every one of Pittsburgh’s championship teams is honored.
And there’s this Topps-inspired gem:
PNC is undefeated.
Its tenants, on the other hand, are not. This is, after all, the Tour of Despair.
The Boston Red Sox are more talented than their record indicates, but they’ve slumped to the bottom of the AL East. The Pirates have signficantly less talent and are only out-tanked this season by the Nationals.
On this pleasant Thursday evening in Pittsburgh in August, though, the Pirates looked like the team with something to prove, while the Red Sox went through the motions — a team in full retreat.
I kept thinking to myself, ‘They brought back Alex Cora for this?’
Sure, the Red Sox won 92 games last season, but they feasted on the not-quite-ready Orioles, the Royals, the underwhelming Twins and the pathetic Marlins and just-listed Nationals. Against stiffer competition, they were closer to a .500 ballclub. Regression was inevitable.
Yet, here in August 2022, there was no such fight left in the Red Sox to address this Pirates club. Derek Shelton’s Pirates, instead, looked like a team with something yet to prove, despite this season being a six-month formal preceding for draft position next summer.
In a serendipitous combination of emerging talent and Bostonian offensive ineptitude, J.T. Brubaker turned in seven brilliant innings, not allowing a Red Sox player past first base. He struck out seven, walked none and yielded two hits. The Red Sox wouldn’t put a man in scoring position until roughing up swingman Zach Thompson in the seventh for both their runs (Manny Bañuelos allowed one of the two on a sac fly.)
Josh Winckowski isn’t ready for the big leagues, getting shelled for six runs on seven hits in five innings. Bryan Reynolds took him deep twice, and looked every bit the player who should have been traded at the deadline. Brewers icon Ben Gamel doubled in two runs.
Oneil Cruz looks big on TV. He looks bigger in person. Cruz had a garbage time single in the eighth, but every time he came to the plate, even with his batting average hovering around .200, there was electricity in the air. He’s so raw, a terrible hitter with minimal plate discipline and in many ways still learning how to play.
But the difference between Oneil Cruz and a replacement-level jabroni (and celebrated Brewer killer) like Wily Mo Peña is that you can see Cruz’ vast potential and, what’s more, he may tap into it sooner than later. He’s smart, talented, charismatic. Potentially, a left-handed Aaron Judge who happens to play short. A baseball Giannis. And he, like Reynolds, is stuck on this dumpster fire of a team and organization.
After Shelton left Cam Vieaux hung out to dry like Isaiah’s suffering servant in a 19-2 drubbing courtesy the Brewers on July 1, it was easy to assume the Pirates are tanking. After seeing them in person in August, witnessing a team with nothing to play for take it to a team that has faded hard down the stretch, it could be believed that Bob Nutting isn’t the profiteering carpetbagger he’s made out to be. The Pirates’ problem is that they draft and develop, and do so well: remember, Gerrit Cole, Joe Musgrove and Jameson Taillon all started here. Josh Bell and Starling Marte were free agent darlings last offseason. It’s like a slightly watered down version of the Marlins a few years ago, but with fries on top.
Then you read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s piece from April (paywalled, but accessible in reader mode) where leaked documents strongly suggest the club’s payroll is strongly linked to concessions and ticket sales. Nothing there disabuses public opinion.
The answer, then, is clear: More dollar dog nights, Bob!
I wanted to see the Jolly Roger raised. After a nerve-racking top of the eighth and Colin Holderman came in to wrap up the proceedings and the ribbon boards and panels everywhere flashed variations of Raise the Jolly Roger and RTJR, I waited and watched from the concourse.
It started to go up the center field flagpole. It stopped.
It went a little further. And stopped again.
Nothing.
Still nothing.
For all I know, the Jolly Roger is still stuck about three-eighths up that flagpole here three weeks later.
If that isn’t the perfect metaphor for the post-Bonds Pirates, I don’t know what is.