Piratical Baseball Impressions
Last night I was at the first of the Pirates' three games against the Nationals this week. Some quick notes thereon:
* When explaining my plans to people I found it impossible not to refer to it as "the Pirates game", as opposed to "the Nationals game". This led to some brief moments of minor confusion.
* I got somewhat discounted tickets through the local chapter of the Carnegie Mellon alumni organization, which reserved a modest block of pretty decent upper-deck seats on the third-base side. My friends Marina and Josh came along; oddly, they are both Swarthmore alums. After getting beer and food in the middle of the second inning we abandoned the small group for the almost-empty section adjacent.
* The Pirates won, 7-6, in a game that was kind of flabbily played by both sides. Pittsburgh had a big third inning, capped by a big double by Xavier Nady with the bases loaded. Jack Wilson and Ronny Paulino both hit solo home runs to left, which were fun to see. Shawn Chacon had a so-so start (four runs in sixish innings) but did hit two sharp singles during the game, scoring after one of them. The bullpen (except for Torres and Capps, who pitched sharp eighth and ninth innings respectively) was ominously mediocre, but not much more than the Nats.
* The crowd was pretty small for a decent weekday evening in June (albeit one that was threatening rain, though it only followed through halfheartedly about ten minutes after the game ended) -- in fact it didn't feel that much bigger than the Easter Sunday crowd when Jack and I were there last. Lots of people seemed late to their seats and somewhat disengaged from most of what was going on onfield, not that I can blame them. I was happy that a small and vocal minority of Pirates fans was in attendance. The most popular Pittsburgh jerseys I could see were, roughly in order, Jason Bay, Freddy Sanchez, and Ben Roethlisberger.
* I told Marina and Josh about Jack's and my discussion about naming the Washington team back when it moved here from Montreal. I wanted them to be called the Washington Generals, after the Harlem Globetrotters' longtime punching bag. Jack suggested Les Expos americain, which I still use.
* RFK Stadium is not the worst cookie-cutter stadium ever built but it is of course one of the last ones functioning. In a lot of ways it is a living fossil of the historic low point of baseball stadium design: big and impersonal scale, seats far back from the field, a Jumbotron not so jumbo by contemporary standards.
* They have made some concessions to baseball modernity -- a side scoreboard showing some a-la-mode pitcher stats (pitch count, ball/ strike breakdown), firing t-shirts from air guns into the crowd during an inning break, etc. They do have one of those affairs where foam mascots (via the scoreboard and in person along the first base line) "race" through the stadium and various local landmarks. In Pittsburgh they use anthropomorphic pierogies; in D.C. they use the four presidents on Mount Rushmore (more of a South Dakota signifier for me, but whatever). Another between-inning entertainment shows a blocky computer-animated Abraham Lincoln running a game of three-card monte. I told Josh that George Washington would be horrified if he could be brought back to witness all this. "Still," Josh offered, "I think he would be impressed by our projection of power into Mesopotamia."
* The "vote for what song you want to hear" thing on the scoreboard after the seventh doesn't even wait for any audience reaction before declaring the winning song right then and there, apparently by fiat. This in the supposed seat of world democracy no less. I believe the Macarena "won" but the sound system echoes so much we could barely make it out.
* Some under-21 kids who had settled into some seats behind us at some point got busted around the seventh inning for buying beer and led away by a big usher/ bouncer guy. I couldn't tell from looking if they were in high school or college; I find I generally can't anymore.
* A little bit of enthusiastic, unsustainable "Let's Go Bucs!" chanting was taken up by some other young guys sitting here and there near me as Matt Capps crisply worked through the bottom of the ninth. Let's go indeed; happy feelings once the Bucs really do close the deal for the first time in a few games.
* When explaining my plans to people I found it impossible not to refer to it as "the Pirates game", as opposed to "the Nationals game". This led to some brief moments of minor confusion.
* I got somewhat discounted tickets through the local chapter of the Carnegie Mellon alumni organization, which reserved a modest block of pretty decent upper-deck seats on the third-base side. My friends Marina and Josh came along; oddly, they are both Swarthmore alums. After getting beer and food in the middle of the second inning we abandoned the small group for the almost-empty section adjacent.
* The Pirates won, 7-6, in a game that was kind of flabbily played by both sides. Pittsburgh had a big third inning, capped by a big double by Xavier Nady with the bases loaded. Jack Wilson and Ronny Paulino both hit solo home runs to left, which were fun to see. Shawn Chacon had a so-so start (four runs in sixish innings) but did hit two sharp singles during the game, scoring after one of them. The bullpen (except for Torres and Capps, who pitched sharp eighth and ninth innings respectively) was ominously mediocre, but not much more than the Nats.
* The crowd was pretty small for a decent weekday evening in June (albeit one that was threatening rain, though it only followed through halfheartedly about ten minutes after the game ended) -- in fact it didn't feel that much bigger than the Easter Sunday crowd when Jack and I were there last. Lots of people seemed late to their seats and somewhat disengaged from most of what was going on onfield, not that I can blame them. I was happy that a small and vocal minority of Pirates fans was in attendance. The most popular Pittsburgh jerseys I could see were, roughly in order, Jason Bay, Freddy Sanchez, and Ben Roethlisberger.
* I told Marina and Josh about Jack's and my discussion about naming the Washington team back when it moved here from Montreal. I wanted them to be called the Washington Generals, after the Harlem Globetrotters' longtime punching bag. Jack suggested Les Expos americain, which I still use.
* RFK Stadium is not the worst cookie-cutter stadium ever built but it is of course one of the last ones functioning. In a lot of ways it is a living fossil of the historic low point of baseball stadium design: big and impersonal scale, seats far back from the field, a Jumbotron not so jumbo by contemporary standards.
* They have made some concessions to baseball modernity -- a side scoreboard showing some a-la-mode pitcher stats (pitch count, ball/ strike breakdown), firing t-shirts from air guns into the crowd during an inning break, etc. They do have one of those affairs where foam mascots (via the scoreboard and in person along the first base line) "race" through the stadium and various local landmarks. In Pittsburgh they use anthropomorphic pierogies; in D.C. they use the four presidents on Mount Rushmore (more of a South Dakota signifier for me, but whatever). Another between-inning entertainment shows a blocky computer-animated Abraham Lincoln running a game of three-card monte. I told Josh that George Washington would be horrified if he could be brought back to witness all this. "Still," Josh offered, "I think he would be impressed by our projection of power into Mesopotamia."
* The "vote for what song you want to hear" thing on the scoreboard after the seventh doesn't even wait for any audience reaction before declaring the winning song right then and there, apparently by fiat. This in the supposed seat of world democracy no less. I believe the Macarena "won" but the sound system echoes so much we could barely make it out.
* Some under-21 kids who had settled into some seats behind us at some point got busted around the seventh inning for buying beer and led away by a big usher/ bouncer guy. I couldn't tell from looking if they were in high school or college; I find I generally can't anymore.
* A little bit of enthusiastic, unsustainable "Let's Go Bucs!" chanting was taken up by some other young guys sitting here and there near me as Matt Capps crisply worked through the bottom of the ninth. Let's go indeed; happy feelings once the Bucs really do close the deal for the first time in a few games.
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