Let’s start with this: From when I got down to Pittsburgh around 5 PM until the first pitch was amazing. There were a handful of moments from 2001-2007 at PNC Park where I’d look at my dad or my friend or whoever I was at the game with and say, “THIS! This is it! This is what PNC Park would be like if the Pirates were good!” but I never had any sort of reality to tie that to. I thought that I understood through the TV while watching last year’s playoffs from North Carolina, but I didn’t. Three hours before gametime, Federal Street was curb-to-curb with people in Pirate gear, just buzzing about the game. The lineup introductions and the National Anthem were indescribable. It felt like it was a whole baseball stadium full of a college football student section or maybe … I don’t even know. The usual words like “electric” or “I got a chill down my spine” doesn’t really even start to cover it.
And then the game started. The Giants hit three balls on the nose, and the Pirates went down quickly. In the second, the Giants started working the count deep against Volquez, though they didn’t score, and then the Pirates went down quickly again. I told a few people that as far as I could tell, Volquez had only generated one swing-and-miss in the first two innings and that I was concerned. In the fourth inning, after Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence nearly homered, I told my dad that if the Pirates didn’t get somebody up in the bullpen soon, that the Pirates were going to lose the game that inning. Two batters later, they lost the game.
I don’t really feel like re-hashing the whole game or the decision to start Volquez or any of that at this point, because it’s late and I’m tired and I have a flight back to North Carolina in an alarmingly short amount of time. All I can say is this: you only had to look across the field to understand why you’d want your best starter going in this game. Madison Bumgarner was in command from the first pitch, and he shut down one of the National League’s best offenses without any incident whatsoever tonight. When the season comes down to one game, you want a pitcher that can do that on the mound. The Giants had that pitcher tonight, and the Pirates didn’t. The Giants will play on Friday, and the Pirates will not.
