It’s been just over six months since a meaningful Pirate game has been played at PNC Park (we don’t need to talk about that game). We’ve been through an off-season, spring training, those weird and stupid Philadelphia games, and a week of regular season baseball, but it’s hard to feel like baseball is really back until you can see the Pirates on the North Shore with the skyline behind them.
I made the same decision this year that I made last year when trying to decide when to take a long baseball weekend in the early spring; as much fun as being in Florida for Spring Training is, I’d rather be at PNC Park to welcome the Pirates home for the first time in 2015. Everyone that was a Pirate fan in the dark days remembers the way that this game used to be the only day that baseball mattered in Pittsbugh; we’d all get together and lament how bad the Pirates were and how we wished that whatever year we were in would be THE YEAR, but we’d all know it wouldn’t be, and by the end of the game a couple of Yinzers with too much Iron City in them would start “Here We Go Steelers” chants. The Pirates would lose and for most people baseball would end.
The Home Opener is a lot different when you can treat it the way it should be treated: as the beginning of something. The Pirates have been incredible at PNC Park the last two years. It was their advantage at PNC that kept them afloat last year when they struggled early on and PNC was home to the most important and dramatic win of 2014 (Russell Martin’s home run). When Andrew McCutchen was interviewed after yesterday’s win on ROOT, you could tell he was being honest when he said that he was just happy to get through the road trip and that he couldn’t wait to get home and play in front of the Pirate fans again. The Pirates have built something these last two years and are hopefully building towards something bigger, and this park and the big baseball-crazy crowds that call it home now are part of all of it. Today, we get to celebrate the return of that aspect of Pirate baseball.
Anyway, the Pirates are 2-4 and the Tigers are 6-0. Gerrit Cole draws the home opener assignment and I’ve got to imagine that he’s going to be amped beyond belief for this game; he’s always risen to the big moments in his career, and his first home opener start is a milestone. Because his first start included a long rain delay, my optimism about this coming season for him hasn’t been dampened much. Anibal Sanchez starts for the Tigers; he has been excellent since arriving in Detroit a few years ago. The weather is supposed to be beautiful. I don’t think you can ask for more out of a home opener than this.
The first pitch is at 1:35. I’ll be there.
Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images
