Cubs/Pirates October 7

Three hours before game time Clemente Bridge leading to PNC Park is packed with people, most of whom are probably at their first game of the year, drinking Bud Light.  Bud Light.  Like having sex in a boat-f-n’ near water.  How do people drink that stuff? 

I give the Pirates credit for trying to create a Wrigley-ville type atmosphere with bands playing in the closed streets.  They aren’t there yet but there are a few bars and lots going on before the game most of which we wouldn’t even sniff at in Wrigley Field, like people dressed as pirates with eye patches, three cornered hats and peg legs.  If these guys showed up in Wrigley-ville they would probably be found somewhere in the middle of Lake Michigan by the third inning.  Though my Cubs have tried a mascot or two, and they have a stupid bear named Clark (for Clark and Addison the intersecting streets for Wrigley Field) they realize we will probably behead him if he shows up in public so he is resigned to kids parties and senior citizens flower shows and never shows his face inside the ballpark.

The atmosphere outside the Pirates ballpark isn’t helped because half the people milling around think they are at a Penguins game.

There is bravado, of course, lots of half-drunk men and woman shouting ‘Go Bucs’ as if the team can hear them.  Why do people do that?  Do they think the team can hear them half a mile away in their clubhouse?  This too is like drinking Bud Light…waste of time.  I do notice they are all in black shirts.  Seems the Pirates have done the college football thing of calling for a ‘blackout.’  Inside the park the Pirates continue doing something else they have borrowed from college football use artificial means to generate enthusiasm which the people in black shirts seem to ignore. 

The Pirates are also the most self-promoting team in baseball. Every inning also includes video of Andrew McCutchen hitting another homerun (in dreadlocks, by the way, which he cut off before the season started), or one of the other guys like their closer Mark Melancon striking out somebody.  They do it at a very high volume and most people don’t even notice during the game.  And when they are losing, like they were to the Cubs, just before the ninth inning they drag up that scene from one of the repetitive Pirates of Penzance movies…wait, it isn’t Penzance is it? No it’s some place with an island name.  Cape Cod?  Anyway, they bring up that sorry video of some woman yelling ‘hoist the colors’ and then they all waive their stupid pirate flags and shout themselves hoarse…only to have their inspired team go out one, two, three.

I have a pretty good seat in the lower seats in right field.   PNC Park is one of those weird places, seemingly designed by Helen Keller, that makes you walk up to walk down, there being no vomitoriums (did you know the passageway to your seat was called a vomitorium by the Romans?  They were so described by some guy named Macrobius because they ‘disgorged patrons to their seats.’  I think he was a shortstop, which in Roman amphitheaters meant he was the guy who tried to stop the lions short of eating the Christians)…anyway my vomitorium is reached by going up a staircase, then down a flight of stairs, and I have to walk past rows and rows of blackout, which is really just rows and rows of drunk people yelling Go Bucs.

The game starts well for me because Fowler singles and Schwarber doubles him home.  But nothing matches the next time Schwarber is up when he hits a ball into the river---the Hudson River---about 400 miles away…what a bomb.

From there it is all Cubs and Arrieta owns the Pirates.

In the stands various fights break out mostly started by idiot Cubs fans who decide to rub the Pirates noses in it.  One such idiot…no, let me say it, asshole--is two seats away from me and spends the entire first eight innings yelling ridiculous things thinking he’s funny but just pissing off everyone around him, Cubs and Pirate fans alike.  He also compares Arrieta to Sandy Koufax.  Sandy Koufax.   I just want to puke.  In the seat next to me is the business man that brought the asshole.  He is forced to put up with him because, well, the guys pays his bills.  He’s also an interesting character with a dip the size of Rhode Island in his lip which he uses to create a large volume of spit which lands at my feet about three times per inning. Mr. Smokeless Tobacco has teeth the color of Batman and breath that can take the chrome off a trailer hitch, which he proceeds to blow in my face for nine innings as he complains about the guy that keeps his business open.  My seat mate has been to a lot of games.  His client, yea, probably first one of the year.  He calls Arrieta, Arteta the whole game, and refers to Roberto Clemente as Clementine.   Approximately sixteen rows of people in black shirts and one guy in a Cubs jacket are hoping for that one foul ball that will result in a casualty.

On the field the violence isn’t much better.  Arrieta has hit Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli on the hand at a time when he sure isn’t going to hit Franciso Anybody on the hand. (He should actually have hit him every time he came up for no other reason than his walk up music is Dean Martin singing ‘when the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie’ because Cervelli is obviously Italian.  He was born in Venezuela for god’s sake).

Later Arrieta hits somebody else by mistake, my opinion based on the fact that the guy is throwing a three hit shutout and the last thing he wants to do is put somebody on base.  The Pirate assholes (yes they have their share) start yelling for blood and a guy behind me who looks like he came to the game from his telemarketing job selling Life Lock,  demands that the Pirates hit two of our guys to make up for the terrible transgressions of Arrieta.  They hit only one, Arrieta.  Benches clear with lots of pushing and shoving and no punches except for Sean Rodriguez of the Pirates who had been lifted for a pinch hitter before he had even batted in the second inning, who goes berzerk.   Later, after order was restored, he punched out a water cooler.  The judges ruled the fight with the water cooler a draw.

I have written elsewhere about baseball fights.  They are closer to Dancing with the Stars than fights.  Nobody ever actually hits anyone.

The Cubs continue to dominate, actually Arrieta dominates, and your humble reporter gets ready to go home happy.  Of course your humble reporter also has to acknowledge about 50 people on the way to the car who have decided I am the Cubs manager Joe Maddon.  Joe Maddon does look like me…notice the positions of each of us here… I’ve had this beard on and off for 45 years and I’ve always worn a Cubs hat. Joe donned a Cubs hat (thank you Jesus) about 10 months ago and grew his beard in Spring Training.  ‘No,’ I say repeatedly, ‘I’m not Joe Maddon…DO YOU THINK THE MANAGER OF THE CUBS IS WALKING TO HIS CAR IN A CUBS HAT AND JACKET RIGHT AFTER WINNING THE WILD CARD GAME?’  Several of the before mentioned Pirates fans refuse to take no for an answer so I sign their autographs.  When they get home they will be shocked to see I have signed my name and ‘hoist this’

I have been here four times this year to see the Cubs and truth is I really like this city and the ballpark, and frankly the team.  The city has great bike paths along the forty seven rivers that all flow through town and the Clemente Bridge, which is closed to traffic on game days and gives me a chance to remember him, one of the greatest players of all time.  Clemente; now that was a ballplayer who also would have hated people dressed like pirates.

But I ain’t coming back this year…

On to St Louis.