Baseball, Barry, and the 'Burgh:
Let's Go to Work
May 1, 1997
Pittsburgh. I've been working seven day weeks, eighteen hours a day, for four months in a startup company, but I've insisted to my partner we take the afternoon off. It's May, the first real month for baseball, and our product is late in shipping, but there's a day game scheduled at Three Rivers. It may not be grass, but it's daylight, and the San Francisco Giants are in town. It is, in short, time to go see a baseball game.
I want my partner to have a chance at seeing one of the best ballplayers ever, Barry Bonds, who makes $20,000 an at-bat and is loathed by local Pirate fans. Barry holds a fascination for me, because not only is he almost exactly my age, but I almost got into a fist fight with him when we were twelve. I sat next to him by coincidence at an Indians' game, and apparently didn't root hard enough for dad Bobby. Boys were boys, and we scrapped a little and then went on our with our separate lives. But he's also clearly among the best ever, and excellence in any field should be respected and explained to the ignorant.
But there's another hidden agenda here: my partner's a Briton, and has never been to a baseball game before. My wife and I have a secret vice, perhaps common but rarely spoken of amongst baseball die-hards: we love to introduce people to the game. We love to warp them with our opinions on the game, from the viability of NL pitchers hitting to the desecration of astroturf to the state of economics of the game to our own system for scoring games. Here we have fresh fodder.
We have a hard time explaining to him why only a few thousand people are in a stadium that holds 70,000, and why they built a ballpark on one of the most scenic urban locations in the world -- overlooking the junction of three rivers and the marvelous Pittsburgh skyline -- that closes the fans off from the view. I feel the need to apologize for the rude ticket vendor, who sells us tickets in the exact area we asked not to be seated, the rude concessionaires, who usher us through a chain-link walkway to get our dogs and beer even though there's nobody in line, and the at-best indifferent ushers, who fail to make contact with the seat they're supposedly wiping off. I explain haltingly to our guest why we have to go to the ticket window in the first place, since the only way the Pirates allow tickets to be purchased in advance is via a $3 surcharge and Ticketmaster, who know even less about the seating. Pittsburgh is a friendly city, and something is deeply wrong with a baseball club that makes it seem not so.
The weather is brisk and while the attendance is announced at 10,000, there are probably no more than a few thousand fans in the stadium. It's an older crowd, likely taking advantage of the daylight hours and the half-priced senior citizen tickets. I reminisce with the older fans about Forbes Field, Clemente, and Maz' home run, even though I was in first grade when the first was torn down, in second when the sainted Roberto died, and not born when Mazeroski killed the gigantic Yankees. I saw my first game in Pittsburgh in 1992 -- a playoff game we went to on a whim when we found out, much to our surprise that good playoff tickets were available the day before the game. It was the night of Bob Walk's two-hit win against the Braves, the last win by a Champion Pirate team that mattered, the Presidential debate between Bush and Clinton, and Robby Alomar's extra innings homer that propelled the Jays past the A's and onto their championship. But somehow it's more comfortable to talk about the more distant Pirate past with these folks, a past I never knew or cared about until moving here a few years ago.
Pittsburgh is full of baseball history. You can walk along the sidewalk in front of part of the Forbes Field wall that was left standing, walk over a plate marking the spot where Maz' homer left the field, and slide across the original homeplate at its original location, encased in worn plexiglass in a hallway of the University of Pittsburgh's monstrosity of a library. You can walk along the area where the Homestead Crawfords once played at Greenlee field, mostly abandoned after the Hill District's thriving black middle class was cut-off by a ringed highway in urban renewal of the 1950s. You can even still play where the Grays and Crawfords played in Homestead, on a weedy field on a hill overlooking the abandoned site of the fabled Homestead steel works. Only a set of seven smokestacks remains on the demolished site, and in twilight they look like seven Oldenburgian baseball bats set on end against the river. Baseball thrived here as a working class sport, dirty and nose to the grindstone, and when the steel industry collapsed, the city's population was halved, and the working class disappeared to be replaced by retirees and high-tech yuppees such as myself, the baseball crowds disappeared as well. The ill-planned stadium did in the baseball crowds with the same bad planning that did in the Hill District and made it a ghetto. My best friend here stays at home and watches hockey on his satellite dish. Pittsburgh is full of baseball history.
The Pirates were bought several years ago by a young guy, also my age, named Kevin McClatchy. McClatchy cobbled the deal together with some inherited money -- he's from a Sacramento, California, newspaper-owning family -- and a mixture of local interests and outside investors. As part of the clause in buyng the ballpark from the city, he's allowed to move the team out of town if a new baseball-only ballpark isn't under construction by the end of 1998. Pittsburgh city dwellers are still paying for Three Rivers, and the political climate doesn't look good for a publically-financed stadium. City dwellers have too much to pay for with a shrunken tax base, and the majority of area residents now live in other municipalities within the county. They're suburbanites, and they vote against Pittsburgh in county elections, and nobody there wants to help pay for a stadium. A 10-county regional sales tax is now proposed to pay for new stadiums and a convention center, but its prospects on the fall ballot are dim. The region's carefully built itself back to economic viability, even prosperity, and people are timid about commitments that smack of old-style big city government, insider sweetheart deals, and poorly planned desecrations of old neighborhoods. Like Three Rivers.
McClatchy bought the team from a consortium that was actually run by the city. He was hailed as the savior of baseball in Pittsburgh, because he was so adamant about keeping the team here. As a handome, wealthy, and single guy, he became kown as a man about town and a popular public figure. His pleas of poverty seem only reinforced by the popular press picture of baseball's economic woes.
This is one of the reasons Pittsburgh fans absolutely hate Barry Bonds with a venom previously reserved only for the Cleveland Browns. Barry left Pittsburgh when someone showed him the money. Barry choked in the playoffs. Barry earns in a single at-bat what most of the folks watching him live on in a year. But most of all, Barry left. And now the Pirates' entire team payroll couldn't pay Barry for a single year, and the Pirates are a triple-A ballclub. The fans are worried, in a sense, that this has become a triple-A city, which it has, and that the major league ballclub will leave, like the hall of fame player did, leaving this city with only the memories. Jim Leyland, the popular Pirate manager, left last year for the $89 million Marlins with the blessing of the fans and the team. The fans forgave Leyland for wanting to manage a winner, and the club saved $1 million in salary. Leyland left. The fans hate Barry.
It's unclear what McClatchy's real intentions are with the team. His aura has worn off a bit, and there are now rumblings about his inability to get private money for a new ballpark. The Steelers and Penguins also want new facilities, if the Pirates get one. McClatchy had previously made overtures about buying another team and moving it to Sacramento. The team's moves last year to cut its payroll and rebuild with youth and the farm system are now occasionally painted a bit more sinisterly: McClatchy wants to keep the team's costs cheap, even while rebuilding the team, but keeping them losers so the stadium won't pass. The Michigan Militia have nothing on conspiracy theories over Pittsburgh sports fans.
Last year's team advertising slogan was "Pittsburgh Pirates: 110 percent", in honor of the team's 110th year playing here, but this seemed to show only that McClatchy was bad at math. There was also a cutely endearing TV commercial that featured McClatchy and his loveable lab, pleading with the fans to come out to the ballpark. A phone number was flashed on the screen, saying it was "Kevin's home phone number, call and he'll sell you a ticket." The number switches to Ticketmaster, where they charge you $3 extra a seat for the privilege of a randomly-assigned seat and waiting on hold for twenty minutes.
This year's slogan is: "Let's Get to Work". The TV campaign this time does not feature a millionaire owner pretending to be working for a living. It features Pirates' players, doing workaday jobs in their baseball uniforms: riding the bus to work, dropping their kids off at school, working in a machine shop, working as a lifeguard. Unfortunately, this only seems to suggest that perhaps most Pirates are paid so little they need second jobs; and the fact that professional actors are playing the players sort of confuses the messages a bit. A few weeks ago, the Pirates had a nice promotion. Every member of the team greeted fans at the gates before the game, spread all the way around. The kids were wrapt, talking to real major leaguers, even if their names were Womack, Cooke, and Rincon and not Bonds, Beck, and Bonilla. It was a very nice gesture, and it at least showed the players were willing to work.
And work they have, for here's the rub: the Pirates are supposed to be terrible, they're supposed to suck, but today, they're in second place and only a few games out of first. They're riding at about exactly .500, but the rest of the division is not playing well, and the kids on this club are doing alright, considering. What's more, Bonds is supposed to be the only good player on the Giants this season, but the Giants also don't suck. In fact, despite the usual poor start by Bonds, the Giants are in first place in the strong NL West division. So today's game doesn't look like that bad a match-up, and the few fans that have showed up to the game today look like die-hards who're ready for some daylight action.
The starters today are Shawn Estes for the Giants, a strong young lefty coming off a good first full year, and Steve Cooke, an injury-plagued lefty coming off several bad and missed years. Cooke qualifies as a veteran relative to the average Pirate; he's had more major league starts than all the other Pirate starters combined coming into the season. Cooke has struggled to stay in the game, and there's no doubt that in another organization he'd've been given his release long ago.
The game starts on a sour note for the locals when Giants rookie Dante Powell doubles to leadoff. Jose Vizcaino strikes out, which leads to a detailed explanation for our guest as to the meaning of "K" and the scoring distinctions between K, KC, and K2. Glenallen hill reaches base on an error by the third baseman, but Powell's held at second. Still, it's first and second with one out and Barry Bonds comes to the plate.
The boos would be deafening if there were enough fans present to deafen, but they are lusty and heartfelt nevertheless. One can sense the palpable dread with the hated Bonds at the plate working to a 3-2 count. Bonds looks a little off, but he's got a confident bearing at the plate, and he swaggers his bat in his accustomed style as the lowly Cooke delivers.
Inexplicably, the hit and run is on. This we try to explain in detail later to our visitor. Bonds waves feebly at what would have been ball four on the outside of the plate, stumbling across the marble, and Powell is cut down at third by Jason Kendall. This leads to an explanation of the notation (DP k2-3 /cs 2-5). Our merriment in explaning this is matched by the chorus of hoots Barry gets slinking away from the plate. [more]
|
 |
[continued]
Jermaine Allensworth triples with one out in the bottom of the first, the most exciting play in baseball, we explain. Our visitor gives no signs of being impressed. Al Martin walks and steals a base; we explain the strategy of the imputed double steal, and our visitor nods politely. The next two Pirates go down swinging.
Bonds comes up again to leadoff the fourth, with the Giants having scratched out a 1-0 lead. The most exciting part of the scoring was explaining to our visitor why the pitcher got credit for a sacrifice hit even though he reached first safely on an error by the first baseman, but that he does not get credit for a run batted in. My wife and I begin to have a side conversation about the nature of the Fielder's Choice when our visitor slugs back the remainder of his Penn Dark with some gusto. We focus back on the game to watch Barry bat again.
This time, Bonds again works a 3-2 count. We talk for a bit about the intentional walk, and why even a poor pitcher like Cooke wouldn't give one to Bonds as a leadoff hitter. My wife and I, however, are somehow compelled to complicate this by discussing the time when Ray Knight indeed did just that, which leads to a discussion as to why the manager is considered to be responsible for the intentional walk but the pitcher is charged with it. It makes sense to us, at least.
The umpire has a wide, that is to say, regulation strike zone today, and Barry is caught looking at a called third strike. The crowd this time is even more convulsed by not only the comical sight of Barry being called back from his trot down to first, but the whipping motion his head makes as the ump indicates to him he's out. Bonds stares at the umpire, and drags his bat back to the dugout. In the paper the following day, Barry is quoted as saying he's really bothered by how the fans have it in for him personally.
The Giants get another run in the fifth. Damon Berryhill leads off with a single, and Estes is hit by a pitch. Powell sacrifices the runners to second and third. Vizcaino is walked on four pitches, leading to a discussion as to why that was not an intentional walk. Glenallen Hill fortunately dribbles to the shortstop, but the ball is slow and the Pirates cannot turn two. A run scores and runners are on first and third with two outs when Bonds again comes to the plate. We have to explain why this indeed counts as a run batted in.
Bonds works the count to two and two. Cooke throws the next pitch in the same zone on the outside corner where Bonds was caught looking in the 4th, and Barry taps it directly at the second baseman for an easy ground out. The crowd goes into hysterics while we explain to our guest why Barry was forced to swing at the pitch.
In the bottom of the fifth, the gutsy Pirates get three runs off Estes, who has looked unbeatable since the first-inning triple. A leadoff double by Jose Guillen is almost wasted when he's cut down at third on a short-hopper by Cooke, who blows a sacrifice attempt. Tony Womack then singles in a run, Joe Randa having walked before Cooke, and after a popout by Allensworth, Al Martin comes through with a clutch two-run double. A lively discussion as to what constitutes clutch hitting followed. Our visitor asked questions about the advertisements.
The PIrates wriggle their way out of a couple of jams in the next few innings, including a one-pitch appearance by Mark Wilkins in relief that results in a 5-4-3 double play. We try to explain why he gets credit for two-thirds of an inning pitched even though he faced only one batter.
In the eighth, Bonds comes up again. He's facing Ricardo Rincon, a pitcher as emblematic as any of the Pirates. Rincon was bought from the Mexican league, has no describable background or record, and by his warmups appears to have minimal stuff. He's pitching in this 3-2 ballgame only because Pirate closer John Ericks is suffering from a stiff neck, and most of the other relievers are on short duty after being forced to work at length in a previous Pirate drubbing. Bonds looks ready for revenge, and it's a classic Barry moment: down by one run, facing an untested pitcher, where the pitcher has to throw to him. "A good time for Barry to hit a homer," I mention to our visitor. He looks hopeful; a homer is about the only thing we haven't seen in this game shy of catcher's interference, and our visitor does know what a home run is. We have been trying to explain to him what an exciting game this has been. He nods politely.
Barry lets the first ball pass him by, to check out the pitcher's stuff. It's a fastball with a little something on it, on the inside corner for a strike. The next pitch is a slider, and Bonds takes a vicious cut at it, not missing it by much. O and 2. Bonds straightens up with that I-know-you're-going-to-waste-one body language and takes a couple of short strokes over the plate.
The third pitch is an all-on fastball, and Bonds seems startled as he swings very late. He staggers across the plate, stares and says something to the ump, and the crowd goes wild. "Show me the money, Barry! Show me the money!" the crowd starts to chant.
The rest of the inning is notable only for a double-switch by the Giants, leading to very long explanations of the consequences of batting out of order and a heated discussion about whether the DH in fact discourages strategy, framed by a discussion of what strategy in fact is. Our visitor remarks on the 8th inning triple by pinch hitter Midre Cummings, asking if it's unusual for a player to reach third like that and not score. Not for the Pirates, we explain.
Rincon shuts down the side in order in the ninth, including two called strikeouts, leading to an explanation of the save rule that continues well into our carride home. Our visitor asks why the parking system is so badly designed and suggests politely that if you have to be struck in unmoveable traffic, it's a very nice view. We conclude the day by explaining why this was a very, very good game. Our visitor asks: "The Bonds fellow, he's one of the best players?" Yes, we assure him. "Ah, yes", he says, somehow knowingly. Today, Bonds earned $61,728, or about $10 per fan who had the pleasure of watching Barry work for it while striking out three times and grounding out with the bases cranked to kill a rally. My partner and I went back to the office for the evening after dropping my wife off.
Let's go to work.
|
