Back from the 'Burg- with pictures, even
Sep. 18th, 2006 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogMajor photospam ahead, so cut for your dining and viewing pleasure. The text story of my travels from yesterday is over on the baseball blog, here, or you can follow the tale thousands of words at a time below:
That's pretty close to my first full-on look at the Pirates' new downtown stadium, not far from where my car was parked under an I-279 viaduct.
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My place in line, queueing for tickets (yes, I'd "gone commando," as it were, and showed up without a ducat, figuring a last-place team on an NFL Sunday wouldn't have anybody there. I figured wrong, but still managed to get through that line pretty quickly and got a good seat.)
----
The statue, outside the home plate entrance, is of early 20th-century Bucco legend Honus Wagner. This statue was at the Pirates' original home near the Pitt campus, Forbes Field, and moved with the team first to its ugly 70s econobox at Three Rivers and finally here. Two other more recent legends are also cast in stone elsewhere around the outside: Roberto Clemente, who also got a bridge named for him which you'll see shortly, and Wilver "Pops" Stargell, a Met-killer from way back who you nonetheless couldn't help but like as a player and a guy. Sadly, he died on the day this new ballpark held its first game in 2001.
----
You go up an escalator to the main concourse, and can peek in before heading to your seat for a preview of what it looks like. It looks like awesome. That's the Clemente Bridge, crossing the Allegheny River just behind the outfield fence.
----
And this is the view from Section 125, where I spent most of the afternoon.
Pittsburgh got out to a quick 2-0 lead on a couple of seeing-eye outfield liners and a sacrifice fly, and it then stayed that way for most of the game. Both pitchers were getting into, but quickly out of, further trouble. The sun was blasting down for most of the middle innings, and virtually my entire row bugged out for either concessions or explorations around the fourth. I chose the latter.
The Pirates have about eight numbers retired- Honus Wagner's isn't because when he played, players didn't have uniform numbers- but they also honor many of their lesser stars through these imaginative collages of their baseball cards. I just about drooled over recalling owning, at one time or another, probably half the cards displayed on these, but I settled for capturing a few recollections among them.
Good memories and bad on this one. dick stuart (must've been a year when e.e. cummings was doing the cards) once held the professional baseball record for home runs at the minor league level, but he rattled around the majors with not nearly the same success for most of the 1960s. And I do mean "rattled;" his fielding was so bad, you could just about hear his glove clanking against the infield dirt, and some wag famously nicknamed him "Doctor Strangeglove" after the Kubrick film of the day. Naturally, a fielder so bad was destined for the Mets, so we traded for him around the time I started following the team.
Below him and to the left, though, is a source of happy Met-mories. Donn Clendennon was a right-hand-batting first baseman who the Mets traded for early in their first championship season. His experience and talent made a big difference in getting us to and through our first World Series that year. He'd been with the Pirates before that (I definitely had that card; that was the Topps 1968 set, which I may have had every one of.)
----
Now here's proof that the Pirates have always been a supporter of hiring the handicapped. Mario Mendoza was the anti-Dick Stuart: a good-fielding shortstop who couldn't hit his way out of a paper bag. To this day, followers of the sport refer to the demarcation of a bad batting average as the "Mendoza line." Nice mullet, too, don'tcha think?
----
And two final card memories, good and bad, of guys who also played for the Mets. About halfway down this one is Richie Hebner, another legendary Met-killer when he opposed us but who, when we finally signed him, reverted to bad play and worse attitude, earning him his own level in my fellow bloggers' Danteish analysis of the Nine Circles of Met Hell.
Below him, though, one of the good ones. Bill Robinson, who was a good if not great player for the Bucs into the 1970s, but who became a Met coach for our last run of good seasons in the mid-80s and really helped out with the bringing-up of some of the younger hitters.
(I have no idea what that is in the lower left. Looks like garbage cans, which can only lead us to our next picture....)
----
That's not a Reds logo up there. If you look carefully, you'll see Cookie Monster sticking his head out as this was one of the many between-inning bits to entertain the audience. Fans got to vote, by decibels, for their favorite Muppet song- the Mana Mana thing, Rainbow Connection and Rubber Duckie were all in contention, but Cookie Monster kicked Muppet ass in a landslide of applause.
----
That shot was on my 8th inning visit over to the first base side. One oddity- this is the only stadium I've ever been in where the visitors used the first base dugout. So I headed back to the other side for a few last shots, including this one documenting the winner of, yes...
the Giant Pierogie race. Sorry about the fuzziness, but those taters are running pretty damn fast. A shameless knockoff of the weinie race from Milwaukee, but certainly better than what they'd do at Shea Stadium, which would probably involve four giant beer hoses being sprayed into the stands.
----
One last view from my seat, notable for (a) a good view of the PPG headquarters skyscraper in the skyline (the one which looks like it's right out of a Batman movie), (b) an idea of what PNC's old-fashioned out-of-town scoreboard looks like along the right field wall, and (c) a typical representation of how the Mets looked most of the day when batting. In other words, none of them on base.
Soon after this last shot, our starter got pulled and Pittsburgh touched up his replacement for a third and final run. There were minor threats after that, but we never scored, which, as even Casey Stengel would tell you, is essential to the winning of games. You could look it up.
And off-topic, but since I had to finish off the roll this morning and people have asked about either the truck or the trucking of the past two weekends:
Eleanor's truck, this time with the harvest having been pre-loaded into boxes scored from the Wegmans produce department before I headed out to the picking of these potatoes. That's the old beater car behind it, which done just fine on its first out-of-state trip in close to a year.
Another angle, just before hitting the road to take them all to the Food Bank. Much appreciated, as you might expect.
That's pretty close to my first full-on look at the Pirates' new downtown stadium, not far from where my car was parked under an I-279 viaduct.
----
My place in line, queueing for tickets (yes, I'd "gone commando," as it were, and showed up without a ducat, figuring a last-place team on an NFL Sunday wouldn't have anybody there. I figured wrong, but still managed to get through that line pretty quickly and got a good seat.)
----
The statue, outside the home plate entrance, is of early 20th-century Bucco legend Honus Wagner. This statue was at the Pirates' original home near the Pitt campus, Forbes Field, and moved with the team first to its ugly 70s econobox at Three Rivers and finally here. Two other more recent legends are also cast in stone elsewhere around the outside: Roberto Clemente, who also got a bridge named for him which you'll see shortly, and Wilver "Pops" Stargell, a Met-killer from way back who you nonetheless couldn't help but like as a player and a guy. Sadly, he died on the day this new ballpark held its first game in 2001.
----
You go up an escalator to the main concourse, and can peek in before heading to your seat for a preview of what it looks like. It looks like awesome. That's the Clemente Bridge, crossing the Allegheny River just behind the outfield fence.
----
And this is the view from Section 125, where I spent most of the afternoon.
Pittsburgh got out to a quick 2-0 lead on a couple of seeing-eye outfield liners and a sacrifice fly, and it then stayed that way for most of the game. Both pitchers were getting into, but quickly out of, further trouble. The sun was blasting down for most of the middle innings, and virtually my entire row bugged out for either concessions or explorations around the fourth. I chose the latter.
The Pirates have about eight numbers retired- Honus Wagner's isn't because when he played, players didn't have uniform numbers- but they also honor many of their lesser stars through these imaginative collages of their baseball cards. I just about drooled over recalling owning, at one time or another, probably half the cards displayed on these, but I settled for capturing a few recollections among them.
Good memories and bad on this one. dick stuart (must've been a year when e.e. cummings was doing the cards) once held the professional baseball record for home runs at the minor league level, but he rattled around the majors with not nearly the same success for most of the 1960s. And I do mean "rattled;" his fielding was so bad, you could just about hear his glove clanking against the infield dirt, and some wag famously nicknamed him "Doctor Strangeglove" after the Kubrick film of the day. Naturally, a fielder so bad was destined for the Mets, so we traded for him around the time I started following the team.
Below him and to the left, though, is a source of happy Met-mories. Donn Clendennon was a right-hand-batting first baseman who the Mets traded for early in their first championship season. His experience and talent made a big difference in getting us to and through our first World Series that year. He'd been with the Pirates before that (I definitely had that card; that was the Topps 1968 set, which I may have had every one of.)
----
Now here's proof that the Pirates have always been a supporter of hiring the handicapped. Mario Mendoza was the anti-Dick Stuart: a good-fielding shortstop who couldn't hit his way out of a paper bag. To this day, followers of the sport refer to the demarcation of a bad batting average as the "Mendoza line." Nice mullet, too, don'tcha think?
----
And two final card memories, good and bad, of guys who also played for the Mets. About halfway down this one is Richie Hebner, another legendary Met-killer when he opposed us but who, when we finally signed him, reverted to bad play and worse attitude, earning him his own level in my fellow bloggers' Danteish analysis of the Nine Circles of Met Hell.
Below him, though, one of the good ones. Bill Robinson, who was a good if not great player for the Bucs into the 1970s, but who became a Met coach for our last run of good seasons in the mid-80s and really helped out with the bringing-up of some of the younger hitters.
(I have no idea what that is in the lower left. Looks like garbage cans, which can only lead us to our next picture....)
----
That's not a Reds logo up there. If you look carefully, you'll see Cookie Monster sticking his head out as this was one of the many between-inning bits to entertain the audience. Fans got to vote, by decibels, for their favorite Muppet song- the Mana Mana thing, Rainbow Connection and Rubber Duckie were all in contention, but Cookie Monster kicked Muppet ass in a landslide of applause.
----
That shot was on my 8th inning visit over to the first base side. One oddity- this is the only stadium I've ever been in where the visitors used the first base dugout. So I headed back to the other side for a few last shots, including this one documenting the winner of, yes...
the Giant Pierogie race. Sorry about the fuzziness, but those taters are running pretty damn fast. A shameless knockoff of the weinie race from Milwaukee, but certainly better than what they'd do at Shea Stadium, which would probably involve four giant beer hoses being sprayed into the stands.
----
One last view from my seat, notable for (a) a good view of the PPG headquarters skyscraper in the skyline (the one which looks like it's right out of a Batman movie), (b) an idea of what PNC's old-fashioned out-of-town scoreboard looks like along the right field wall, and (c) a typical representation of how the Mets looked most of the day when batting. In other words, none of them on base.
Soon after this last shot, our starter got pulled and Pittsburgh touched up his replacement for a third and final run. There were minor threats after that, but we never scored, which, as even Casey Stengel would tell you, is essential to the winning of games. You could look it up.
And off-topic, but since I had to finish off the roll this morning and people have asked about either the truck or the trucking of the past two weekends:
Eleanor's truck, this time with the harvest having been pre-loaded into boxes scored from the Wegmans produce department before I headed out to the picking of these potatoes. That's the old beater car behind it, which done just fine on its first out-of-state trip in close to a year.
Another angle, just before hitting the road to take them all to the Food Bank. Much appreciated, as you might expect.
Section 125
Date: 2006-10-05 08:43 pm (UTC)