St Louis Cardinals @ Pittsburgh Pirates

My final game in Pittsburgh was this evening's opening game of the series against St Louis.  For this game, by seat was just about on the third base side of the plate, with an excellent view of the city skyline and of the action below.  Quite a few of the early runs in this game were scored without hits.  Albert Pujols' sac-fly in the top of the 1st gave the Cardinals an early lead which was quickly answered by the Pirates in the bottom of the first with two sac-flies of their own.  The big blast of the game came when Albert drove a ball over the centerfield wall to give St Louis a 4-3 lead which seemed to deflate the crowd and the Pittsburgh team at the time.  However, in the bottom of the 8th, the Pirates managed to come up with a string of men on base, the key hit being a 2-RBI hit by Ciriaco - funnily enough, the regulars in the crowd around me had already given up on the inning when he came to bat, expecting him to just make an easy out.  The Pirates' closer, Josh Hanrahan, came in to try to close the game out and kept things interesting by giving up hits to load the bases, then a wild pitch to score one run, leaving men on 2nd and 3rd.  Fortunately, he managed to strike out Corey Patterson to finish the game, stranding big Albert on deck.  The crowd, all 13200 of them, went wild.

Sometimes, highly rated stadia turn out to be disappointment, but I'm happy to say that this is not the case for PNC Park.  The photos of the views are real - no "city skyline added" in small print at the bottom of the picture.  One of the nice things about the park is that the walking ramps for accessing the different levels are on a spiral walkway and have a view of the playing field, which gives the whole place a feeling of openness and rather less that of a concrete doughnut or multi-storey car park!  It's on a par with AT&T Park in San Francisco, although that's still my favourite perhaps due to hometown club bias.  The prices for these seats are remarkably cheap - just $52 for the club level, which is less than I paid for OK-ish seats at both Chicago teams.

This would be a terrific place for a playoff series.  I'm sure that the place would be packed and the atmosphere electric.  They've got the stadium, all they need is the team.  The people here are friendly and probably best described as stoic when it comes to the Pirates - that's what comes of 19 straight losing seasons, although there are bright spots like Alex Pressly and Andrew McCutchen with the veteran Derrek Lee to provide leadership.  It is quite cunning that the Pirates, Penguins & Steelers all have the yellow, black and white colours - it allows people to wear the merchandise of any one sport to other events!  I saw quite a few Andrew McCutchen jerseys, but a lot more Troy Polamalu and Hines Ward.

PNC Park view over downtown Pittsburgh

Pirates win!