I took the photo that everyone takes at PNC Park in Pittsburgh — behind the area of home plate, out across the field to capture the Roberto Clemente Bridge and the city skyline.
It’s like how everyone on the London Eye scurries to one side of the pod when it nears the apex, so they can get the same shot everyone else does of the River Thames and Parliament.
I’ve done it twice — once during the day and once at night.
For starters, they’re spectacular shots, but they also convey to the world — even more than other photos from the same place — that “I was here. I did this thing.”
The day before we went, Paul Skenes, the pitcher Pirates fans are hoping leads the team back to glory, made his debut.
We had been out and about during the day, then went to sports bar for dinner … and that’s when all the craziness started. Skenes got pulled, followed by a deluge of walks, followed by a deluge of rain before the Pirates eventually won.
Our game was not nearly so eventful, a Pirates loss in extra innings. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful ballpark that had me thinking that this stadium, these people, this city deserve better.
They showed a kid on the scoreboard with the sign “Best field trip ever.”
Of course it was.
It must be that time of year, because we saw a bunch of field trips —the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Fallingwater, the Philadelphia Museum of Art — but it would have been all of my childhood dreams to miss school for a baseball game.
Missing work for a baseball game as an adult isn’t bad, either.
We had been at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore once before, 15 years ago. It was a brutally hot day, hot enough that they were telling people sitting out in the open that they could move back in the bleachers, to seats shaded by the upper deck above.
Part of me still thinks of Camden Yards as a “new ballpark,” but it has been open for 32 years. It is starting to show a little age, but it’s a very graceful aging. It’s more lived-in than shiny and new — or even new-ish like the 7-year-old park we went to — but it will continue be the standard by which its progeny will be measured.
I’ve been to dozens of games all over the country, and some of those kids on the field trip may have been at their first game, but it’s doubtful any of us will forget the homer Adley Rutschman hit in the ninth to win the game for the home side.
I’m no soothsayer, but right before Rutschman came up, I switched the setting on my phone to video … just in case.
The “It’s gone” about eight seconds in … that’s me.
I saw multiple women in and around Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia wearing T-shirts proclaiming that they were bigger fans of Bryson Stott than you are.
I have no doubts about their sincerity, but what happens if they run into each other? Do they fight to the death? Does the world collapse upon itself because the true unsolvable problem has arrived?
It was also Bryson Scott Bobble Figurine Night, and although Suzi has developed a soft spot for Brandon Marsh (I’ve been a big Bryce Harper guy since he came up with the Nationals), she was worried that they’d run out and we wouldn’t get them.
As were the people behind us on the train going to the ballpark.
And the people in front of us in line to get into the ballpark.
I just kept telling them that on the broadcasts, they said all fans would get a bobblehead, immediately making me think of a room somewhere in the bowels of the ballpark full of miniature Bryson Stotts and the intern whose whole day was spent unloading the truck when they arrived.
As for the game, it was a workmanlike 4-2 win for the Phillies — opportunistic offense in the early innings, Zack Wheeler pitching like the ace the Pirates hope Paul Skenes becomes, lining up to shake hands after it was over.
One of our bobbleheads is part of the sports room collection, the other on a bookshelf in the extra bedroom that Suzi uses as her office.
As far as I know, there was no Scott-fan-on-Stott-fan violence.
After I got back from vacation, one of my coworkers asked what we did,
I told her Pittsburgh, the Eastern Shore and Baltimore, along with Philadelphia, and that we saw three ballgames along the way. She replied that she didn’t know I was a baseball fan, causing me to look at her like it was the dumbest thing anyone has ever said.
Which wasn’t fair to her at all. We’re work-friendly, but there was no way to know that at one point, baseball was pretty much “my whole personality,” as she put it, and it’s still a pretty big part.
“The world is heavy, and scary, and the news is hard, and the years pass, and your loved ones slip through your fingers, and sometimes everything can seem like it is spiraling out of control.”
Will Leitch, “Volume 5, Issue 21: I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano”
Leitch gets away from it by writing about baseball. A lot of the way I do it — at least during the summer — is by watching baseball, with no small amount of WNBA thrown in.
I like the Phillies, but Suzi likes the Phillies a lot, so if they and the Yankees are playing at the same time, I put the Phillies on the TV while I watch the Yankees on the iPad.
I’m not a “stick to sports” guy, but I definitely get its value for getting away from everything. If I didn’t feel that way before, the summer of 2020 would have converted me.
After all, why would you want deal with … all of this … when you can wait for the Phillie of the Week video or try to Name That Yankee?
Or go to three games in three different cities in a week?
A Silly Place 