For the love of the Pirates….
After the last game of the 2025 campaign, Sportsnet Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ television broadcaster, aired a video piece it produced featuring highlights from the past Buccos season. It was beautifully edited, and the music choices over the season’s memories were perfect. Chances and One for All and All For One, both by Five For Fighting, wonderfully weave the joyful scenes together. The images and words were poignant.
To those of us who live baseball throughout the season, it is always a joy to see the players and fans living in the moment of sport. Smiles abound. Laughter is infectious. The pure joy at seeing a living legend on the field is indescribable.
As the piece played, my lady looked at me, and with a cracking voice and tears in her eyes, told me she was sad that the Pirates’ season was over. Well, I can never keep from getting choked up when she does, especially when it’s over something that touches both of our hearts, so I teared up, too.
At the end of the video piece, the final shot showed a group of four young lads, sweating in the stands from the summer heat, probably aged 11 or 12. They were shouting for pitcher Paul Skenes to toss them a ball, to which Skenes obliged. In a slow-motion video, one of the boys caught the ball. At that moment, we both lost it. The boy who caught it was overjoyed, and his buddies, all screaming with mouths wide open, came in to hug him, jumping up and down, celebrating, and then stood side-by-side with their arms draped over one another’s shoulders in sublime happiness.
I’m choked up right now just writing this. That is the image I will carry in my mind through the cold days of winter here in Pittsburgh.
The sheer joy of baseball. Childhood buddies living a moment that they will remember forever. Years from now, maybe on what we, here, call high school reunion night, which is Thanksgiving eve at any local bar, those young men may be reminiscing, and one might mention that moment. And maybe they all focus their minds on that childhood memory for a split second. Their hearts and souls will be filled with joy for as long as they remember it.
THAT is the power of baseball.
Unfortunately, there was a time when I would be at the ballpark and see a grown man with his baseball mitt, and I would chuckle to myself. Grow up! That’s a full-blown adult over there. Ha. Ha. I finally realized I was jealous of that fan’s childlike love for the game. There came a point when I realized that I’m better than THAT way of looking at things.
So, I decided to bring my childhood feelings about baseball to the forefront of my heart, and I’m glad I did. Now, I will sit on my couch with my book of score sheets and keep score of most games. It keeps me focused on every single pitch. My soul feels great while I’m doing it.
Also, I try to complain less about an individual player’s performance. I mean, I certainly couldn’t do it. I recently saw a stat that said if you took every man who ever played in the MLB at the professional level and sat them in a ballpark, they wouldn’t fill the smallest professional venue. There are around 23,000 men who meet that criteria. So, to make it onto an MLB field is an amazing against-all-odds feat, and I respect all who managed to do it. That being said, I can still hope they get sent down to the minors to improve before being called up again. That’s the human being in me that still needs something to gripe about!
There’s a particular section of a book by the old commissioner of baseball, and past president of Yale University, A. Bart Giamatti. It touches me deeply.
A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games: [Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.
Courtesy The Tennesseean
So, here’s to the Pirates off-season. I’ll be following information closely to track what’s happening in the organization and around baseball until that glorious day in Spring, when we hear those most wonderful words, “Pitchers and catchers report.“
