The Tartan

Friends, the long wait is over.

October was a mix of the sort of relief that you feel after a brutal exam ends, and the sort of fear of missing out that you feel when all your friends get invited to the afterparty and you don’t. I’ve long been a believer in the regular season being baseball at its finest — the 162 lackadaisical games played in the shadow of the grandstand, with peanut oil and overpriced lagers wafting through the North Shore air. 

It’s one of the country’s finest rituals — the weeknights and evenings topped with a cool breeze, which give way to humid summer nights, which turn to September matinees as you enjoy the last morsels of warm weather. But the games are rarely exciting, especially on a sub-.500 ballclub; the seats are half-empty, and it doesn’t matter, anyway, if you win. October baseball is a different breed, a time when each game matters enormously, when the ballpark atmosphere resembles something we might not find out of place in the American sports atmosphere. And it’s something that, each October, I’m reminded that I’d like the chance to experience.

Then November comes along, and for the next few months, you sort of forget about baseball; there are more exciting things going on. Who needs baseball, when Penn State is marching towards an undefeated seas— oh, they just lost to Michigan? Damn it, well, they’re gonna make the playoffs— what’s that? And Ohio State, too? Well, shucks. But by then it’s Thanksgiving, and you go home or stay here or do what you will, and then finals, and then winter break, and you can decompress until oh, I don’t know, January.

And then it’s the Super Bowl, and then it’s March Madness, and all of a sudden spring training is over, the rosters are set, the ballpark passes are purchased, and it’s time to get things started.

And boy, did they. With three straight (quality, I might add) wins on the road against the Miami Marlins — a club who, last year, was just a shade over .500 — the Pirates are looking good. 

The bats have been nothing if not alive, with the offense putting 22 runs across the plate in the first three games of the season. Three players have gone yard. Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds are both 5-for-14 with a dinger and a few RBIs; Connor Joe is 5-for-14 and only missing the homer, and Ke’Bryan Hayes is a staggering 6-for-13. Andrew McCutchen is the only Pirate regular to go hitless in the young season, but even he’s already picked up an RBI. There’s not much more to say about the hitting. If it could stay this good all year, we’d be golden.

And the pitching hasn’t been atrocious, either. Mitch Keller started the first game with four runs allowed in five-and-two-thirds innings, a very Mitch Keller thing to do. The bullpen, though, locked it down the rest of the way, not allowing another earned run. Josh Fleming finished up the sixth, Hunter Stratton and Ryan Borucki took the seventh and eighth, Aroldis Chapman the ninth, Luis Ortiz shut the Marlins down in the first two extra frames, and Jose Hernandez, a return from last year, got the save after the Buccos finally scored in the twelfth. The second game wound up more or less being a bullpen game, with Ryder Ryan relieving Martin Perez in the fifth and giving way to Fleming, who, on a day’s rest, pitched three full innings in a 7-2 Pirates win. And on Saturday, Jared Jones uncorked ten strikeouts in his MLB debut, before Borucki, Stratton, and Hernandez put paid to the seventh and eighth, and the famed Pirates closer finished the job in the ninth for his first work of the season in a 9-3 win.

I must confess that I only actually got the chance to watch one game of the three, Saturday’s evening number in which Jones led the way to a thumping victory. But watching the game, I was consumed by an odd feeling. It wasn’t worry, fear, or dread while in the lead, and it wasn’t resignation when things went badly. It was confidence. I almost had to take a reality check. Is this a team in black and gold looking in control of a baseball diamond? A pitcher who isn’t imploding? A lineup strong enough that, with men on second and third and no one out, it can seem reasonably likely that we’ll score? Fielders who I trust to get the ball across the diamond, not into the other dugout?

You never know, but maybe this feeling will last.

And yes, I know, I was optimistic last year too. April was incredible — by the start of May, Pittsburgh was 20-8 and led the National League — not just the division, but the whole thing. And from there, things fell apart. But with a team like this, in a city like this, in a sport like this, how can you help yourself?

So I’ll drink the Kool-Aid again. Pittsburgh is now in sole first place, once again, in the National League. Sue me.