PITTSBURGH–There’s always a first time for everything. I have attended baseball games at a lot of Major League ballparks, some of them dearly departed, many of them new, but I experienced a first the other night at PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Never before did I walk through the gate of a ballpark and almost immediately bump into one of the home team’s legends.
In the company of old friends Bill and Barbara Kennedy, Pittsburghers to their toes after three decades of marriage and residence in the area, we were on the prowl for ballpark food. The first concession stand we saw was Manny’s BBQ. Oh yeah, I thought, I’ve heard of that. It is a barbecue operation run by former Pirates star catcher Manny Sanguillen.
The stand set out examples of what you get for what you pay. It featured barbecue beef sliders with what seemed to be sides of cole slaw and beans. I said, “There’s the food.” And a second later, as my eyes drifted farther along the counter, I said, “And there’s Manny!” Sure enough, the long-time player was sitting at a table in the middle of the stand, marker pens at the ready to sign autographs, apparently as desert to accompany the main course.
Manny signed a program for us. He wrote, “God Bless, Manny Sanguillen.” How cool is that?
By the way, just about as impressive was the fact that as we entered the park we were each handed copies of that night’s program magazine. For free! In a big-league park! Not simply a four-page cardboard fold-out scorecard, which normally sells for $1 elsewhere, but a full-fledged, 5×7 glossy magazine. One might argue that when you have not have a winning team in a generation a club (19 straight losing seasons and counting) must be careful where it extracts its revenue, but still, not charging for the scorecard? That’s like un-American. Maybe we walked into a time warp.
The team has a core of solid pitchers, including reliever Juan Cruz, and a star outfielder in Andrew McCutchen, but those playoff days still seem somewhere over the horizon in a vague future.
How could this not be a feel-good experience when five minutes after arrival the Pirates had already done two very fan-friendly things for us? Heck, and that was already after walking across the Roberto Clemente Bridge from downtown on the final approach, a bridge over the Allegheny River closed to automobiles before the game. And also after pausing to look over the very large statue of Roberto Clemente out front with the phrase “The Great One” emblazoned on its base.
From the moment it opened in 2001, succeeding Three Rivers Stadium as the Pirates’ park, PNC Park has received excellent reviews. It is not difficult to see why. Our vantage point for a Pirates-New York Mets game was about 25 rows up behind home plate and the park felt quite intimate, not sprawling, not big-shouldered with great heights defining the bleachers or grandstands.
A big reason for that is by big-league standards, PNC Park is small. The listed capacity is 38,362. In this era I didn’t think they built Major League stadiums that could not hold 42,000 or so fans. For perspective, even Wrigley Field’s capacity is larger. Some day, and the Pirates hope within their senior-citizen fans’ lifetimes, Pittsburgh will have a good enough team to reguarly sell out again. Then the Pirates will have a problem as too many fans go after too few seats. First, the Pirates have to finish over .500 again. Then they can make the playoffs. Then they can worry about seating capacity. Surely the seat numbers contributed to the cost of construction being only $216 million when other new stadiums cost much more money.
The concourse level is jam-packed with souvenir stores, team stores, and a wide variety of concession booths. Only a week ago I was surprised to see a gluten free concession stand in New York. Well, the Pirates offer gluten free nachos. Not being a nutritional guru I am not sure that’s possible to achieve, but at the least it sounds counterintuitive. Sticking with more traditional fare, at one point during the game The Pirate Parrot, the team mascot, grabbed one of those bazooka-type airguns used to shoot T-shirts into higher levels of seating at just about every pro sporting venue these days, and fired hot dogs to fans instead. You will be pleased to note they were wrapped not only in buns, but paper, not sent airborne as naked tubes of meat.
The club seems to do a good business selling jerseys with player names scrawled on the back, autographed baseballs, and team caps. All to be expected–wear your allegiance not just on your sleeve, but on your head. However, there was also a fairly sophisticated sports memorabilia shop on the grounds for the serious fan and spender. There one could purchase an autographed Sandy Koufax baseball for $395, an autographed Joe DiMaggio postcard-sized item, and memorabilia of Pirates of the past such as Willie Stargell.
Still, nothing beats Manny Sanguillen live and in person selling BBQ. The only thing that could have topped that in my mind was Honus Wagner manning a booth selling Dippin’ Dots ice cream.