Pirates bringing Pittsburgh together
I’ll have to admit that I haven’t paid much attention to national politics these past few days. I’ve had far more important concerns — the Pittsburgh Pirates.
I know, it’s not even been a month since I wrote my “3rd Annual Homage to the Pittsburgh Pirates,” but I had no idea they’d become the winningest team in all of baseball this late in the season.
Washington, D.C., can wait. The pennant-hungry baseball fans of western Pennsylvania are well worth a tribute paid to them.
Last Tuesday evening, my wife and I were at PNC Park, and we witnessed the second-place Pirates and first-place St. Louis Cardinals battle for three hours and 49 minutes.
At precisely three hours and 50 minutes — the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates became the first-place Pittsburgh Pirates, and we found ourselves amidst utter pandemonium. The good kind of pandemonium. We’d been at PNC Park at times when you could heard a cotton ball drop in right field. Not on that night.
When Alex C. Presley of Monroe, La., slapped a liner off the pitcher’s glove and into shallow left field, Canadian Russell Nathan Jeanson Coltrane Martin, Jr. burst toward home plate, and I doubt if there was a single, self-identified Republican, Democrat, Independent, Christian, agnostic, atheist or devil-worshipper in the place. At least for that moment.
The game of baseball is, perhaps, like few activities in America, where Democracy flourishes on the field, and in the stands, without notice. There are other sports we watch that help us to briefly forget our daily grinds and differences. But baseball is quite different.
Consider the fact that on April 15, 1947, major league baseball quite ceremoniously allowed its “color line” to be breached. The name Jackie Robinson has become etched into the very fabric of the game. But can you name the first African-American NFL player? (There were actually two: Joe Lillard and Ray Kemp, who played during the 1933 season.)
Baseball is comprised of players from across the western hemisphere. This season, on opening day, 28 percent of the players in the major league were born outside of the United States. In fact, the best hitter in baseball for the past two seasons has been Venezuela’s Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers. By contrast, according to the online website — bleacherreport.com — of the 1891 players on NFL rosters in 2012, 97.12 percent were born in the United States. In other words, baseball spreads its “nationality wealth around.”
I’m sure the baseball fans of Detroit can care less where Miguel Cabrera is from — just that when he walks to the plate there’s the potential for him to send somebody sitting in the stands a memento by way of that piece of wood in his hands.
Sitting in the crowd at PNC Park, you can’t overlook all of those people who still wear Pirates regalia with the number “21” on it. Roberto Clemente, born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, must be one of the most loved Puerto Ricans in America — and, at the very least, the most beloved Pittsburgh Pirate of all time.
Fans, even the ones who’re the sons and daughters of parents who weren’t even born when Clemente haunted the Pirates’ right field, know his name, and they dutifully wear his name and number on their backs.
Oh, the fans. Not those unruly fans you might encounter at Heinz Field in October, but attentive, mostly sober fans, who take in the evening sunshine and the famous Pittsburgh skyline that makes PNC Park arguably “The Best Baseball Park in America.”
For that second game of the doubleheader last Tuesday night, Pirates fans cheered and chanted themselves into a frenzy. The Pirates stood atop the National League Central Division, and we stood with them.
You could look around and see democracy in action. Grandmas and grandpas sitting with their grandsons and granddaughters.
There were 47 percenters side-by-side with 1 percenters. Democrats, Republicans and Independents wildly cheering for a group of men from all over this part of the globe. If that isn’t democracy, what is it?
Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20 year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net