Perrotto: One Good Reason to Visit PNC Park One Last Time in ’22
You could hear the players talking to themselves on the field.
That is how quiet it was at PNC Park last week when the Pittsburgh Pirates swept a three-game series from the Cincinnati Reds.
Major League Baseball only permits teams to announce paid attendance in terms of tickets sold. However, there were likely less than 10,000 fans total actually in the ballpark for the three games between two of the very worst teams in baseball.
It was kind of like the Pirates and Reds played in a forest. Much like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, does a sweep really happen if no one hears it?
Regardless, the Pirates have three more games at home to finish another long and frustrating season when they play the National League Central champion St. Louis Cardinals in a series that begins Monday night.
So, will anyone bother coming out to the ballpark? Probably not many.
Yet there is at least one reason for a baseball fan to show up – the opponent.
The Cardinals are in town, and they are a living baseball history museum.
Albert Pujols is retiring at the end of the season. He has 702 career home runs to rank fourth on the MLB career list. His 2,214 RBIs are tied for second all-time with Babe Ruth and behind Hank Aaron.
Rarely does a player pass through who is in the company of Ruth and Aaron.
Plus, Pujols is almost guaranteed to hit a home run in the series, and it would be the last regular-season one of his storied career. The slugger’s 34 career homers at PNC Park are his most at any visiting ballpark.
Catcher Yadier Molina is also retiring. Like Pujols, he figures to eventually wind up in the Hall of Fame.
Molina has won nine Gold Gloves and been selected to 10 All-Star Games. While he is clearly at the end of the line at 40, it’s one final opportunity to see one of the greatest catchers in the game’s annals.
Molina and right-hander Adam Wainwright have combined to start 328 games together, the most of any battery mates in major league history. Wainwright won’t pitch in this series but, even though he is 41, is expected to come back in 2023.
If you’ve ever seen Wainwright pitch at PNC Park, it likely resulted in a Pirates’ loss. He has an 11-4 record in 24 career games on the banks of the Allegheny River.
Should he desire to play into perpetuity, Wainwright will likely still be slicing and dicing his way through the Pirates’ lineup when he is 55 years old – Sunday’s loss to the Bucs on Sunday being an aberration.
If nothing else, a trip to the ballpark this week would be worth it to see how a first-class baseball organization operates. And that would be both a pleasant diversion and a bit instructive for those whose minds have become numb to good baseball after watching the Pirates stumble their way through 24 losing seasons in the last 28 years.
The Cardinals have had 15 straight winning seasons and are headed to the postseason for a fourth consecutive year.
St. Louis has also been to the playoffs in 16 of 23 seasons since the start of the millennium. The Pirates have had 16 winning seasons since 1975.
So, at least one team will be playing high-quality baseball over the last three days of 2022 at PNC Park.
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