I took a day to attempt to digest the Pirates opening day debacle vs. the New York Mets. It didn’t help.
What a curious thing that Thursday afternoon game was, along with the personal trappings of my experience attempting to watch it.
When a friend advised me the night before that it was going to be on NBC, it was a bonus since I get my TV service from DISH and they refuse to pay the ridiculous rights fee of SportsNet Pittsburgh and its predecessor AT&T Sports, or something like that. This means I get precious few Pirates games – only those that are national broadcasts and, let’s face it, the Pirates haven’t exactly been marquee material for a decade or so.
The guy who had given me the heads-up Wednesday night, called at game time Thursday to see if I was watching. Well, I was trying. But, another aspect of DISH satellite TV is signal loss. Heavy snow, heavy rain, severe winds, you name it, all play havoc with the signal, leading to pixelization so as to make viewing impossible, usually followed shortly by the dreaded blue complete signal loss box.
When I flipped to Channel 6 Thursday, with the sun shining and birds singing, the picture was a series of colored lines. Perhaps some butterflies in the Amazon were flapping their wings too hard.
I put the broadcast on pause and went to the front porch to talk to the guy because my wife had some friends over to chat.
He asked during the course of our conversation if I wanted to know what was happening. I did not. But, I could tell from his tone it was bizarre.
Eventually, I came back inside (the signal can only be paused for an hour) and fast-forwarded through some bad signal time. There was a brief moment of clarity, when I saw the Pirates jump up 2-0 on a Brandon Lowe homer in the top of the first, then the picture again became a collage of colored lines, before devolving into a black screen.
While attempting to fast-forward some more, my controller unilaterally decided to change channels, thereby eliminating all that paused video.
I changed back to NBC and the signal was clear. What was not clear was how the Pirates could be losing, 5-2.
Say what? Paul Skenes pitching, has at least a 2-0 lead before he takes the mound, and an inning later, the Pirates are trailing 5-2. Unbelievable.
Though the magic of these times, I was able to find a video of the entire bottom of the first inning on YouTube.
Skenes was unrecognizable with poor control. He still might have gotten out of it all virtually unscathed had former shortstop Oneil Cruz not looked like, well, a shortstop playing center field.
First, Cruz looked like every bad Little League outfielder you’ve ever seen when he came in on a ball hit at him and allowed it to go over his head for a bases-clearing “triple.”
Next up, another fly to center, this time misplayed by Cruz, who lost it in the sun. Where were his sunglasses? Good question.
It was so good that today, again on YouTube, I found a postgame interview with Pirates manager Don Kelly being asked about that.
Kelly assured he had a word with Cruz. Yet, I definitely recall later in that same game, played on a sunny afternoon in the Big Apple, Cruz was playing the field sans sunglasses.
And, yes, Cruz had looked bad at the plate, too. But, he sure ran hard on that one groundout, Kelly noted.
This opening day loss was theater of the absurd. Imagine before the game someone had told you Skenes would take the mound with a 2-0 lead, the Pirates would hit three home runs and score seven runs overall.
You’d have bet the house on the Pirates, right? And you’d be homeless today in the wake of an 11-7 Mets win.
At this point, we are obliged to note it was just one of 162 games. The season is a marathon, not a sprint. Every team loses 60 and every team wins 60, it’s what you do in the other 42 games that makes the difference.
Consider those points conceded.
But, this was just too familiar when it comes to the Pirates. Again, we had a player apparently ignoring the manager.
We had poor defensive play. We had an inexplicable pitching performance. We saw a team prepared to find a way to lose, as Pirates teams so often do.
The Pirates didn’t exactly have a monopoly on strange plays in this game. On the Cruz gaffe that cleared the bases, the second runner to cross home plate for the Mets slid, even as the third runner close on his heels, crossed standing up. His proximity to the previous runner was due to the uncertainty of whether Cruz actually was going to misplay the ball entirely.
That much is understood. But, customarily the on-deck batter signals his team’s baserunners whether to slide or stay up on close plays at home. If the second runner didn’t get the word, but the third did, it raises some serious questions about Mets communication.
This strange event was lost in the win, just as any offensive positives for the Pirates were obscured by the defensive lapses and pitching failures.
It’s really disappointing because some national media types actually are picking the Pirates to be one of the season’s surprise teams and contend for postseason play.
Forgive my doubts. I’ve seen this movie too many times.
Sam Ross Jr's site 