‘NOW WE CAN GO!’
What a time to be a Pirates radio broadcaster.
It is wondrous time to be a Pirates player, a Pirates executive, a Pirates fan. Everything is coming up Pirates.
What a game at Wrigley on Friday, a 2-0 victory for the Pittsburghs and a fantastic, beautiful, joyous call from the men in the KDKA booth.
“Swing and a liner over first. There goes the no-no for the Cubs,” Greg Brown called to start the seventh inning reflecting the excitement of Ryan O’Hearn’s hit and dispensing with the hitless frustration of the first six innings.
His partner, Neil Walker, drafted by the Pirates in the 1990 draft, picked it up and ran.
“The Buccos start it off with a base hit,” Walker said with verve. “Now we can go!”
The lightning strike followed immediately.
“Here's the pitch to Reynolds. Swing. Fly ball. Deep left field. Happ back, turns around, there it goes. Just like that the Pirates have the lead 2 to nothing on the homer by Reynolds. What a game in Chicago. What a season for the Bucs already!”
Raise the Jolly Roger
Graphic courtesy @Pirates
You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning and you can’t thrill to a wire-to-wire playoff push if you don’t play exciting baseball in the first three weeks of the season. The Pirates are keeping that option alive.
Greg Brown has been behind the microphone for the Pirates for 33 years, so he has scars.
“The last time Pirates pitchers walked seven and won a shutout on the road was 2015, also the last time the Pirates qualified for the postseason,” Brown said. “Sometimes you get to the postseason it’s because you have a couple games like this when you get a little lucky.”
It’s only 13 games into the long season, less than 10 percent. Trends start somewhere and you don’t know when that is until later.
The broadcast on an overcast day in Chicago was exemplary and depending on how the season goes, this could prove to be decisive. My hopes for this project of following the arc of the season through the radio calls of every team are all being fulfilled. That doesn’t mean the Pirates are on a trajectory to win the championship, but it does mark the passions of the middle of April no matter the outcome in October.
The Pirates booth is building a narrative. It’s shape was cast in the pregame.
“Neil, it’s April,” Brown said to his partner. “You can feel it with the weather here today with the wind blowing in. Just in how the Pirates have gotten off to this start this season this kinda feels like within the division it’s kind of a big game.”
It was a huge game if you believe in momentum, in building confidence, in setting a pattern. However things go for the Pirates and a roster with the best pitcher on the planet and the early season excitement of 19-year-old Konnor Griffin, this will forever be a memorable game, either as the start of something huge or a highlight on the way to more disappointment. Hope will always blaze bright on this game, though, when everything seemed possible for Pirates fans.
“What a ball game to start this series.”