8.9.01 PITTSBURGH PIRATES vs LOS ANGELES DODGERS
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Likely my last chance to see the Dodgers this season, and I’ve been badly wanting to see the Pirates’ new ballpark, so I went. It’s five hours and change from Rochester to Pittsburgh, and I was lucky enough to be making the drive on the hottest, muggiest, nastiest day of the year. I had no choice but to go top-down, and it wasn’t long before I was coated head-to-toe with a slimy mixture of sweat and sunblock the effects of which I’d be enjoying until I got home at four in the morning.
You learn pretty quickly to resign yourself to discomfort in this weather, though, and once I got to Pittsburgh, parked, and started making my way to the Roberto Clemente Bridge, all was forgotten.
This place is unbelievable. Flat-out spectacular. Stunning. Gorgeous. The words civic treasure spring to mind and stubbornly stay there. And I’m as deeply ambivalent as the next guy about the whole public-funds-for-private-profit scam, really, but to anyone who would argue that a brilliantly conceived and executed sports complex can do no tangible good for the soul of a community, well, go to Pittsburgh. Go to Pittsburgh and see the people flocking to downtown and happily traversing the pedestrian bridge, families strolling along the riverfront, dining and shopping and more importantly simply enjoying public spaces hours before a game, then gazing out from the stadium’s upper deck upon the most beautifully framed skyline on the continent. You can’t come here and not feel good about Pittsburgh, is what I’m trying to tell you.
The ballpark itself is a peach, too. Simple, elegant, understated, retro without being gimmicky about it, sensibly proportioned and perfectly comfortable. And the view will kill you. The river. The bridge. The city. Pittsburgh: who knew?
Sadly, the game’s spectators failed to live up to the cosmopolitan standard set by their environs. Down next to the field before the game, watching the Dodgers take batting practice, a kid was calling after Chan Ho Park, trying to get an autograph. “Say something in Japanese,” the grown-up next to him joked, looking at me, the guy in the Dodgers cap, as if for confirmation that this was funny. “Actually, he’s Korean,” I corrected him, “so I don’t think speaking Japanese would do a whole lot of good.” Not wanting to come off like an asshole, I added lightly, “But if you broke off something in Korean you’d probably get his attention pretty quick.” The guy took a moment to process this, nodded to indicate what seemed like comprehension, then turned back to the kid who was still unsuccessfully trying to summon Park, and said, “Bet you wished you knew some Japanese, huh?”
Later, during the game, there was a between-innings contest in which a girl from the crowd had to choose between the prize of a Pirates cap or the hidden contents of a fancifully decorated box. She decided to go with the box, and was rewarded with a copy of that day’s Chinese Financial News newspaper, printed in Chinese of course. Funny. But then this guy in my section yells, “Hey, you should give it to Park!”
Okay. Attention hillbillies. Chan Ho Park is Korean. Joking that he should be given a Chinese newspaper makes about as much sense as joking that Honus Wagner should be given a plate of spaghetti. Japan, Korea, and China are three different countries. Different cultures, different languages, different histories, different people. Yes, they all have slanty eyes, just like all Europeans have too much body hair. But Chan Ho Park is no more Japanese or Chinese than you are smart, so you might wanna lay off the racial jokes until you can at least keep your stereotypes straight. Christ.
Whatever his nationality, Park was awful tonight. Seven runs, all earned, over five innings, and though the Dodgers never gave up, coming back with five runs in the middle innings and in the later ones using every pinch-hitter they had to try to get something going, it just wasn’t enough. The game ended with Paul Lo Duca, representing the tying run, facing his former battery-mate Mike Fetters who’d been traded a week earlier for Terry Mulholland. Lo Duca bounced one back to the mound, and don’t think Fetters wasn’t pumped about it.
FINAL SCORE: PIRATES 8, DODGERS 5
FOOD CONSUMED: A foot-long hot dog that really was a foot long, topped with grilled peppers and onions, as tasty as it was difficult to eat. Best since Chicago.