After leaving the New York area, we rode west to Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh Pirates. On the road, we decided to stop at a campground to sleep a little bit more comfortable, to take a shower and to do some Laundry! People around us at the campground were suprise to see our licence plate from Quebec. We don’t have a lot of material for camping (we still slept in the van) but we made the best out of it to have a good meal and to get some good sleep.

 

 

 

When we woke up, we took the road on the way to Pittsburgh thinking we would get there around 2 PM in time to visit the city a little before the 7 PM game. Listening to the radio, we heard some people speaking live from PNC park and we realized the game was actually at 1h35 PM! We hurried to get there in time and, hopefully, we parked and got to our seats before the first throw! Next time we will pay more attention to the schedule!

 

From our seats, we could confirm all the good words we had from baseball fan around the league about PNC park. First of all, the view of the downtown and the Allegheny river is astonishing. What a chance to have such a beautiful ball park and so close to downtown. The inside of the park is also really nice. Spiral footbrige to go to the upper levels gives the park more beauty.

 

 

For the game: Phillies vs Pirates, we could witness the return of A.J. Burnett against his last team: the Pirates. Fans gave him a nice welcome back when he got to the field. Jeff Locke was pitching for the Pirates and following an error from his 3rd baseman, he allowed a single that made it 1-0 for the Phillies. Phillies fan were really happy, they were hoping not to get sweep this weekend! The Pirates answered right back and Russell Martin (he played baseball in Montreal when he was in High School) pushed two runners to the plate with a solid double and the Pirates were leading 2-1. The Pirates defense did the rest of the work for the game and they had fun with their offense in the 8th: they produced 3 points one of wich by Russell who had been given an intentional walk. Final score 6-2 Pirates and we are now 2 and 2!

 

 

Bucs fans were really showing their colors in the ballpark. The team is still on their hype from last year after several difficult years: 4 years finishing last in their division from 2007 to 2010. Popular players like Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen helps the team to get fans to the stadium. In a city with the famous Pittsburgh Steelers, we understand how the fans could have difficulty to live with a losing team. Still, people were really happy at the game and in this ‘Black and Yellow” culture, the fans are really attached to their teams. It’s really a city that can relate to his sports teams.

 

Tomorrow, day off and we are rolling to Washington et then Baltimore. They will play eachothers in the two games we will attend!

4 down 26 to go!

P.S: ALWAYS check the time and date of your sports events! Enough said!