Pittsburgh PNC Park

Paul with Roberto Clemente

Cubs Win!!!

View From Upper Deck of PNC Park

Lou Piniella Get Tossed From the Game

Satchel Paige Statue

Us in our seats along the first base line

Pirate Mascot

Another Pittsburgh Mascot

Derek Lee Swings Away

Lee Coming Home after First Inning Homer

Front Entrance to PNC

Paul With Statue of Longtime Steelers' owner Art Rooney

Entrance to Jerome Bettis' Restuarant

View of Heinz Field from Incline

View of PNC Park from Incline

View of Pittsburgh Downtown Skyline from Incline

July 1st
Erin and I took a climb up the Duquesne Incline this afternoon prior to the Cubs-Pirates game at PNC park. The Duquesne Incline takes you up a large hill which allows you to get a birds' eye view of the city of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has three rivers that run through it which gives it a gorgeous view from up high with all the bridges and water in the city. I counted 17 bridges that I could see from up high and I’m sure there’s more than that. The Pirates’ PNC Park and the Steelers’ Heinz Field are very noticeable from this incline.

We ate at former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jerome Bettis’ restaurant called Jerome Bettis’ Grille 36 prior to the game. There wasn’t much for memoriabila in the restaurant, but the food was very good. And surprisingly we were able to get in there right away a hour and a half before gametime. The restaurant is located almost half between Heinz Field and PNC Park which are pretty close together.

PNC Park was another very nice field and also fairly new as it was constructed in 2001. Of the three so far we've seen, they had the largest and probably the nicest looking statues of former Pirate greats. Yes they did have great players at some point in their history, although it’s hard to imagine that based on the current state of the franchise. The team hasn’t had a winning season since 1992 and that has caused attendance problems. Under 16,000 fans watched tonight’s game which is not good considering everybody draws more people when the Cubs are in town. There were a lot of Cubs fans there so that tells you how many Pirates’ fans actually came out. This is part of the reason that the Pirates can’t retain their best players and usually have to trade them away. Of course the fans aren't coming out because the team isn’t good because they trade away their good players. So right now Pittsburgh’s franchise has some problems. Which is too bad because the stadium looks great and the ticket prices are very good.

Erin and I had tremendous seats for tonight’s game as we were just 14 rows up from the Cubs’ dugout down the first baseline. Plus you’ve got the downtown setting in the background with a bridge blended into the background. It was definitely the best view I’ve had at major league baseball stadium. The only real problem was the individual seats weren’t that big and the guy sitting next to me felt that is legs needed some room which meant that he also used nearly half of my seat area for his legs.

We took a tour around the ballpark and didn’t find as many kids’ activities as the first two parks but we did take the opportunity to spin a wheel for prices. I ended up winning a Pirates hat and Erin won a traveling mug. They did have a nice Hall of Fame bar that you could go into and get drinks and watch the game from there. They also had nice home plate shaped plaques of their Hall of Famers in the bar. They also have a section of the station that honors the top negro league players.

PNC’s strength I would say would be their wide variety of food they have throughout the stadium. We ate dinner before we came so we weren’t look for something to eat, but there was definitely some things I think would have tasted great. I can’t say that about a lot of stadiums including that park in Minnesota. The one negative about the food selection came from Erin. She’s on a mission to but ice cream in a helmet at every stadium on the trip. I think we went by pretty EVERY food stand in PNC Park and until we finally found one that had it. I’m pretty sure it was the only food stand in the park that had it. By that time we had missed about 3 innings because the game was flying by. And we also missed Cubs’ manager Lou Piniella getting to tossed from the game. This is the second time in three games we’ve had a manager tossed. And of course it had to be of the two teams we were really cheering for in the Twins and Cubs.

The first three parks we’ve seen have to be three of the very best in the major leagues.(In fact ESPN voted PNC Park #1 based on their ratings) It’s hard for us to rank them because they’re all outstanding, but we both feel that Kauffmann Stadium is the top stadium we’ve seen so far. Busch and PNC are neck and neck with Busch maybe being just above PNC. Both have a great view of their cities’ skyline which KC doesn’t.

I’m going to be taking a break from my blog for a couple of days because I’m flying back to Iowa to go to the funeral of one of my best friends who was killed in a boating accident. There won’t be anything new on Friday but I will be back to blog about our trip to Progressive Field on Saturday. We’ll be visiting the Pro Football Hall of Fame and and Indians game on the fourth of July.