ST. LOUIS -- At 6:02 p.m. Central Daylight Time Saturday, when Gregory Polanco swung through a Trevor Rosenthal fastball to finish the Pirates' 4-1 loss to the Cardinals at Busch Stadium, their yearlong goal -- stated loudly, proudly from the first day balls were rolled out in Bradenton -- hit a hard wall.
"Just missed it," Polanco would fairly whisper afterward, fully aware he'd represented the tying run. "I saw it, I felt good ... so close."
So close, indeed.
These Pirates won't win the division, as they'd set out to do.
Not 6 1/2 games back, with three weeks on the schedule.
Not against this very special St. Louis team that's steaming toward 108 wins.
Had there been a sweep here this weekend, had this outcome been as uplifting as the 9-3 victory the previous night, at least the discussion could have been revived, if not fully resuscitated. That would have reduced the deficit to 3 1/2 games, at which point one streak or slump in the right directions could have changed everything.
That won't happen now.
What will happen, by any reasonable measure, is this: On the seventh of October, the Pirates and Cubs will take to PNC Park for the National League Wild Card game.
Oh, and this, too: This 129th edition of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club will have been one of the most successful in the richly storied tradition of this franchise of five World Series championships, of 13 Hall of Famers, of Honus Wagner and Roberto Clemente:
And if you choose to take out the nine teams from the Wagner-led powerhouse at the turn of the 20th century -- I don't like to do that, but if you choose -- then these are the eighth-greatest Pirates since then.
Not to mention the greatest group of Pirates an entire generation has seen.
So pardon me if I don't go all overboard, on this particular day, in the minutiae of the moment. But to cover it in short order ...
Clint Hurdle put out a strange lineup, some of it worked in the form of Sean Rodriguez rapping three hits, and some of it didn't in the form of watching red-hot Aramis Ramirez rot on the bench. The way St. Louis' Jaime Garcia was dealing from his south paw -- seven scoreless innings, four hits -- it probably didn't matter.
"Garcia was sharp," Hurdle said by way of understatement.
Charlie Morton pitched a decent six innings of his own, his only trouble a two-run infield single/error in the second inning. Otherwise, he avoided a three-ball count to 14 of his 26 batters and bounced back beautifully:
https://youtu.be/wJ7h7ca1j-8
Josh Harrison was charged with that error after the wildest hop, a virtual springboard off the 100-degree infield dirt that forced him to backpedal, throw off balance ... and Michael Morse couldn't pick it at first.
"You'll see that once in a blue moon," J-Hay said. "There must be a blue moon."
Josh Harrison puts hands on hips after his second-inning throwing error that allowed two runs. -- GETTY