It's just another mid-March Monday afternoon in the quiet, quaint Florida town of Dunedin, where the term millennials refers to the citizens' median age rather than when they were born. It's as mundane a setting as any in the scope of six repetitive weeks of spring training, and that's no small feat.
Time basically stands still. And all concerned can't stand it in the slightest, although few speak of it. They simply huff.
"Every day," Josh Harrison huffs in the musty visitors' clubhouse while dropping a mitt into his equipment bag. "Every day, it's up at 6:30, get all geared up, get to the field, put in your work, give everything you've got in the game, get back to the room, fall asleep."
No one sheds a tear for a big-league ballplayer. The players don't, either. They're living the life they choose, probably the one a lot of folks would choose.
And yet, this all feels different. I've covered more than a decade's worth of spring trainings down here, and it's immediately discernible that this is different. Because at this one, everyone seems to be in a foul mood. Everyone seems to have an edge.
I'm talking everyone as in Jared Hughes, for crying out loud. And Hughes has the personality where he'd find the sunshine and rainbows at his best bud's funeral.
"Yeah, it's all good," Hughes tells me after a so-so outing, no sliver of a smile.
Across the room, there's Starling Marte. He's always in the highest of spirits. He just rapped three more hits. He's having a spectacular spring, the kind that offers one of the brightest signs for the summer ahead.
"I don't know," he says to that topic. "We'll see."
Hello?
"I don't prove anything yet. We'll see."
Hm.
PNC Park, as seen from the Downtown side of the Allegheny on Saturday afternoon. -- DKPS
Brandon Crawford rounds the bases after his grand slam in 2014. -- GETTY
The Pirates and crowd sit and stew in the loss to the Cubs in 2015. -- GETTY