"So cold," Francisco Cervelli was telling me, and this was after about a half-hour in the heat of the Pirates' clubhouse. "My pitchers ... their fingers were so cold, they couldn't feel their pitches."
Hm. And judging from the way the catcher was flexing the fingers on his own right hand, the lack of feeling sure looked mutual.
"Got jammed. Twice. Really hurts."
He looked up from the hand.
"Is it supposed to get nicer?"
Sure is. Temps for this home opener Friday at PNC Park, a 5-4 victory over the Braves, stayed stuck in the 20s throughout. The wind gusts, too, were in the 20s, and swirling the flags psychotically from second to second.
Oh, yeah, there was snow. It came rolling down the Allegheny from the David L. Lawrence Convention Center as if Old Man Winter were playing April Fool's, and it flurried up a storm in the fourth inning:
"It starts through pitching," David Freese said on a day when he and Cervelli went deep. "Nova grabbed the ball and did what he does. He’s just a pro. A complete pro. We’re fortunate to have him."
They genuinely are, and here's betting that sentiment will only strengthen over the summer. Because in addition to showing his usual cool -- sorry, calm -- he also flashed a little fire, something I'm not sure I'd seen on the mound since his arrival from the Yankees last August.
Both such sparks came at the expense of the Reds' -- sorry, the Braves' -- Brandon Phillips.
In the fourth inning, Atlanta's better-than-most-think lineup loaded the bases against Nova on singles by Freddie Freeman and Matt Kemp, then Nick Markakis being hit by a pitch. There was one out. And up next was Phillips, who in his decade in Cincinnati had batted .308 against the Pirates with a personal-best 105 RBIs against them and, thus, wasn't exactly delving into foreign territory.
But then, neither were Phillips' opponents.
As Hurdle worded it afterward, "Phillips is a guy that we've been challenged by. Especially with runners in scoring position."
Nova had faced Phillips only twice while in the American League, but pitchers have photographic memories.
"I remember both of those at-bats," Nova would tell me, never blinking.
And Cervelli, of course, knew as much as anyone. So when Nova and Cervelli huddled beforehand Friday morning to revisit the Braves' regulars one last time, there was a focus on a "handful of guys," per the catcher, notably Phillips, whose unpredictable nature -- on and off the field, for what that's worth -- makes him a challenging scheme.
What they came up with was that they'd be equally unpredictable.
"Whatever he was going to do," Cervelli said, "we were going to do something different."
"We saw something," Nova said. "We saw something right away."
Fine, but the battery wasn't doing all the looking. Phillips watched three straight balls go by, a great rarity for the perpetually poised Nova. All were way down and way in.
"I didn't want to give him anything where he could extend his arms," Cervelli said.
"We were just going to keep going there," Nova said.
And so they did. After the obligatory heat right down the middle to avoid the walk, Nova pumped another down and in and then this one down and away, a 93-mph sinker with serious bite to accordion his arms right back out again ...
... a 6-3 Jordy Mercer stomp-on-second double play to end the inning.
Nova animatedly, and wholly uncharacteristically, pumped his fist repeatedly, punched his glove and, as he neared the Pirates' dugout, barked out, "Let's go!" to his waiting teammates.
More on that in a bit.
Two innings later, the Braves were ready to bite back. A Markakis book-rule double put runners on second and third with one out, and there again was Phillips.
Time to switch it up.
"He got into the box and had his feet back a little," Nova said.
"We weren't going back inside," Cervelli said.
OK, you want to talk unpredictable ... here's the pitch chart that would follow:
The two that were down, the pitcher and catcher told me, were pretty much waste pitches. The objective had been to get Phillips to go the other way, where he long has been less dangerous. But all the up, down, left, right -- all fastballs, mind you -- had him so out of sorts that he'd whiff:
When Adonis Garcia would bounce out, another jam was buried.
"The sequences were clean, the locations were good," Hurdle said. "Ivan made pitches. They knew were they wanted to go, and he got the ball there."
“I’d seen Nova in the past," Phillips said. "But regardless of who’s pitching, when I’m in that situation, I have to do my job. That game is on me. Especially when there are less than two outs, that’s something I always do. I talked to our hitting coach and he told me what I was doing wrong. I fixed it on my last at-bat."
That would be a two-run single off Wade LeBlanc, right back to the Phillips of old when facing the Pirates.
"But early on, small, little things can really change a game," Phillips continued. "I just gotta pick my team up tomorrow. I gotta do my job.”
With the Garcia out, along came another passionate set of fist-pumps from Nova.
Really now, what was that?
"Ha! Well, I don't normally show that, I know," he'd explain. "But I was happy to get out of that for my team, for my teammates. It felt good."
He paused and acknowledged there was a bit more. His father recently had surgery in the Dominican Republic and, though he's "doing fine," his mother -- the most powerful influence in his life who advised him to stay with the Pirates at any cost this offseason -- chose to stay there to take care of his father rather than fly up to Pittsburgh.
Both parents watched this one on TV, though, and mom's first text had to do with the celebrations, as translated from Spanish: "What was that?"
Nova laughed again.
"I'm happy to show them I'm happy."
I noticed a lot of that sort of stuff around the room, notably among the pitchers.
"It's not just about the three of us who've gone so far," Cole would tell me later. "It's everyone on this staff. Everyone here is excited for what's ahead. We're eager to prove ourselves. And I'll say it right here: We're ready. You'll see."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY