Kovacevic: Pirates must race to their rescue

Tyler Glasnow stands roughly 6-feet-7, give or take a spike. And that spots him at least a couple inches on Usain Bolt.

This now officially matters, I'm told.

"Glasnow's the fastest man alive," Steven Brault was explaining to me late Wednesday night inside PNC Park's home clubhouse. "In fact, I'm not even sure he's a man."

Say what?

"I think he's part human, part antelope."

Not the slightest grin cracked the man's mouth, I swear. And maybe it shouldn't have.

Because, as that rare and exotic reporter who's covered both Glasnow and Bolt, the more commonly accepted fastest man alive, I'll at least go this far: I'm not sure I've ever seen any individual cover as much outfield grass in as short a time as what Glasnow pulled off in the third inning of the Pirates' 2-1 victory over the Cubs.

Please tell me, if you were among the 14,126 on hand, that you noticed this:

Now, the flapping hands and arms aren't exactly at an Olympic level. And for that matter, the competition itself wasn't exactly within the Olympic spirit, as these two increasingly acrimonious opponents were having a benches-clearing encounter at second base over a hard slide by the Pirates' Joe Musgrove into the Cubs' Javier Baez.

But man, that speed ...

"Honestly," Glasnow would tell me, "I just really, really wanted to get out there. We all did."

Hm. Imagine that.

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Nothing about the Pirates' broader predicament of late was fixed on this night. Not the nine losses in the past dozen games. Not suddenly hovering just above .500 for the first time. Not the erratic starting pitching. Not the ongoing wait for some of their bigger bats to wake up. And no, not now, not ever, the omnipresent prospect of operating under a front office that perpetually keeps one hand on the plug.

This 2018 season, so much budding fun just a month ago, remains every bit the enigma it was beforehand.

But I'm sure of this, silly as it might sound in late May: They needed this one.

The Cubs hadn't just beaten them the previous two nights. They'd embarrassed the Pirates. They'd emasculated them. They'd poked a finger in their collective eye, this through Anthony Rizzo's filthy slide into Elias Diaz, then laughed about it, this through Joe Maddon's sickeningly condescending comments about Pittsburgh fans not understanding a rule that, with spectacular irony, Major League Baseball would inform him the next day he didn't understand.

Otherwise, it was dispiriting stuff. All of it.

And it was that much worse for the cowardly lack of a response by Richard Rodriguez, blowing the one opportunity the baseball code affords a team to plunk a culprit and, in turn, forcing David Freese, Sean Rodriguez and other team leaders to stir up an internal storm to ensure "we have each other's backs," as S-Rod powerfully stated publicly.

Now, take all that and picture one more loss to these preening Cubs, followed by a four-game set in St. Louis and ... yeah.

"It was a good one to get, let's put it that way," Josh Bell would tell me afterward. "It's always good to win, but this one ... yeah, this was a good one to get."

"We needed this one," Josh Harrison told me "That's a fair thing to say, considering how things have been going. But I'll also say it was especially good the way we did it."

Right. That deserves to be stressed.

Musgrove, battling back from seven weeks lost to shoulder pain, strung together seven nails-tough innings in addition to that slide that, as Bell would tell me, "really fueled our fire." The new guy did it all, even picked off a runner at second and put down the sweetest, softest bunt, a pitcher's dream.

Best of all, he didn't come close to apologizing for the slide or its fallout.

“He saw me coming,” Musgrove would say of Baez. “I was right in front of him. If he wanted to get out of the way, he should have. I wasn’t trying to hurt him by any means. But I was trying to go in and hard, like their guy did. He should have gotten out of the way, I guess.”

Oh, dude. A shot at Rizzo, too?

Good for him. Better for the Pirates. This rotation needs him.

Kyle Crick, who'll probably forever lug the he's-the-one-they-got-for-Andrew-McCutchen label, hadn't been anything special until Clint Hurdle, his bullpen battery life at maybe 0.5 percent, called upon him for an eighth inning, a career first. And Crick zipped through it 1-2-3.

Felipe Vazquez, who just a few days ago was clutching his left forearm and cringing after his third consecutive blown save, was back out there for the ninth throwing fire in shutting it down.

Breathing fire, too.

"I'm just letting it go," Vazquez told me. "I'm not thinking. I'm not holding back. Just throw it."

The offense was obviously modest, J-Hay's leadoff home run augmented only by Corey Dickerson's triple the next inning and Gregory Polanco's sac fly.

But hey, it was something other than a goose egg for Polanco, and that visibly brightened him up as well as his teammates. As Polanco returned to the dugout, still holding onto that bat that barely got enough of that ball to lift into center, the Pirates mobbed him in unison by the steps. And, as captured by our Matt Sunday for the photo atop this column, Dickerson offered the warmest embrace of all.

It wasn't an accident Hurdle went out of his way to cite that.

"Great to see from Gregory," the manager would say. "He goes up there, and you're just hoping for something good to happen for him."

And he'd say a lot more, to my slight surprise, when I asked if this victory might carry a little additional weight given the recent context.

"You always want to win, but you've got to go meet the demands of the game to win," Hurdle began. "Musgrove ... stopped."

He clearly used that term in the classic baseball 'stopper' sense.

"He stopped the direction in which we were headed. You're looking for guys in your rotation who can put a foot down. And then, we've had some good starts and weren't able to finish at the other end. It's still about the team. It's about getting it done together."

He paused a moment.

"Yeah, strong win for us. Strong win after those first two games."

I was surprised solely because Hurdle's typically the first to downplay any single outcome. Not this one. This series wasn't any party for him, either. He's an invariably positive sort, upbeat almost to a fault, and his only serious stumbles as a manager have tended to come within turmoil.

He needed it. They all did.

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"Getting it done together" can't be optional for this group. There's plenty of hitting, as I'll stubbornly maintain through any drought, partly because Bell's coming around and because Polanco will, too, but also because the first 11 games of Austin Meadows' major league career have seen him slash .419/.435/.814 with four home runs and ... hey! His first two career walks, both in the same night!

No way I wasn't going to give him grief over that:

The kid's really good. And as you might have heard me mention to him up there, it looks so natural, almost effortless.

But even a Ruthian rookie won't be enough. Not alone.

I had a couple conversations with the Pirates' leaders after this, none of which will be divulged here other than to summarize thusly: Business was settled to their satisfaction, and they expect it'll make the collective that much stronger. Given who was speaking, I'll take their word in every way. Even Richard Rodriguez, who's been conspicuously scarce in that clubhouse, should emerge unscathed and smarter for his mistake.

The team as a whole ... hey, again, imagine if they'd lost this one.

MATT SUNDAY GALLERY