At a little before 11 a.m. on Sunday morning, Josh Harrison, in a camo green shirt and thick gold chain around his neck, strode into the home clubhouse at PNC Park just as he's done over 400 times over the last eight years.
This time he was pulling along a large suitcase filled with a week's worth of clothing for the Pirates' upcoming road trip that will take him to Chicago and then, finally, to his native Cincinnati.
The Queen City is -- and will always be -- home for Harrison, but Pittsburgh has clearly played a large role in his personal and professional development. His adopted hometown, where he arrived as a 23-year-old, will always hold a place in the two-time All-Star's heart.
Sunday's game against the Milwaukee Brewers wasn't just the final home game of the regular season, it was most likely the last that Harrison and Jordy Mercer were to play in the black and gold, the only uniforms they've worn in their big league careers.
Surely, there was going to be some emotions, right?
"To be honest, not really. Woke up today fine, normal," Harrison was telling me while shoveling equipment into a bag for his upcoming trip prior to Sunday's game.
Mercer echoed those thoughts.
"Not really, I try not to let it get to me," the stoic Oklahoman was saying between sips of his morning coffee. "I don't ... I'll wait until the offseason to do that, and I'll reflect back and see how cool of a ride it was."
Harrison said he was unsure of what kind of reception he and Mercer would receive from the fans after hearing the shortstop get booed last week.
Well, things changed for both players over the course of Sunday afternoon and Pittsburghers let them both know exactly how they feel.
In an otherwise forgettable 13-6 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, the duo of Harrison and Mercer -- two of the last vestiges of the good old days of 2013-15, the Pirates' only playoff berths after a quarter century in the abyss -- gave Pittsburgh reason to cheer one more time.
Trailing 7-0 with no outs and the bases loaded in the fifth inning, Harrison doubled to center field scoring Elias Diaz and Jordan Luplow:
Mercer followed suit with a double of his own to right that scored Jose Osuna and Harrison to make a game of it ... for the time being, anyway:
You couldn't have scripted a better scenario except, well, the Pirates are still the Pirates.
"I mean you can't write it," Harrison was telling me. "I was as excited for him and I'm sure he was excited for me."
You see, Harrison and Mercer are more than just mere double play partners. They are old friends, dating back to their time coming through the organization together. In 2009, they were even roommates in Lynchburg with Harrison crashing out on the pull-out couch of Mercer's living room apartment.
Next season will be their first apart.
Before Sunday's game, Neal Huntington was non-committal on whether either might return, but the answer is fairly obvious.
Harrison’s contract calls for two club options in 2019 ($10.5 million) and 2020 ($11 million) but the Pirates are likely to exercise their $1 million buyout this offseason. Mercer is a free agent at season's end.
"If they don't return, we'll certainly miss them," the GM said. "Unfortunately, that's the game in this day and age. You look at the 50 most-tenured players in the game and 80 percent of them are on their second, third or fourth team. It's just what the game is today. That's hard because we want our fans to grow attached to our players. We just have to give them a larger number of players to grow attached to."
To be clear, the organization doesn't owe either Harrison or Mercer a thing. One's made $27.8 million in his career, the other $14.8, according to BaseballReference.com
But they did owe them a heartfelt thanks for their contributions in making the Pirates -- zero World Series appearances since 1979 -- at least relevant again in their own market. And for helping to build a winning culture in a clubhouse that previously could have served as a mausoleum.
"They made the place better," said Clint Hurdle, who took over as manager in 2011. "It's one of the things that I share with the team all the time. There'll be a day when you walk out, for everyone of us, and one of the things you hold onto, you want to strive for when you're here, is to make it better than when you came in. They both made it better than what it was when they came in."
After seeing their playing time dwindle over the final month of the season, Hurdle gave both starting nods on Sunday. But that's not all he did.
Neither Mercer nor Harrison wanted any kind of special recognition during the game, but unbeknownst to either, Hurdle decided to pull each from the game in the eighth inning to allow the fans and their teammates to give them a proper send-off.
"He didn't have to do that at all," Mercer said of his manager. "He's got a few tricks up his sleeve that no one knows about. He can be sneaky good at that. It's just, he lets you have your moment, just for a little bit. It was cool."
First, it was Harrison, who was replaced by Adam Frazier, his heir apparent at second base:
Before he left his position, the two-time All-Star had a message to deliver, according to Frazier.
"'Love you, bro, you earned it,'" Frazier retold to me. "It was a cool moment between us. I just let him know how appreciative I was for helping me get to where I am now. Without him, and Mercer too, setting an example of how to play, J-Hay even more, he came up in the same role I did when he came here. Just a good role model to look up to."
And then it was Mercer's turn, as he was replaced by Kevin Newman at shortstop:
Even Mercer, the stoic one, looked a little glassy-eyed as he spoke afterward. He said everything hit him at once -- the long bus rides, their children growing up together, the couch -- as he trotted off the field.
"You try and not think about it at all, keep your head down and keep playing and keep moving forward," Mercer was saying. "But when a moment like that happens, you're able to reflect just a little bit, and I was able to. There's just swarms of memories going through my head when I was running off the field, when I got to the dugout, of where we'd been when we first got here. We were awful and now we're pretty good, made some playoff teams. It was just a big whirlwind of emotions and memories going through my head."
Sunday's loss, coupled with, St. Louis' win over San Francisco officially ended Pittsburgh's playoff hopes. Mercer deemed the season a disappointment.
"We didn't make the playoffs, that was our goal," he said. "We made a good run in the first month, month and a half. We were right where we wanted to be. Fell off pretty hard, then we came back and won 11 in a row and made it interesting but could never get over the hump."
Harrison, who had been battling hand and hamstring injuries, is frustrated by missing out on October baseball again.
"Once you get a taste of it, you want to go back," he said.
But if this was it, he hopes --- even through an injury-plagued season -- that he was able to leave a positive impression on his teammates.
"I was able to give what I got, and the guys in here know that even if I'm not 100 percent, I'm going to give it what I've got," he said.
1. Shower well? Pirates might need to disinfect.
The 2018 Pirates shouldn't be defined by one game or one play. But, wow, did they lay an absolute stinker in their final game in front of the home crowd.
Already trailing 7-4 in the sixth inning, things went from bad to comically awful when the Brewers scored five runs on one hit. Three of those came on this:
Hurdle said he's never seen three runs scored on a wild pitch in his 40 years in the game, but I suppose there's a first time for everything. Michael Feliz uncorked a wild pitch with the bases loaded that somehow cleared the bases.
There's plenty of blame to go around as Diaz lost track of the ball after it caromed off his knee and toward first base. He jogged slowly to retrieve it, as did Josh Bell at first. When Bell finally did get the ball, he threw to Feliz, who had the ball hit off his glove allowing Ryan Braun and Orlando Arcia to also score.
You'd be hard-pressed to see that in a Little League game.
"That's a bad baseball play," said Hurdle, stating the obvious. "Whether there's confusion or a lack of effort or a combination of them going on there? It seems to be. I'm not sure."
Diaz was making his first start behind the plate after catching four innings on Friday, following his return from a hamstring injury on Aug. 31.
It was the major-league worst 92nd wild pitch thrown by the Pirates, one of three on Sunday.
"It was a fastball at 96 (mph)," Diaz said. "It's tough to block. I just tried to stop it and the ball hit me. Nothing I can do about it."
Almost as bad as his three walks and the wild pitch, Feliz then beaned Yelich in the elbow to start the seventh inning. Fortunately for the Brewers, who reduced their magic number to four, the NL's OPS leader was OK. In the top of the eighth, Jordan Lyles retaliated -- and justifiably so -- by plunking pinch-hitter Colin Moran in the side.
"Sometimes guys (try) too hard, they lose responsibilities, and that's not acceptable either," Hurdle said.
2. Nick Kingham gets nicked up.
Kingham hadn't started a game in three weeks and hadn't pitched in one in two weeks. Man, did it show.
The 26-year-old has been yanked around all season by the organization, splitting time between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, and most recently had been used in relief. On Sunday he was placed in a tough spot, learning only a night earlier that he would be making a spot start in place of Joe Musgrove.
That, Kingham says, is no excuse. He had twice warmed up to pitch out of the bullpen in the previous series against Kansas City.
"I've been playing baseball my whole life," he explained. "This is no excuse. I'm a ballplayer that has to go out there. I didn't put up the numbers or go as deep as I wanted to. Granted, it's been a while since I've thrown off a mound but I'm still supposed to go deep in the game. They picked me to start the game and didn't do that."
On Sunday, he lasted just 1 1/3 innings, giving up six runs on seven hits, including a pair of home runs to Yelich and Travis Shaw. It was Yelich's 32nd of the season and Shaw's 31st. The two balls carried a combined 864 feet with Shaw's taking a single bounce into the Allegheny River.
"Everything that they're supposed to do, they did," Kingham said.
He threw 52 pitches in what was actually his second-shortest outing of the season after lasting just one inning against the Cubs on Aug. 1.
With Musgrove shut down for the season, Kingham is expected to make his next start Friday night in Cincinnati. It couldn't be any worse than this one, right?
3. Tough crowd.
Sunday's game, Fan Appreciation Day at PNC Park, drew an announced crowd of 20,623, which is actually above the season average of 18,762. Those who did show certainly made their feelings known, whether it was booing Feliz or applauding for Harrison and Mercer.
Overall this season, attendance was 1,465,316 -- 48.9 percent of capacity (38,362) -- in 78 home dates. That's a decline of 454,131 over last year and a 1,033,280 drop from 2015, when the club made its last playoff appearance.
The Pirates ranked 28th out of 30 in attendance, with only the Tampa Bay Rans (14,431) and Miami Marlins (9,968) trailing them.