"Finally. Baseball."
Going based on the smile on Derek Shelton's face, you probably wouldn't have been able to tell that the Pirates had just lost his managerial debut at PNC Park to the Indians, 5-3, Saturday night. It was just an exhibition, and even one where he could feel optimistic about the work his starting pitcher, Joe Musgrove, had turned in.
But after a wait like the Pirates and Major League Baseball had gone through to just get to this point, the first words Shelton offered as he got in front of the camera postgame felt like he right sentiment:
"Finally. Baseball."
"I’ve been waiting a little while, as you guys know, to sit and look at that skyline and watch a game with another team," Shelton said during a postgame Zoom conference Saturday.
It was 128 days, to be exact, between the Pirates' last spring training game March 12 and their first exhibition game against an actual opponent during summer camp Saturday. This contest was one of the first three true exhibitions in baseball, with the Yankees-Mets and Phillies-Nationals also playing Saturday. They are the first competitive games by any of the four major North American sports since mid-March.
It isn't quite the same game they played back before the pandemic in March, with new health and safety protocols put in place to protect players and coaches.
The changes started before the game. Instead of a high-five, Jason Martin tapped elbows with a Cleveland player to celebrate ending a round of batting practice by putting a ball into the seats in right. The national anthem was prerecorded at the stadium earlier in the week and played on the scoreboard. Once it was done, some players and team personnel started to file into the seats behind home plate. There are now green tents set up by each team's dugout and by the bullpens, allowing both teams to socially distance better.
None of those changes felt drastic, but the real concern was what a game would be like without fans in the stands.
The Pirates had experimented with adding crowd noise to their intrasquad games this week, though it had been static, white noise up until Saturday's game.
"I realized yesterday, listening to it for the first time, that you can't really tell if it's a home crowd or not," Ben Cherington said with a laugh Wednesday. "I'm not sure who they're rooting for."
That blandness was not a point in the artificial noise's favor. Musgrove went on the record earlier this week saying he would prefer to pitch in silence, but most of his teammates wanted something.
"You're not really invisible anymore as a catcher, so I'm trying to get set later [with] targets a lot more often than I otherwise would," Luke Maile said earlier this week.
"I think we should get a little white noise in there, just to confuse microphones or whatnot," Kyle Crick said Saturday afternoon.
"I don't really want to hear the other team's conversations from their dugout, and I don't want them hearing ours," Jacob Stallings said in the opening week of camp.
Shelton was also a proponent of crowd noise, so the Pirates were going to at least try it in a game scenario. As Musgrove finished warming up to 'Even Flow' by Pearl Jam, it was time to see what the Pirates had planned.
Then the crowd started to come over the speakers.
Finally. Baseball.
Fake cheers -- including spikes of artificial excitement when the Pirates do something right, like get a hit or record an out -- was constant. Players were given walk-up music and a fair dose of applause as they walked to the plate, with recordings of public address announcer Tim DeBacco's introductions echoing through the stadium. Recordings of the late Vince Lascheid's organ work rang through the stadium following a strikeout by Musgrove.
If it wasn't for the pregnant pauses after the Lascheid audio's cues for a 'Charge!' or 'Let's Go Bucs!' chant, and the silent rendition of 'Take Me out to the Ball Game,' it did sound like a normal day at the ballpark.
"I thought we did a really good job with the fan noise," Shelton said. "Made it seem pretty realistic."
How about you, Musgrove?
"It still felt like a game," he said. "When you're on the mound, man, you've got tunnel vision. You can hardly even see your dugouts. You've really got what's right behind the plate and the umpire. So that visual, for me, was pretty much the same. You don't have the loud noise, and it's not true, authentic fan noise that you hear. It's run through speakers, so that's a little bit strange. As far as my ability to focus on the task on hand, I was about the same."
About the same might be the best any team can hope for this season.
And maybe a few less "woos."
MORE FROM THE GAME
• Musgrove threw 40 pitches in his schedule three innings pitched, 30 of which were strikes. That included 10 whiffs, with four coming on the slider.
Here is where his 40 pitches were located:
"I feel like everything was working, really," Musgrove said. "The sinker-slider was kind of what we used predominantly for the night I guess, but all my stuff felt sharp. I mean, I felt good in my bullpen. Really this entire summer camp felt really good for me. Just trying to continue to process repeating my delivery and focus on the few little keys that I have and just simplifying and minimizing the thought process in my head when I'm out there."
This is Musgrove's final tune up ahead of his opening day start July 24 in St. Louis.
"Really good. Really sharp," Shelton said. "That last start before the Opening Day start is a pare-down start with the three innings, but really sharp. I thought the ball came out of his hand nice. Executed his plan. Very happy with that.”
• It's safe to say Musgrove feels like he's where needs to be for opening day.
"Intensity wise, my only goal was to go out and dominate," Musgrove said. "Not trying to work on anything anymore, not trying to add pitches. I'm not trying to necessarily tune anything up. It's just go out there and compete and get a feel for that atmosphere with no fans and having a real competition in the box and not facing your own guys. I got to pitch a little bit differently than I been pitching our guys the past couple weeks. I felt really good."
• Steven Brault and Chad Kuhl each went two innings of one-hit ball.
• The Pirates carried a 3-0 lead into the eighth inning, with Guillermo Heredida driving in two on a base hit in the fifth and Erik Gonzalez adding an insurance run in the sixth.
Kyle Crick couldn't hold onto that lead though, allowing two hits and walking two, with all four eventually coming home to score.
It was the third time Crick had pitched in summer camp.
"Nothing was holding me back," Crick said during a Zoom call Saturday afternoon. "I think extra precaution was exercised because of my surgery at the end of the year and coming back from that."
It is worth noting that Crick's slider, which averaged a velocity of 81.5 mph last season, was in the 76-79 mph range all night.
• Taking a quick break from baseball, Crick has had a lot of personal hardships over the past year, losing his twin brother, Kevin, in December and his father, Reggie, in May.
On Saturday, he talked about how those two will be a "driving force" for him in 2020.
"Tragic things happen in people's lives and you have one or two choices — you can go forward and move on positively, or you can stay stuck in a tough place," Crick said. "It’s something that I do to honor people, it's not just just cruising right by and not looking back. When I take the mound, it’s in honor of people now. It’s a little different than just trying to get people out.
"I feel like I have a couple more, you know, guardians looking out for me."
• Maile had surgery on his right index finger Friday, and it seems like he will miss the 2020 season. More on that here.
• Williams confirmed on the broadcast that he will start the Pirates' second game of the season. That will be July 25 in St. Louis. He'll oppose Adam Wainwright. Williams will be the starter in the next exhibition against the Indians on Monday night in Cleveland, so he will be on a full five days of rest.
• It was revealed during the television broadcast on AT&T SportsNet that Bob Walk had COVID-19, but is hoping to be back to broadcast opener. “He had a couple bad days,” Greg Brown said.
• Shelton confirmed the club is looking at potentially using Cole Tucker in the outfield this year. With only four outfielders in Pittsburgh camp now that Gregory Polanco has tested positive for COVID-19, the team is looking for people to pitch in.
This is Tucker's first look in the outfield.
" I think he has the ability to play all three [outfield positions] with not much issue," Shelton said.