Aug 14, 2021, Pittsburgh, PA - While the Pirates may be in a "rebuilding"season this year, they have nothing to be ashamed of in their stadium. And we saw a lot of it. We walked across the yellow Roberto Clemente Bridge late afternoon Friday to witness a rain out before the players even took the field. This led us to a double-header on Saturday where we sat through two 7 inning outings. I like baseball, but that's a lot.
We didn't have high hopes for seeing a win over the streaking Brewers. When I told my friend Carrie that we expected the Pirates to lose, she said "Yep. That's what they do."
Friday night was Star Wars night which is one of the reasons we showed up early. They gave
out Mandalorian shirts and had characters walking around. Right before game time the grounds crew started covering the infield even before the rain had started. While we would
have preferred our game 1 to have been on Friday, it was kind of neat watching the rain against the stadium lights.
Saturday at 2:30pm the sun was blazing for mostly empty stands. This will probably be the only major league game I attend where one of bathrooms I used was completely empty.
Our close to the field seats were too hot and we promptly moved back into more shaded seats. But the Pirates must have liked the warm weather as they managed a blow out against the Brewers 14-4. The Pirates Newman (SS) tied a MLB record for 4 doubles in one game.
The second game was back to normal with the Pirates taking a loss 0-6. But the stands were full for this game so at least there were many witnesses. After the 7th inning was done we witnessed a spectacular fireworks show over the river with the city as a back drop. If you are going: We highly recommend arranging to see this show.
Racers - Pierogies! Christine was determined to see these in the stadium as earlier in the year they were racing on the Roberto Clemente Bridge due to Covid. Once she determined we could see them on the field the tickets were booked. They ran races in both games and at least one of them fell down.
Note: Since all entertainment and restaurant venues have been affected by Covid Pandemic restart issues, we recognize that the stadium likely did not offer an optimal experience. However, it is what it is. We'll update the ratings when we visit again.
Stadium Ratings are exciting, good, meh, bad, disastrous.
Facility - Spectacular view of the city. Post game fireworks the best I have ever seen. Staff were helpful and friendly. Really no bad views in the place, even from the second level. Rating: Exciting
Food - Food choices were limited. Most of the beer in the stadium was in cans due to Covid restrictions, although I did manage to find one stand with craft draft beer. The stadium house beer is the local Iron City and I had a few. The "crab" fries seemed like a thing, but it was really just fries with old bay on them. Hot dogs were fine but did not change my life. The pizza soaked up some IC beer. Christine thought the pretzel bytes were really good. Rating: Good
Mascot - We saw more of the Pirate Parrot in the first game, but was not as present for the second game. He pecked some of the people in the lower seats. Someone pointed out that the suit is probably really hot. Rating: Meh
