PNC is salute to past, present

PITTSBURGH -- Say this much for the Pirates -- when they open a new ballpark, they're consistent.
The Pittsburgh franchise has called three places in the city home ... and lost the first game at each site.
That useless bit of trivia aside, there's not much anyone could claim as similar between the Pirates' most recent home and the one in which they played Monday.
Three Rivers Stadium was a salute to the antiseptic age of the 70s, not to mention the relative cheapness and shortsightedness of the city planners of that era who envisioned a multi-purpose facility to be the wave of the future.
Best of both: PNC Park, on the other hand, is a salute to the history of the Pirates' franchise during the time they called Forbes Field home, with all the amenities today's baseball fan has come to expect.
Sure, one could argue that the current wave of throwback ballparks is as much a trend as the cookie-cutter mentality that prevailed in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and St. Louis and Philadelphia and San Diego and Atlanta in the late 60s and 70s.
But, there is one difference, and it is an important one. Instead of the look-a-like stadiums of the past generation, the new models are built with a great emphasis on the makeup of the structure, the sightlines and fan comfort.
PNC Park's view of the city's downtown, for instance, is pretty spectacular, and should be even more so for night games.
How about the view of the Allegheny River? Fans could attend an entire season of games at Three Rivers Stadium and not even realize there was water nearby.
The open-air atmosphere also means ... there's air, the kind that circulates around and through the stadium.
The real stuff: Have I mentioned the real grass?
No more high hop doubles or triples on routine base hits to the outfield. That light brown-colored stuff between the bags -- those are called basepaths.
And, as sacrilegious as it may seem in this football-mad region, I don't miss seeing the yardlines from past Steeler seasons that couldn't quite ever seem to be painted out.
The players probably enjoy the real stuff, too, no doubt thinking back to those warm summer afternoons at TRS when they could count on the turf being 20 or so degrees warmer.
There seemed to be a few problems still to be ironed out. The out of town scoreboard didn't work after the first inning and the LOB (runners left on base) column on the main scoreboard remained empty throughout the game.
The main scoreboard also didn't provide up-to-the-minute batting averages for the visiting team and operators were a bit slow changing over to that information for the Pirates.
Those are minor glitches, though, that will surely be worked out in short order.
Have I mentioned, there's real grass on the playing field?
Booed: The Pirates' fans seemed to be in mid-season form. Realizing right-fielder Derek Bell started the game with a batting average of .130 and went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, the baggy-panted, well-traveled Bell was summarily booed following his final at-bat, a weak grounder to the second baseman.
They were enthusiastic, for some reason, over the pirogi race at the end of the fifth inning, won by Sauerkraut Saul. (Saul, I'm told, didn't win his first race last year until July 2 but wound up with more race victories for the season than Potato Pete and Cheese Chester. ... Talk about useless trivia.)
Buc fans were also not impressed with the outing of reliever Marc Wilkins, who faced 11 batters and retired just four of them. Of the other seven, four scored. He also uncorked a wild pitch ... but he did induce Ken Griffey Jr., in a pinch-hitting at-bat, to fly out to center.
Did I mention, there's real grass?
XRob Todor is sports editor of The Vindicator.