Joining the Blue Jays Migration to Pittsburgh & 5 Things on Sports & Movies
Heading on a road trip to Pittsburgh to watch some baseball and musing about TIFF, the Baltimore Orioles & Don't Worry Darling.
I joined the great migration of Blue Jays fans driving down through upstate New York and Pennsylvania to attend two baseball games (Friday and Saturday) at PNC Park in Pittsburgh this past weekend. It was my first time visiting a major league ballpark other than Rogers Centre (SkyDome) in Toronto. What a major upgrade for a stadium. Open air, great sight lines, lots of communal spaces, statues to past team heroes, and one helluva view of the Pittsburgh skyline. I’ve heard PNC Park referred to as “baseball paradise” and I get it. The stadium sits right near the splitting of the Ohio River and, as you can see above, the outfield view is the city itself, with the yellow steel of the Roberto Clemente Bridge drawing your eye to the 20th-century skyscrapers of Steel City. It’s a great place to spend a few hours watching baseball. It helped that the Jays won all three games.
The Jays contingent was strong in Pittsburgh over the weekend. In the hours before the game, you’d see waves of fans decked out in Jays gear walking over the Andy Warhol Bridge or checking out nearby Acrisure Stadium (Heinz Field) where the Steelers play. (That stadium is massive. I walked around the entry concourse as it was open on Saturday afternoon and I could only imagine how crowded the place gets on game day.) Inside the park, it seemed like half of the fans in attendance were Jays fans, which swung some of the home-field advantage away from the Pirates. For instance, during Saturday’s game, the crowd was cheering on Jordan Romano with two strikes and two outs in the 9th, which is typically what happens with closers during home games. The Pirates crowd took the invasion of their ballpark in stride and were pretty friendly for the most part.
Was it concerning to watch the Jays leave men on base seemingly every inning on both Friday and Saturday? Sure, but they got the job done in all three games, which is what good teams are supposed to do against tanking teams like the Pirates.
Still, not everything is rosy. The Yusei Kikuchi experience was particularly aggravating on Saturday, with the usual uncertainty that accompanies him every time he steps on the mound. You don’t know if he’ll strike out or walk the side, give up a three-run bomb, or plunk a batter with an inside fastball. Luckily, he made it out of 2.1 innings with minimal damage, although Yimi Garcia certainly bailed him out in the 5th. Once the offseason comes (hopefully in mid-November for the Jays), Pete Walker and the team need to sprinkle the magic pixie dust on him that they used on Robbie Ray last year. He’s got the stuff. Leftie starters who can throw 97 don’t grow on trees in MLB. But the mentality on the mound is lacking. Maybe he needs to start grunting whenever he throws, cause we’ve got another two years of the Yusei Kikuchi Experience after this season.
5 Things on Sports & Movies
1. The Toronto International Film Festival starts this week on Thursday, September 8. I’m a TIFF Member, but because I was out of town on Saturday, I missed the four-hour exclusive window to buy individual tickets for members. Four hours. Talk about great benefits for members….
2. The Baltimore Orioles keep winning, although they dropped the final game in their series against the Oakland A’s. A lot has been written about the Orioles’ unlikely success after several seasons of losing 100-plus games. Even still, their success since early June has been unreal to witness. I’d hate to have them upset the Blue Jays this season (which is possible with so many games remaining between the two teams this fall), but of all the non-Jays AL East teams, the Orioles are absolutely the least hateable. So, ultimately, good for them.
3. The Canadian Men’s National Basketball Team is going through FIBA World Cup qualifiers right now and a lot of people on Raptors Twitter seem to assume that all Canadian basketball fans should be super invested in this. I don’t get it. Sure, it’s cool when national sports teams do well (I’ll be cheering on the men’s team at the upcoming FIFA World Cup this fall, for instance), but the idea of automatically supporting the men’s team because you like the sole Canadian team in the league has always puzzled me. There’s not a lot of overlap beyond individual players like Khem Birch and Delano Banton being a part of the men’s team and furthermore, Canada Basketball has a history of messing up, both on and off the court. I feel like the team needs to do more to earn fan engagement before sports media starts assuming they automatically earn our support and attention.
4. I watched The Terminator again the other night as preparation for our upcoming James Cameron Retrospective over at 3 Brothers Film (keep your eyes peeled for details on the retrospective in the coming weeks). It remains one of the best science-fiction films ever. The jump in quality from Piranha II: The Spawning to The Terminator has to be one of the greatest improvements from film to film in cinema history. It’d be like a rookie pitcher putting up a 5.50 ERA in AA and then winning MVP in the big leagues the following year.
5. The press tour for Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling keeps getting weirder. First there was her hooking up with Harry Styles on set and her divorce from Jason Sudeikis. Then rumours of a Florence Pugh feud as a result. Then a series of promo features in magazines where she says nonsensical stuff, including some half-baked commentary on Jordan Peterson and incels. Now the film is premiering at the Venice Film Festival and we’ve got amazing footage of Chris Pine trying not to roll his eyes at the utter banality of Harry Styles’ press conference answers. The film looks bad, but this is a messed up press tour for the ages.