Four Summer Days In Four American Cities: Nothing But Baseball, Hot Dogs, and Highway Driving With My Two Sons – Post #6: The “Confluence”

Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is located in the triangle formed by the “Y-shaped” meeting of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. The area is simply known as “the confluence”.

A statue of Honus Wagner welcomes you to PNC Park. Pittsburgh’s new baseball facility is to the north of downtown, across the Allegheny River, and is connected to the forest of skyscrapers by the signature yellow Roberto Clemente Memorial Bridge.

Before, during and after each Pirates home game, the bridge is shut down to vehicle traffic and becomes a convenient, pedestrian-only approach to the Park site. Gregg took the bridge pic below from outside of the right field fence.

Just to the west, on the north side of the very spot where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers converge to form the Ohio, lies the also newer Heinz Field (above), home of the football Steelers. Heinz Field replaced the now razed but appropriately named Three Rivers Stadium, in which both the Pirates and Steelers played.

What I remember most about July 8th in Pittsburgh is that it was quite hot – and humid. Of course it was an afternoon game, and the beating sun made it feel a little like a sauna.

The game itself was a good one. Pirates 6, Cubs 2 was the final score. We had two seats together and one separately (because we bought the third one later), but the single seat actually turned out to be a better location – directly behind home plate.

From the vantage point of that seat (which was also in the sun most of the game) you could see Carlos Zambrano’s wicked breaking stuff. How the Pirates could hit him at all was amazing, and they did so enough to beat him, aided by some spectacular defensive plays.

PNC Park is truly one of the finest baseball parks in the country. There is a hedge out in center field that is cleverly clipped to spell out “Pirates” (left). The views from inside the stadium toward downtown are spectacular. The service people in Pittsburgh were especially friendly and helpful.

In fact, the whole Pittsburgh area was (to me) surprisingly green, hilly and beautiful. Where were the steel mills and smoke?

For me, Pittsburgh comes in extremely close to number one St. Louis as far as ranking the four stadiums we visited. Detroit would be a close third followed by Cincinnati. However on a scale of 10 of all stadiums, the rankings would be 9.9, 9.8, 9.7 and 9.6. They are all wonderful Parks, including my hometown Safeco Field in Seattle, which I’d rank about a 9.8 or 9.9.

Of course for me the only 10 ranking is AT&T Park in San Francisco. Nothing can compare with the views of the San Francisco Bay or a “splash hit” into McCovey Cove.