Pirates home opener history includes some memorable moments

Under normal circumstances, the Pittsburgh Pirates would have played the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday at PNC Park in their 139th home opener.

But the game — just like almost every sporting event around the globe over the past three weeks — was postponed (not yet canceled) by the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, no makeup date was scheduled because the sports shutdown is indefinite.

Pirates manager Derek Shelton understands the importance of remaining isolated. But after 15 years as a major league coach, he eagerly was awaiting the opportunity to exchange lineup cards at home plate as a first-time, big league manager.

Opening Day matters, or celebrated author and columnist Thomas Boswell wouldn’t have written a book entitled, “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.”

The Pirates have made many memories on Opening Day — some their fans cherish, others they would like to forget.

The 1995 opener — a 6-2 loss to the Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals) on April 26 — featured one of the most bizarre plays in Three Rivers Stadium history.

The game was the first at home since Aug. 11 of the previous year when a strike shortened the ’94 season. Prior to the game, some people in the crowd of 34,841 booed shortstop Jay Bell, who got his revenge when he homered in the fourth inning.

In the fifth, however, the Expos scored five runs whereas the Pirates committed three errors and uncorked a wild pitch. The Expos’ Roberto Kelly rounded the bases and scored on a play you might see in Little League — an infield single and two throwing errors.

The madness started when Kelly hit slow chopper to third baseman Jeff King, whose throw eluded first baseman Rich Aude. Right fielder Orlando Merced chased down the baseball, but his throw hit the Expos’ Cliff Floyd in the face as he slid home.

The errors and the wild pitch weren’t the craziest part. Irritated fans caused a 17-minute delay when they littered the field with pennants that were handed out before the game.

The best of the openers occurred 19 years later — March 31, 2014 — when Pine-Richland’s Neil Walker broke a scoreless tie with the Chicago Cubs by leading off the bottom of the 10th inning with a home run. It was the first game after the Pirates the previous season ended a 20-year streak of missing the playoffs

The Pirates have a winning record in their home openers (79-59), according to the Baseball Almanac. In fact, before losing to the St. Louis Cardinals last year 6-5, they had won five in a row. The Pirates also had a 10-game winning streak from 1945-1954. Strangely, the team finished with only two winning records in that time.

The first home opener was played May 10, 1882, when the Pittsburgh Alleghenies defeated the St. Louis Brown Stockings, 9-5.

The game was to be played at 16,000-seat Exposition Park, which sat where Three Rivers Stadium was built 78 years later (two blocks west of PNC Park).

But flood waters forced the game to higher ground on a field called Exposition Park II, according to a history of the park written by Dan Deluliis.

More flood waters moved the team to Recreation Park (site of present-day West Park) before the re-named Pirates returned to Exposition Park and lost to the Chicago Colts, 7-6, on Opening Day, April 22, 1891.

Flooding was so bad at Exposition Park that the Pirates scheduled long road trips at the outset of the season. Deluliis wrote that on the Fourth of July, 1902, a foot of water covered the outfield, forcing a change in the rules — any hit to the outfield was a single.

Finally, the Pirates moved to dry ground in Oakland in 1909. The first home opener at Forbes Field was played April 21, 1910, a 9-4 victory against the St. Louis Cardinals.

This season isn’t the first time Opening Day was postponed. Labor disputes were to blame in 1972, 1990 and 1995.

Games have been called off for various reasons, including when U.S. Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1923 and 1945. Six teams postponed games June 2, 1968, when presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.

No baseball was played June 6, 1944, the day of the Normandy invasion.

And, of course, games were suspended for a week after the attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.