Tim Benz: Kevin McClatchy, former players reflect on PNC Park on the 20th anniversary of its debut

It had been a long time since something went right for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

In fact, pretty much everything since the end of the eighth inning in Atlanta on Oct. 14, 1992 had been downhill.

They lost their last shot at making the World Series. Their MVP went to San Francisco. Their former Cy Young Award-winning pitcher went to Houston. A work stoppage. The manager left. The next guy got fired. Eight straight losing seasons. No hope on the horizon for a return to competitive performance, and a financial structure within baseball that didn’t seem to care.

But then, on April 9, 2001, the brand-new PNC Park opened its doors. And for maybe the first time since Kent Tekulve got the last out in Game 7 of the World Series in Baltimore in 1979, we could unequivocally say, “The Pirates got this one right.”

Twenty years later we’re still saying it. This star-crossed team nailed it with PNC Park. Despite 16 more losing campaigns in the years since it opened, the statement is no less true.

Even on Thursday when the 2021 team opened the park’s 21st season at 1-5 and on the heels of yielding 25 runs in the previous two games.

PNC Park is still everything we hoped it would be. It’s the crown jewel of the city’s infrastructure. It’s a national attraction. A monument to the team’s history. And a touchstone for any conversation about how far the city has come.

Not only over the past 20 years. But for the 20 years before that.

So, in honor of Friday’s 20th anniversary of the first game at PNC Park, I spoke with those who have distinct memories of that day and the anticipation leading up to it.

Former Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy remembers thinking it wouldn’t happen.

The funding problems. The political rancor. The frustration over people insisting he was looking to move the team. Realizing that he had the ability to do so even if he didn’t want to.

The overwhelming rejection of the Regional Renaissance Initiative in November 1997. Then the ensuing phone call from Mayor Tom Murphy at 2 a.m.

“He said, ‘Don’t worry we can still get this done,’” McClatchy said Thursday. “’We have a Plan B. We can still do this.’”

Yeah. That “Plan B.”

From there, McClatchy recalls the steps forward. Finally seeing political partnership from both parties. The planning. The renderings.

Then it was a different kind of stress. Would it be done on time? Would it be done right? On budget? Would the details be on point?

Let’s face it, those were traits not consistent with how things tended to turn out for the Pirates over the past few decades.

Regionally consistent stone facing instead of brick like they used at Camden Yards and Coors Field. Making the steel blue instead of green.

The groundbreaking was held. Then it felt real. It was actually going to be built.

“We thought we knew what the ballpark was going to look like,” McClatchy said. “But when I sat there and looked at the skyline, and the park started to come out of the ground, you knew we had something special.”

Former Pirates first baseman Kevin Young remembers the first look. It was a few months before the season would start. He was up in the press box with teammates Jason Kendall and Brian Giles before a PiratesFest appearance.

It was winter. The stadium wasn’t finished yet, but it was close enough to get a glimpse of what their new home would look like.

“Kendall and I were just like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ And Giles (a left-handed power hitter) got super-excited. All he was doing was looking at the right field foul pole and saw how short the distance was. Kendall and I (both right-handed hitters) looked at left-center at 409 (feet). And I’ll never forget thinking, ‘Three Rivers was 375.’ And I just saw all of my home runs turning into flyouts,” Young sighed.

A blow to slugging percentage aside, the place was going to be special. And it was vastly different from what had been the experience at Three Rivers Stadium just a few feet away and a few months ago.

“Opening day was pretty much amazing,” Young said.

Kendall vividly remembers some home games from that first season at PNC Park. The seven-run, ninth-inning comeback against the Houston Astros which ended in Brian Giles’ grand slam off of Billy Wagner. The club’s first game back against the New York Mets after the 9/11 attacks.

The All-Star catcher also recalls a treacherous drive home from the airport the night before that home opener.

Kendall and Young both recount the story in nearly identical fashion. The team flight touched down in Pittsburgh late evening. It was after a Sunday afternoon win in Houston on April 8, 2001. Monsoon conditions after returning from a six-game season-opening road trip.

“Harder than I’ve ever seen it rain. Wind, lightning, thunder. Dorothy! Toto! Are you coming to take me away somewhere?” Kendall exclaimed.

A massive thunderclap hit the region sometime between midnight and 12:15 a.m. Both players heard it even though their homes were 30 miles apart. They each managed to get back to sleep before the home opener, then arrived at roughly the same time at the new stadium on game day only to hear the news.

Pirates Hall of Famer Willie Stargell had died. Team icon. Franchise favorite. Ambassador to the team’s glory days. Still a regular around the clubhouse.

“When?” Young asked.

It turns out, sometime right around 12:15 a.m. After Kendall, Young and presumably thousands of other Pittsburghers were jarred out of their slumber.

“That was Pops telling us he’s checking out,” Young said. “I’ll never forget that. What a way for us to have that thought process. What he did and how he impacted us and our careers in Pittsburgh.”

It was so … Pirates. Wasn’t it? Just all the forces in the world conspiring.

This monumentally great day in the franchise’s history — on the day PNC Park was scheduled to open — the franchise hero dies of a stroke at the age of 61. Just two days after the statue of him was unveiled near the outfield gate.

Anytime Kendall saw Stargell before a game, Stargell would jab Kendall in the rib cage.

“He was older in life,” Kendall chuckled. “But he’d hit me hard. Oof! And I go out and get two or three hits. So I’d come back the next day and I say, ‘Pops, give it to me again.’ And bam!”

Kendall couldn’t get that jab for the PNC Park opener. But a few hours later, he was standing on first base with the first hit in Pirates history in the new stadium, beating out an infield single in the bottom of the first inning.

So maybe Kendall got a little push up the baseline from Stargell instead of a shot to the ribs.

It wasn’t the first hit overall in the stadium, though. Because a few minutes earlier in the top of the first, the guy who did get the first hit felt like there was a different sort of divine intervention.

Here’s what Reds first baseman Sean Casey doesn’t remember.

Making contact.

“Sometimes you get one of those swings, when you hit it so well you don’t even know the ball is coming off the bat,” Casey said.

The Upper St. Clair product was hitting cleanup for Cincinnati that day. Just hoping, praying that somebody from the Reds would get on base in the top of the first inning by way of a walk or an error. So he could get up as the fourth man and take a hack at getting the first-ever hit in his city’s new ballpark.

As fate would have it — and Casey insists, it was “fate” — Dmitri Young got plunked by a Todd Ritchie pitch with two outs. And Casey had his chance.

On a 1-0 pitch, Casey sent a rocket into the stands and was forever ensconced in the park’s history as the guy to get the first hit and the first home run.

“Sometimes they talk about ‘your faith.’ Is God real? This and that,” Casey started to laugh. “God is real!

“There’s no way otherwise a guy from Upper St Clair who barely got a scholarship ends up going 4-for-4 with the first hit and home run at PNC Park. Stop it! Unbelievable day. So grateful.”

McClatchy remembers his goal when PNC Park opened.

“My hope for PNC Park is that it is going to be similar to Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. That it is going to be in the landscape of our city forever. And it is built in a way that it can stand the test of time,” McClatchy said.

Pirates fans — those that remain — are withstanding that test right along with the building itself. Hoping to recapture that brief glimmer from 2013-15 when the Pirates team was representative of the field it used.

Well, at least fans have a wonderful view while they wait.