This is why sports matter
My father and my son were in the stadium for a landmark Andrew McCutchen home run and it got me thinking.
Being a Pirates fan is a ridiculous endeavor. The team has been mostly terrible for the past 30 years, with a wonderful blip of competitiveness from 2013-2015. In 2013 when they had their first winning season in 21 years - a record for futility not just in baseball but in all North American professional sports - I drove 700 miles in a day to be at their first playoff game in forever, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
When my kids were growing up in New Jersey surrounded by Yankees fans rooting for the most successful franchise in America, I told them it was ok to choose them, because I knew that being a Pirates fan was just choosing pain. “Stick with me on the Steelers,” I said. “But it’s ok to pick a different baseball team. I grew up in Pittsburgh, but you didn’t.”
But they stuck with the Pirates and with me, led by my eldest Jacob, who has ended up living in Pittsburgh for the last seven years, going to college there and sticking around. He adopted a cat and named him Roberto Clemente. And today he went to an afternoon game with my dad - who at 89 still rides his bike down to the stadium! - and they saw Andrew McCutchen hit his 241st home run as a Pirate, passing Clemente for sole possession of third place all-time on the organization's home run list. I was watching on TV and I choked up, for a lot of reasons.
I mean, this is why sports matters to me and to so many. It brings us together as a nation, as a community and as a family. And at a time when so much seems to be falling apart, and society itself feels on the edge of shattering, we need these communal moments more than ever. It’s not stupid. It’s important. It matters.
My son being there with my dad for this historic home run really got to me. Sports has always been a bridge, a way we can communicate with people we love when other things are making it hard. As with many men, sports were always an avenue of communication between my father, brother and I, a way to keep talking even through years when there were distances in other regards. Back in the days when I thought it was reasonable idea to drive a garbage truck from Ann Arbor to Tegucigalpa, Nicaragua to aid the struggling Sandinistas, when the pockets of my thrift store overcoat overflowed with things my father didn’t approve of; and I disregarded his advice about many things, including how far it was reasonable drive to meet up with an old girlfriend and have some fun.
Even then, we had the Pirates. And Cutch has been such a standby, a part of our lives, someone who seems like a family member, and one we can be proud to call our own. It only seems like he’s been a Pirate forever.
MLB.com writes, “McCutchen played the first nine seasons of his career in Pittsburgh, including a 2013 campaign in which he was the National League’s Most Valuable Player, and after stints with the Giants, Yankees, Phillies and Brewers, he returned to the Steel City ahead of the 2023 season.”
Having him back has been so meaningful, even as the team has continued to mostly stink. It’s continuity, it’s tradition… it’s something.
I wrote here about my trip to attend that playoff game with my father, Dixie Doc, who was the person who fueled my love for the Pirates and as a kid and stuck by them for two decades of losing. It was a one-game Wild Card matchup that they won and which remains the greatest sports event I’ve ever attended, and is going to be hard to top ever, because nothing about the enthusiasm was fake. We didn’t need a scoreboard to tell us to stand and cheer.
And no one needed to explain to anyone in the stadium today why a 38-year-old Cutch passing The Great One, Roberto Clemente, in team home runs mattered. Clemente is not only one of the greatest baseball players of all time, but a true legend, a humanitarian giant who died serving others, a beacon to this day for Spanish-speaking players. All of this is why sports matters to me, even when I sometimes wish it did not! And I wanted to share my thoughts with you, fresh from my brain to my fingers to the screen in front of you.
The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.
Well-stated Alan and being there for the 2013 Wild Card game is a moment I will never forget. My father was with me that evening as well and we slapped high fives with everyone we could walking out after that game. To me, Sports and Music are a utopian world where it feels like age, race, and other things do not matter and shouldn’t matter! To me, Sports and Music represent a part of society we should all strive to emulate daily.
Now a close second was the clinching game of the 79 NLCS, also against the Reds. Crazy atmosphere for a 10 year old and loved every minute of that day
That's beyond cool -- especially since the Atlanta Braves were in the basement my whole early life, only to become a powerhouse after I left (Hank Aaron & Phil Niekro notwithstanding). Nonetheless, I was a fair-weather fan. But through today's siloed lens, I see the beauty, the community, the thrill of the challenge. (But jocks don't float my boat like, you guessed it, rockers do!) :)