Dunlap: This Sure As Heck Felt Like The Playoffs
That was baseball; that was real baseball.
I don't care that it was a smidgen before the All Star Break and that the Pirates' season still has 74 games to play.
I don't care that July hasn't turned to August and the trade deadline still hasn't hit.
I don't care what you want to call it --- I was there. And this felt and looked like the Major League Baseball postseason. Don't try to tell me otherwise. It had the sensation of the playoffs.
I generally hate comparisons of the such, but this one fits --- if you unknowingly plopped someone down and dropped them on Federal Street at about 6:30 p.m. on Saturday without giving them the context, there's no question they would have sworn it was October.
You see, as the weekend has now ended and we begin our week, some want to debate the merits of what went down on our magnificent North Side riverbank this past weekend, as the Pirates hosted the St. Louis Cardinals for a four-game set that began Thursday and traveled right up through Sunday.
Some want to question --- or at least bounce around --- a notion that the buzz in and around PNC Park for the series didn't have the texture of a playoff matchup.
To that, I say "garbage, nonsense and save it for someone else."
And I don't say that from some high and mighty perch in the press box.
I don't say that from some look-down-my-nose-at-you glare.
No, I say that as someone who ponied up and then plopped down in some seats with a couple friends for Saturday night's amazing contest against the Cardinals.
In what I do, I feel it is ultra-important that every so often I get out of the press box at venues and experience what it's like to see amongst the real people, the Pittsburgh people. My people.
So on Saturday night --- accompanied by two friends --- I did precisely that, getting to the North Side a few hours before first pitch and staying well into that stunningly exciting night that ended when Andrew McCutchen planted a pitch into the bushes.
Make no mistake, it felt like a playoff game. All of it.
From the time just after 4:30 p.m. when I stopped to ask the street ticket brokers just how tough of a ticket it was and they just laughed, explaining how the crowd ---- which would end up being 37,318 ---- had scooped up most of the tickets well in advance and they were struggling to make a buck.
It felt like a playoff game as the corner of General Robinson and Federal was crammed in like a New York rush hour subway station and strangers high-fived each other, how spontaneous chants of "Let's Go Bucs" broke out and how no person with a Cardinals shirt was able to make their way through without getting at least a modicum of razzing.
It felt like a playoff game inside, too.
When the moment came that Mark Reynolds got a second chance in the second inning and blasted a pitch over the wall that incited Francisco Cervelli to lose his mind, the crowd followed, making you wonder inside PNC Park if the umpires would need the National Guard to get out alive.
Don't tell me that didn't feel like the playoffs. Don't even try.
Don't tell me it didn't feel like the playoffs, either, when A.J. Burnett blasted a home run, Pedro Alvarez got a huge hit off a lefty or McCutchen delivered that momentous strike that lifted the hometown nine.
It all did. Every second of it felt like the postseason. Don't tell me otherwise.
I know where I will be on at least one of the games Sept 28-30. That's the next time the Cardinals come to town.
I will be down in the seats, among the Pittsburgh people.
It won't be the playoffs yet but, be sure, it will feel like it. No matter what anyone says.
Colin Dunlap is a featured columnist at CBSPittsburgh.com. He can also be heard weekdays from 5:40 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Sports Radio 93-7 "The Fan." You can e-mail him at colin.dunlap@cbsradio.com. Check out his bio here.
