McKechnie Field!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard about McKechnie Field. Today, I finally made it there.

Seriously, look at those palm trees. Ahhhhh, Florida.

In my two-plus years in Chapel Hill, I’ve grown to appreciate the little touches that separate minor league baseball from big league ball, that make it feel much more personal. Many of those things are apparent in Spring Training.

If you couldn’t tell from the lineup and didn’t already realize it, today’s opponent was the Phillies. The Red Sox fans in our hotel (we’re staying near Fort Myers because we’re going to two games there, plus it’s close to where my brother lives, which means our hotel is full of Sawks fans) were more than happy to remind us that the Phillies and Pirates are in the same state.

We rolled in to McKechnie around 11:30 this morning so we’d have plenty of time to explore. The Pirates’ batting practice was over already (hopefully we’ll see them take BP on Thursday against the Twins since they’ll be the road team), but the Phils’ BP was in full swing.

Howard and Rollins spent most of BP screwing around in the outfield and behind the cage, which was funny to watch because Howard is a giant and Rollins is, well, not.

I wasn’t there to watch the Phillies take BP, though, so while they were on the field I checked out the bullpen and the batting cages along the right field line, watching various Pirates hit and throw. Finally, I decided to hop out on towards the field to try and get some pictures of the Pirates as they came out to stretch. When I got out there, Ken Tekulve and the Pirate Parrot were amusing the crowd with Teke soft-tossing rubber balls that the Parrot was bashing into the stands. Amusingly enough, Teke slings soft-toss with rubber balls just like he pitched.

Finally, the team took the field. First out was the guy that’s seemingly hit his way on to the team since I’ve arrived in Florida, Delwyn Young.

As the players stretched, a group of six Navy Seals parachuted out of a plane high above McKechnie, pulled some crazy maneuvers in the air, and landed in short center field. Most of the players stopped their stretching to watch. Here’s Jose Tabata doing just that.

At one point, Andrew McCutchen was jogging out and back and was very nearly obliterated by a landing Seal. He’s laughing in the pic below, but I was pretty scared there for a second.

Just like Howard and Rollins during the Phillies BP, ‘Cutch and Lastings Milledge were more or less inseperable as the Pirates stretched before the game.

Check out former Pirate and new infield/first bas coach Carlos Garcia. I took like four pictures of him today and he looks just like this in every one. Dude’s all business. Also, check out Neil Walker’s new number. Guy grew up in Pittsburgh in the early and mid-90s. Wonder who his two favorite players were. I have a guess …

After awhile, JR walked out among his charges. Please notice how short Delwyn Young is, especially when juxtaposed with Garrett Jones. And look who’s chatting in the background!

As the stretching wound down, Pedro Alvarez and Don Long headed towards the dugout.

As stretching finished up, the three guys who might help determine whether the Pirates’ offense this year is pitiful or kind of average spent some time talking.

And here’s a better shot of Andy LaRoche playing catch.

Finally, everyone moved towards the dugout. Here are some of the players milling around.

And here’s a similar shot with Gary Varsho and Joe Kerrigan. Honestly, I really like this coaching staff. I’m going to be sorry when the Pirates finish 70-92 and the fans peer-pressure the front office into canning a bunch of them.

At some point, the game actually started, so we headed up to our seats. I got some pictures from there, though the safety net does make an appearance in all of them. First up is Zach Duke’s first pitch of the game.

Most of the accounts of the game made it read like Duke really struggled today, but I thought he looked pretty good, to be honest. He fell behind in some counts in the first and put two guys on, but he changed speeds well and worked very quickly, zipping through the second and third innings without much difficulty at all. It was pretty easy to see from where I was sitting that his curve was buckling a few knees, which I took to be a very good sign. He clearly wasn’t as sharp as he would’ve liked, getting into that jam in the first and another in the fourth, but for a mid-March spring training game I was pretty happy with how he threw on the whole.

On the flip side of things, Roy Halladay went for the Phils. Andrew McCutchen lead off for the Bucs and immediately squared around to bunt, raising my blood pressure to unhealthy levels.

I can’t really judge how Halladay threw, because he was given an incredible strike zone by the home plate ump. Jeff Clement was really victimized by this, when he had two strikes called against him that Carlos Ruiz was obviously reaching into the right-handed batter’s box for pitches that were being called strikes anyones. Clement, Vazquz, and Milledge all jawed a bit at the ump, which struck me as awfully rare for a spring training game.

Perhaps the single most impressive Pirate today was Neil Walker. He made some incredible plays in the field at third base, moving easily to both sides and making great throws. He was awesome. I have no idea if his bat will ever come around, but if Adrian Beltre and Pedro Feliz can find consistent work as starting third basemen … Anyways, I got a picture of Walker hitting, cropped to include the big team logo behind the plate. Something about him growing up in Pittsburgh as a Pirate fan etc. etc.

I don’t think there’s much else to say. The offense was almost non-existent today, even after Halladay left and the strike zone evened out (a little bit). A few guys hit balls hard off of Halladay, though. LaRoche ripped a couple of foul line drives, Doumit doubled down the first base line and Milledge immediately followed it up with a hard single through the infield to score the lone run. Javier Lopez looked great out of the bullpen and Evan Meek did a nice job of bailing out Zach Duke’s mess in the fourth, though he really struggled in the fifth and probably cost the team the game.

Like I said on Saturday, I’ve got a lot more pictures (and higher res versions of all of these), but I may wait until the week ends to upload them to a picture sharing site (both because they slow the site down when I put them here and because my internet is really, really bad right now). Tomorrow’s an off-day, but I have a few pics from today’s side trip to Pirate City to put up, plus some news to link and dissect a bit.