Two Years and Three Teams Later, “Grill Cheese” Discusses Happiness, Home and Heartbreak in Pittsburgh
It’s a common thing that happens on anniversaries of events – the day Kennedy was assassinated, the Challenger disaster, the day Princess Diana died – people will often reflect on where they were when they first heard the news and what they were doing. They are moments embedded deep in the mind due to their monumental impact on the world.
Pittsburgh Pirates fans have those moments too – the day the team won their last world series, the day Roberto Clemente died and September 23, 2013 – the day the team clinched a playoff berth, ending a 21-year drought of post-season glory.
Jason Grilli remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing – he was on the mound in Wrigley Field and threw a pitch that the Cubs’ Ryan Sweeney just got enough of to bloop a single toward centerfield.
The former Pirates closer recollected the moment when we caught up with him last week.
“It was kind of a flashback to that Sid Bream play in a sense, the ball kicked, then McCutchen recovered it and then Morneau was right there for the relay to Russ,” the reliever said, recalling those moments as if they’d happened last week, not nearly three years ago.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”Jason Grilli” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=””]I wasn’t there for some of that painstaking stuff, but you could see it was building.[/perfectpullquote]“That play, it just showed who we were. We didn’t give up. We knew what was at stake. There was so much going on in that moment and everyone was trying so hard knowing that the game was so huge. We just wanted to lift that burden.”
After catching the ball from Morneau, Russell Martin tagged Nate Schierhotlz, who was attempting to score from first, out at the plate. Grilli rushed his catcher, as he often did after closing a winning game and grabbed him.
“There’s a picture of me hugging Russ with that ball in the air,” he said. “He and I were in that moment – but the whole team, the whole city were right there too…it was so awesome to see a city lifted after so many years – it felt like, 21 years of losing? Yeah that’s over now,” he said.
Front Row Seat for a Slow Buildup
Grilli joined the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2011. He approached Manager Clint Hurdle, who was his manager during his stint on the Colorado Rockies in 2008-2009 about joining the club. “I was at a point in my career where I was a little frustrated because I was pitching so well in triple A for the Phillies and was thinking, I don’t want to just sit there and win a triple A championship – I’ve done that. So I exercised my out transaction-wise, I asked for them to let me go.”
His first call was to Hurdle. “I told him, ‘if there’s any room for me, if you have a need, I’m just telling you, I’m taking my out and I’ll be a free agent here’.” Hurdle told him he’d send some people to check him out and “they got me over there and it was a pretty cool thing,” he said. ‘I was ecstatic.”
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”Jason Grilli” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=””]That play, it just showed who we were. We didn’t give up. We knew what was at stake[/perfectpullquote]He was impressed with what he saw on the field from the Pittsburgh Pirates. “You could see that the team was clicking. They were getting hot and starting to roll,” he said. “I didn’t know what my role was going to be, but I was gonna accept whatever it was. To be in a winning situation, it didn’t matter to me if I’d be pitching the eighth inning like I did in Triple A or the sixth or the seventh inning. I just wanted to contribute.”
He described the 2011 and 2012 seasons as a “slow build-up” with a team that was hungry for success. Which they found in 2013.
“I wasn’t there for some of that painstaking stuff, but you could see it was building. It’s a process, especially for a lower-budget, small market team that’s not going out and spending a lot of money to bring free agents over. It was going to take the right mix of guys, and it finally happened – it was like a bolder rolling downhill and gathering steam when [the season] turned over,” he recalled. “It was rather exciting to be a part of because of the history of 20-plus losing seasons. To get to that point it took a lot of willpower from the guys, the right mix of guys and the combination of effort that we all had – it was amazing, just amazing. And the town knows that and I’ll never forget that.”
He said those teams in 2011, 2012 and 2013 were almost exorcising the demons of the past – not just for the Pittsburgh Baseball Club, but for the city itself.
“It was like we were carrying the weight of all of these losing seasons – things we were never a part of – on our shoulders,” he said. “And it was great that we were able to lift that burden for our team and for that city.”
[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”Jason Grilli” link=”” color=”#000000″ class=”” size=””]21 years of losing? Yeah that’s over now[/perfectpullquote]It was that moment, perhaps, that made him fall in love with Pittsburgh.
“Yeah, we didn’t make it to the World Series that year, but that was our world series. That was, at the time, significant and monstrous,” he said. The build to the 2013 season, and that post-season run was almost reflective of the city itself, he added. “It’s what I get out of Pittsburgh – the people are, no matter what, if they’re knocked down they just get back up. They’re humble, they’re tougher, and I think that just embodied what kind of team we were then. We just kept fighting to be the best we could. And we fell short of our goal – had the ball bounced a certain way, had something changed a certain way, we could have advanced further, I’m sure of that. But it was a heck of a run– it was quite overwhelming and satisfying.”
With memories like that, it’s no wonder that Grilli has a special affection for Pittsburgh in his well-traveled heart.
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