Pittsburgh Pirates tickets

THREE RIVERS STADIUM was named for its location, at the con¬fluence of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela Rivers, a pic¬turesque area with a pastoral park adjacent to the stadium. Inside, however, this was another of the basic multipurpose, cookie-cutter concrete bowls built in the seventies to accommodate football crowds. Happily, PNC Park replaced Three Rivers in 2001.

In January 1993, the Pirates decided to block off approximately 11,000 seats in the upper deck, covering them with gray tarpaulins that pictured the teams' championship banners. According to a Pirates spokesman at the time, this "will make Three Rivers more intimate and baseball-oriented." It didn't. Like the other stadiums of its type, there was no sense of neighborhood, except perhaps for the last twenty rows of the upper deck, from which the tall build¬ings of downtown Pittsburgh were visible. Nothing was visible elsewhere in Three Rivers but concrete, artificial turf, and usually thousands of empty seats.

Every ballpark utilizes some device to get the crowd involved and cheering, whether it's the tomahawk chop, a hyperactive organist, or simply rhythmic applause. In Pittsburgh, a wonderful cartoon video of a locomotive blowing its whistle was played on the scoreboard. The fans clapped and cheered, stomping their feet in rhythm with the gathering speed of the train.

Despite winning World Championships in 1960 and 1979 and fielding consistently fine teams in the late eighties and early nineties, the Pirates have never drawn large numbers. Perhaps the low attendance is due to the relatively small population here or the fact that Pittsburgh is truly a football town. But the new PNC Park has the smallest seating capacity of any of the new stadiums, and it is hoped that enough fans will attend games to fill the house.

TONY WOMACK "I got called up in '93. It was Three Rivers, so that was my first. Just playing in front of so many people was proba¬bly the best memory I can think of. I grew up in Virginia, so I never went to a major-league game until I actually played here."

MIKE TORREZ "What I remember is that when it rained there, there were the longest delays. Because I was a different type of Astroturf that they used, it was more like a carpet-it took the longest time for them to squeeze it out, with all the run-off. I hated when it rained at Three Rivers-that's what it was when it rained there: a river."
SHANE ANDREWS "My first time was in Pittsburgh at Three Rivers Stadium. I was a rookie and it was the first time I'd ever been to a big-league baseball game. It was over¬whelming to me, just amazing."

JAY JOHNSTONS"Great place for a hitter. Good park to see in and the fences weren't very deep. For me, playing with the Phillies against the Pirates, we always had that controversial 'Who's the best in Pennsylvania?' In 1975, we went in there with a chance to beat them and maybe win the division, but they beat us in a doubleheader."

JIM BOUTON "I hate it today, I hated it back then. I walked into the stadium, I said, 'This is stupid.' A sugar bowl with a baseball field in it. A baseball field is essentially square and you put a square into a circle and what do you have? Large half-moons of wasted space. I'm not surprised to see them tear these places down. They're not even good for football."