By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/?m=1
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette
Pirates third baseman Pedro Alvarez makes his way to the field Wednesday at PNC Park.
The first visual evidence that PNC Park cannot hold Pedro Alvarez arrived Wednesday via air mail, having soared into the humid summery sky between the farthest Pepsi discs on its right-center field towers.
About 450 feet.
Over everything.
Of course, it was just after 5 o'clock in batting practice, and the sad little ballpark on the North Side would not begin its business day for another two hours, but this was why it took former Pirates catcher Manny Sanguillen about two minutes of spring training last year to invoke the name of Willie Stargell at the sight of Alvarez's crackling whip of a left-handed stroke.
"I can't wait to show the city what I can bring to the table," Alvarez told a Wednesday afternoon news conference. "And to show them how much I love the game and how hard I can play."
It took 40 minor-league homers to get this eloquent son of a New York jitney driver to the major leagues, and it might take 40 more to convince the club's failure-besotted fan base that Alvarez is the real thing. But Wednesday night was surely the start of something.
Yes, he got his first error before his first hit, and his first big-league shift was part of a jarringly amateurish six-error Pirates nightmare, the club's 10th consecutive loss, 7-2 to the Chicago White Sox.
Yet for better or worse, Alvarez's arrival means that for the first time here in Development Stage 99, the core of the Pittsburgh Pirates -- Alvarez, Jose Tabata (whose first big league homer came Wednesday night), Andrew McCutchen, Neil Walker, Brad Lincoln -- has been developed by the franchise's current management. Alvarez is far from the final component of management's often-questionable vision, but he is critical to the long-lost launch code for winning baseball.
"We're trying to simplify it for him," said general manager Neal Huntington. "We've been telling him he's Pedro Alvarez and all he has to do is to be Pedro Alvarez. The weight of the world is not on his shoulders."
Huntington and field manager John Russell spent part of Wednesday insisting that any pressure on Alvarez will come from external stimuli, that they wouldn't give him too much to think about, but when his initial news conference lasted only 10 minutes at 3:27 p.m., I thought cynically that they were either anxious for him to start over-preparing or they wanted to take him to wherever they keep The Sword In The Stone.
It's going to take some personage of youthful baseball royalty to yank that thing out of there, to extract what is magically embedded in failure and begin the return to some semblance of Pirates sovereignty.
So Alvarez climbed from the dugout for his first at-bat wearing a black-on-home-white 17, a number that flashes swiftly through Pirates lore from the nearly forgotten Johnny Dickshot (1938) to Donn Clendenon to Dock Ellis to Phil Garner and Lee Lacy and even to current Pirates broadcaster Bob Walk (who, in his major-league debut 30 years ago this summer, surrendered a homer to that same Willie Stargell). The new No. 17 started his career with a second-inning strikeout, but what a rip Alvarez had at that 92-mph fastball from White Sox lefty John Danks. Had he connected, splashdown would have come precisely at 7:26 p.m.
Calmed considerably for his second plate appearance in the fifth, Alvarez accepted a six-pitch walk and scored the first Pirates run after Lastings Milledge doubled and Bobby Crosby rapped an RBI grounder to short. Then in the seventh, the first ball Alvarez put in play was a trolley-wire to the opposite field, but Chicago's Juan Pierre caught up with it as he neared the warning track to make Alvarez 0 for 2 officially.
Despite management's stated precautions, the immediate danger for a player such as Alvarez is that its operatives will evaluate these first baby steps and swamp him with specialized video encryption and some litany of corrective suggestions that can send young hitters into a kind of enormity paralysis.
You wonder sometimes if the explosion of specialized data in the game today can ever make it possible for a Pedro Alvarez to just come up and play and enjoy his education.
"It's possible," Russell said. "That's where his teammates and his staff become his support system. We've got some guys who have been through this. Guys like Bobby Crosby and Ronny Cedeno have dealt with these kinds of external expectations. He's going to know what to expect. He's got some pretty solid guys who can help him and he's going to help them as well.
"I think this is going to be a big boost for everybody."
That might well be, but in the near term, everybody's going to have to calm down a little -- internally and externally -- so that this young core isn't turned every which way but loose. There is zero at stake at this stage for Alvarez or his crew mates. They wouldn't be the first core not to turn the ship around. It shouldn't really matter so much if these Pirates lose the remaining 97 games. They have to be free to play and to let the game's little mysteries reveal themselves.
It's really simple right now.
Just play.
It's exactly as Stargell said. The ump yells play ball, not work ball.
Gene Coller: gcollier@post-gazette.com.
Alvarez's first day brings 'butterflies,' big swings
Goes 0 for 2 with in debut with Pirates, gets warm welcome from crowd
Thursday, June 17, 2010
By Chuck Finder, Colin Dunlap and Bill Brink, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette
Pirates third baseman Pedro Alvarez makes a play on ball hit by the White Sox's Jayson Nix Wednesday at PNC Park.
The too-long-awaited moment lasted two minutes.
Let history show, at 7:25 p.m. Wednesday, with patrons cheering the moment Ryan Doumit got called out at first base on a groundout, Pedro Alvarez walked along the bottom edge of the circle surrounding the batter's box. He stopped near the visitor's on-deck path and took a mighty swing toward the stands. He stepped into the left side of the batter's box, pawing places in the dirt. He drew around the far edge of the plate with the tip of his black bat, then tapped the near side. He extended his right hand toward the pitcher, then swung the bat downward and into place by his left shoulder.
And it all ended, six pitches later, in ... a swinging strikeout.
The crowd cheered anew.
Yes, it has been that long a wait.
"I said something to the batting coach [Don Long]," outfielder Ryan Church offered. " 'I wish they'd cheer when I got out.' "
Alvarez will do a considerable amount of striking out in his major-league career.
There also will follow rain barrels of doubles, home runs, moments.
Little was seared into memories from a first night that turned into a 10th consecutive Pirates loss, a 7-2 defeat against the Chicago White Sox. For the power-hitting third baseman, it all began with that big swing and miss on a full count, a walk and a run, a lineout to deep left field. Thus were inscribed the first words of his narrative, in front of a sparse PNC Park assemblage of 15,218 on a perfect baseball night with the heralded arrival of the 23-year-old Moses expected to helped lead the franchise from this sub-.500 wilderness.
"At first, the game was going 100 miles an hour," Alvarez said. "After the first grounder, the first at-bat, things slowed down a little bit. I definitely had a lot of fun out there. The way I thought it would [be]."
Church cautioned, "Don't judge on the first day." Others around the ballpark were impressed, though.
"Good at-bats. Very good at-bats," outspoken Chicago manager Ozzie Guillen said afterward. "Takes a lot of pitches. Hit a line drive to left field. Good at-bats."
"He's a tough out," added winning pitcher John Danks. "You can definitely see why there's a hype around him. He's a good player, he's a big boy, and I think he'll have a pretty good career."
"Even though I didn't get a hit, I thought I had some pretty good at-bats. Some good looks," Alvarez said.
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette
The Pirates' Pedro Alvarez and Neil Walker engage in a secret handshake.
He recorded his first merchandise sales -- black and gray No. 17 jerseys and T-shirts -- seconds after the park stores opened. He started his first 5-4-3 double play on the first grounder he fielded at 7:22,. He recorded his first run at 8:10, thanks to his first walk, a Lastings Milledge double and a Bobby Crosby groundout. He recorded his first error -- one of the Pirates' six -- on a Doumit throw on a stolen base at 9:25 p.m. He went 0 for 2 and saw pal Jose Tabata hit his first homer and the game end in booing, with a final Doumit out depriving patrons of a fourth Alvarez plate appearance. If nothing else, he is the second coming of Ralph Kiner already, a swinging reason to watch baseball in Pittsburgh.
Of all his prodigious power, Alvarez on his first night and in his first at-bat was unable to club a 17-year-erasing homer.
A new decision?
"What changed?" Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said, answering a question with a question, sitting in the same seat seconds after Alvarez held a 12-minute news conference there.
"About six hours, and a [Class AAA Indianapolis vs. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre] game for Pedro to get through. There's a lot of discussion held with a lot of people. I was asked a question [Tuesday] at 4 p.m., and I answered it as best I could," he said, referring to his belief that Alvarez had work yet to do in the minors ... though sources told the Post-Gazette's Dejan Kovacevic that a Saturday call-up and debut was most likely.
"And the reality is he does still have some development left. If I'd been asked the question at 11 p.m., I'd have answered it very differently," Huntington continued.
Did the Pirates' ninth consecutive loss Tuesday have an impact on that final decision, announced at 10:59?
"Nothing to do with it whatsoever."
Reporting for work
"A little surreal," Alvarez called the scene. This, mind you, was only the second time he set foot in PNC Park -- the first being the unceremonious, quiet, private ceremony to sign his contract in September 2008 after weeks of negotiations, hearings, rancor.
"Honored and privileged to be in this situation right now. I just hope I can contribute any way possible to this ballclub."
He was inserted at No. 6 in the order, one spot below where most expected, because manager John Russell wants to make him feel comfortable before moving him up the order. Skeptics might wonder if the protection at No. 5 with Garrett Jones in front might prove more cozy than a Doumit-Milledge sandwich.
"He's special," Russell said of Alvarez. "But, on the other hand, the league's not going to let him hit home runs. He's going to have some rough goes occasionally. ... There are going to be some days where he's going to learn the hard way. There are going to be tough days he'll have to fight through."
During batting practice, his father sat on the home bench, under cover, as a light rain fell and had dugout-tunnel vision on his son.
It couldn't rain on Pedro's parade, could it? Ballpark gates were closed until 5:30, so the son's audience was mostly media, family and ushers, one of whom exclaimed upon his entrance into the batting cage: "Woo-hoo." Show time.
Seven minutes later, at 5 p.m. Alvarez clunked a BP homer directly over the 325-foot sign in left. His second one hit off Section 142, Row M, Seat 8, about 6 feet from clearing the entire stands.
About a minute later, he hit one into the Allegheny.
End of Day One
"I think he did great," said Neil Walker. "I'm sure he had a lot of things going through his mind." And midsection. "Some butterflies in my stomach," Alvarez admitted.
And that first ovation in the second inning, followed two minutes later by a second one?
"Definitely got some goosebumps," Alvarez added.
Walker echoed the thoughts of Danks, Guillen and more about the laudable at-bats. "It didn't seem like he was too far out of his element," said Walker, who knows something about debuts and expectations.
"I'm excited for him," continued Tabata, who walked onto the field for batting practice alongside his friend and teammate of the past two summers in Class AA Altoona and Indianapolis, from where Tabata and starter Brad Lincoln were promoted one week ahead of him. "He looked good in the at-bats. I trust him. He can do it."
He can be the one to provide home runs. And goose bumps. Just not this first night.
Chuck Finder: cfinder@post-gazette.com. Colin Dunlap: cdunlap@post-gazette.com. Bill Brink: bbrink@post-gazette.com.
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