John Kelsey

The Twins had not played a series in Pittsburgh that fans could attend since April of 2018, with the last series the team played at PNC Park being a fanless two game series during the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The scheduling of this series on a weekend in early June at one of the best ballparks in the country allowed the opportunity for many Twins fans, this one included, to watch their team get shutout in a new and exciting destination!
My wife Sophie joined me on this trip and she got a nice (for me) or terrifying (for her) glimpse into our future when we were surrounded by scores of older, presumably retired couples wearing Twins gear at the gate awaiting our early Thursday morning flight to Pittsburgh. Our plans got pushed back a bit when our Delta gate agent got on the loudspeaker and asked for volunteers to take $500 per person to take a later flight. We were the first ones to take the offer and didn’t actually fly out until 12:30, but did so $1000 richer. Always take the extra pierogi money, friends. 
Neither of us had been to Pittsburgh before and while the trip was largely influenced by wanting to see the Twins play at PNC Park, I had heard from numerous people that Pittsburgh was a wildly underrated city and actually had a lot of appeal outside of the ballpark, and that proved to be true. 
The main things I knew about the city entering the weekend were that the local "Yinzers" speak with ridiculous accent, which had initially come to my attention during this sketch. I also knew that they liked to eat pierogies and sandwiches with fries on them. While all of those things were on display throughout the course of the weekend, we came to find that the city is also very picturesque. It was once the sixth largest city in the country which explains why it has such an impressive skyline for a city that currently only has about 300,000 people. It’s split up by the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers which meet to form the Ohio River, so you are never far from water or bridges and get some really great views.

When it comes to getting around town, the public transit options aren’t great. I would guess that’s largely due to the aforementioned rivers and bridges splitting up parts of the city and a lack of necessary connectedness, but Uber and Lyft were both pretty reliable. We took the bus from Lawrenceville, the neighborhood where we stayed, down to the Strip neighborhood and downtown a few times which was a good option for simple trips. The funicular at the Duquesne Incline was pretty cool too and only took about five minutes to ride to the top. Once you’re up there there are some great views (pictured above), especially at night, but not a whole lot to do except head back down. 
Pittsburgh is also the only sports market smart enough to have all of their professional teams wear the same colors. The Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, and even the Riverhounds in the USL, all don the black and gold. This results in a lot of cross-sport wearing of merchandise; for example there were a lot of Steelers shirts and jerseys at the Pirates game that didn’t look out of place. It seems like a great deal for fans; they can buy one black and gold shirt in their lifetime and fit in at any game in the city, but it’s probably not as great for the teams’ bottom lines.   
Friday night game
Friday morning and afternoon before the first game of the series I decided to throw on my Roberto Clemente shirt and blend in amongst the Yinzers. While I think this won me some points, it also created some confusion from the multiple people who asked me for directions or where they could find a bathroom and were met with my blank, helpless stares. 
Later on before the game, I changed into my Joe Ryan Grateful Dead shirt and became just another Twins fan jagoff. 

 
Ahead of game time we contemplated heading over to the Andy Warhol museum which is just blocks away from PNC Park, but decided we didn’t have enough time and that we’d tackle that the next day. Instead, we headed over to Southern Tier brewery down the street from the ballpark and had some beers with a large swath of Pirates fans listening to an acoustic guitar-playing singer banging out timeless hits like “Thong Song” and “No Diggity”. This was a pretty solid spot to have a few beers before the game, but it looked like there was no shortage of breweries around the park where you could do the same. 


 
About a half hour before game time, we strolled over to PNC Park and were able to get in pretty quickly. I had purchased seats up in Section 322 a few days before the game and the prices were pretty reasonable at around $25 a ticket. I like to get cheaper seats when I go to a ballpark for the first time as I expect to be walking around and exploring for a good portion of it. I feel most at home with the upper deck patrons at a ballpark anyways. These seats and really any section in the 300s near the third base line had a great view of the city and the bridge. 

 
Our seat neighbors for the most part were pretty engaged, but right in front of us, there was a group of girls likely in their late teens or early 20s that spent the entire game taking pictures of themselves and recording Tiktoks. This is not an exaggeration, it was the entire game. Just as I was losing hope in our youth, I noticed the group of girls to our left that were likely in their early 20s and were drinking beers and eating hot dogs and watching the game without a phone in sight. Let that be a lesson that there are not disappointing generations, just disappointing people. 
Some fun gimmicks at the game included the Warhol cam, which was a jumbotron filter honoring Pittsburgh’s famous purveyor of pop art, and the Pierogi race, honoring Pittsburgh’s famous Polish dumpling. Had we gotten a Michael Keaton-related activity, I think that would have covered the Pittsburgh Big Three.   

 
You’re likely not here to read about the game itself, and the Twins got shutout so there’s not a whole lot for me to write about on that front anyways. Joe Ryan pitched really well, the Twins hit a lot of singles but not in a row, and the home plate umpire was clearly doing a very bad job even from my seat in the 300 level. If you’re looking for a much more detailed writeup on the 3-0 loss, you can find a great one here.
The only thing worse than the result was that the Pirates' closer David Bednar, who is from Pittsburgh, walked out to “Renegade” by Styx for his intro music.  
One redeeming note: With legal sports betting in Pennsylvania I decided to place an “emotional hedge” bet on the Pirates moneyline so I would get to either see the Twins win or win some money. 15 bucks on the Pirates at +114 yielded a nice 17 dollar profit that paid for the jumbo 24 oz IC Light I had at the game.
After the game we were told there were fireworks, what we didn’t realize was that they would match the pyrotechnics budget of the helicopter Ride of the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now. To say these fireworks were a bit over the top would be like saying a Dinosaur Jr. show is a bit loud. We decided to watch them on the Roberto Clemente bridge since they were being fired off of a barge in the river right in front of the bridge. This seemed like a great idea until we started getting bombarded with smoke and actual fireworks shrapnel. Great view though!
Ballpark thoughts
PNC Park is as good as advertised. The sightlines are great from everywhere, the views are spectacular and it only has two seating decks which makes it really manageable to get around. The Clemente bridge is closed to traffic on game days which makes for an easy way to get there if you’re coming from downtown. The Pittsburgh fans are pretty dang good too. I was a little disappointed in the attendance for a beautiful Friday night in June but the ones there were very tuned in and loud. 
Going to a Major League ballpark for the first time always makes me consider where it ranks among the others I’ve been to so far. I have a hard time comparing Fenway and Wrigley to ballparks that were built in the last 30 years as it feels very apples to oranges. However, I would probably put those two in the top spots due to the joy and overwhelming sense of history one gets from attending a game there. That being said, I think my current top ten now including PNC, would be something like this:
1. Fenway Park (Boston)
2. Wrigley Field (Chicago, the good one)
3. Oracle Park (San Francisco)
4. PNC Park (Pittsburgh)
5. Target Field
6. Citi Field (Queens)
7. Coors Field (Colorado)
8. Kauffman Stadium (KC)
9. T-Mobile Park (Seattle)
10. Miller Park, it will always be Miller Park to me (Milwaukee)
Fenway and Wrigley are pretty interchangeable for me at 1A and 1B and so are Oracle and PNC at 3A and 3B, but it’s really all about personal preference. Wrigley is typically a more fun game experience with better sightlines than Fenway, but I like the architecture and quirkiness of the Green Monster at Fenway better. When comparing Oracle and PNC, they both have great views on the water but PNC gets the edge with the skyline and the Roberto Clemente bridge in the background and Oracle gets the edge on food and beer selection. 
The three I still haven’t visited that I’d really like to get to are Dodger Stadium in LA, Petco Park in San Diego (been to the park but in January during the offseason), and Camden Yards in Baltimore. 
Other Pittsburgh activities
My wife and I spend most of our vacations eating and drinking so while this section is titled “Other Pittsburgh activities” it’s mostly just going to be some of our favorite restaurants and bars to consider if you’re making the trip. 
As I mentioned earlier, we stayed in Lawrenceville. This was a really good hub if you want to be close to a lot of bars and restaurants that are walkable and cater to all ages. Of the neighborhoods we visited, we were definitely happy with our choice and it was validated by one of our Lyft drivers (shoutout David) who said we nailed it by choosing to stay there. Downtown had a lot of nice looking hotels if that’s more your scene and Squirrel Hill supposedly was nice if you’re looking for a more residential, quiet vibe. 
-Cork Harbour Pub was literally next door and was a solid home base/Lyft drop off spot for us. We ended up going all three days of the trip at some point in the day and even when we weren’t there at night, we got to pretend we were because we could hear it from our bedroom when we were trying to sleep. 
-Big Jim’s in the Run was a classic dive that naturally has been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. It was tucked into an odd, hidden neighborhood called Four Mile Run and is the most authentic Pittsburgh place we went to. I will admit that the food didn’t blow me away, but I would still highly recommend it just for the experience. This was also where I watched the final four innings of the Saturday loss and thanked my lucky stars that we explored a few more areas of the city instead of paying to watch the Twins get shutout two days in a row. 
-Dish Osteria Bar on the South Side was the best meal we had on the trip. If you don’t mind shelling out a little more money and have the foresight to snag a reservation (we had to grab one for 10 pm on Thursday) this is about as good as it gets for Southern Italian food. The pasta was perfect, the seafood was delicious, the drinks were great, and it was in a very nice, intimate setting. 
-I hesitate to even admit it, but the only time we ate at a Primanti Brothers sandwich was at the ballgame. I’m confident that a limited menu and a ballpark kitchen was not the best way to experience Pittsburgh’s most legendary sandwich chain but the capicola and cheese we got (topped with fries, of course) was still very good. I wish we would have made it to one of the locations around town and gotten the true experience but alas, I only have one stomach. 
-La Gourmandine was a great French bakery just up the road from us where we had a wonderful almond croissant and an apricot pastry for breakfast one day. It was a tough place to order because everything there looked so good, including the sandwiches. 
-S&D Polish Deli in the Strip was a good stop for pierogies and had some interesting Polish deli items to browse. 
 -Colangelo's was a solid pizza joint right around the corner from the Polish deli. I had a really tough time figuring out what they’re doing with pizza in Pittsburgh. Most of the places we saw or ate were similar to a Detroit style pizza which is fine by me, but then you have the unmelted cheese abomination of the Ohio River Valley style that’s served famously at Beto’s in Pittsburgh. I actually wanted to try it out of morbid curiosity but didn’t find the time.
-I ducked into William Penn Tavern to catch the fifth set of the Alcaraz/Sinner French Open semifinal while Sophie was shopping one day and that was a great spot to grab a beer and watch a game in the middle of the day. It looked a little more rowdy at night when we walked by however, so beware of that potential bro-fest.
-After the fireworks on Friday night, we wandered over the bridge into downtown and eventually settled at Emerson’s which was a good, hidden cocktail bar on the second floor. They had some really interesting cocktails and the food looked promising too. 
-Bar Marco was another good spot for drinks in the Strip that looked to have some good Italian food as well. 
-Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. was a huge Italian market that was fun to walk around if you like spending time in a place that has 40 different kinds of canned tomatoes. Think Cossetta’s in St. Paul on steroids. 
-After that dinner at Dish on Thursday night, we went to a bar called Dee’s in South Side Flats that still allows smoking and employed some bartenders with great accents. From what I could tell, South Side Flats and all the bars on Carson Street are basically Pittsburgh’s version of the old Combat Zone in Boston. In other words, this was an area I was entirely too old for, so we didn’t last long there. 
-Schenley Park was a good place to go for a walk in the city. The northern half of the park felt like being at a park that was in a city. It had an arboretum that we decided not to pay $22 for and had a couple weddings going on. The southern half of the park was a bit more rustic and while we may have gotten slightly lost in there, we did get to see a couple deer which was an unexpected surprise. 
-The Andy Warhol museum is very conveniently located only a few blocks away from PNC Park and was a good place to spend a few hours. It has seven floors that are broken into the different stages of Warhol's life and career. We later found out it’s half price on Fridays so that’s probably the time to go. 
Overall, I'd highly recommend making the trip out to Pittsburgh next time the Twins are in town, or just to see the Pirates. It's a highly underrated city if you know where to look and features arguably the best ballpark in the country that's been built in this century. 
Jump into the comments if you made it to the games this past weekend or have been to a game at PNC previously and have some experiences to share. 
 

The Twins had not played a series in Pittsburgh that fans could attend since April of 2018, with the last series the team played at PNC Park being a fanless two game series during the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The scheduling of this series on a weekend in early June at one of the best ballparks in the country allowed the opportunity for many Twins fans, this one included, to watch their team get shutout in a new and exciting destination!
My wife Sophie joined me on this trip and she got a nice (for me) or terrifying (for her) glimpse into our future when we were surrounded by scores of older, presumably retired couples wearing Twins gear at the gate awaiting our early Thursday morning flight to Pittsburgh. Our plans got pushed back a bit when our Delta gate agent got on the loudspeaker and asked for volunteers to take $500 per person to take a later flight. We were the first ones to take the offer and didn’t actually fly out until 12:30, but did so $1000 richer. Always take the extra pierogi money, friends. 
Neither of us had been to Pittsburgh before and while the trip was largely influenced by wanting to see the Twins play at PNC Park, I had heard from numerous people that Pittsburgh was a wildly underrated city and actually had a lot of appeal outside of the ballpark, and that proved to be true. 
The main things I knew about the city entering the weekend were that the local "Yinzers" speak with ridiculous accent, which had initially come to my attention during this sketch. I also knew that they liked to eat pierogies and sandwiches with fries on them. While all of those things were on display throughout the course of the weekend, we came to find that the city is also very picturesque. It was once the sixth largest city in the country which explains why it has such an impressive skyline for a city that currently only has about 300,000 people. It’s split up by the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers which meet to form the Ohio River, so you are never far from water or bridges and get some really great views.

When it comes to getting around town, the public transit options aren’t great. I would guess that’s largely due to the aforementioned rivers and bridges splitting up parts of the city and a lack of necessary connectedness, but Uber and Lyft were both pretty reliable. We took the bus from Lawrenceville, the neighborhood where we stayed, down to the Strip neighborhood and downtown a few times which was a good option for simple trips. The funicular at the Duquesne Incline was pretty cool too and only took about five minutes to ride to the top. Once you’re up there there are some great views (pictured above), especially at night, but not a whole lot to do except head back down. 
Pittsburgh is also the only sports market smart enough to have all of their professional teams wear the same colors. The Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, and even the Riverhounds in the USL, all don the black and gold. This results in a lot of cross-sport wearing of merchandise; for example there were a lot of Steelers shirts and jerseys at the Pirates game that didn’t look out of place. It seems like a great deal for fans; they can buy one black and gold shirt in their lifetime and fit in at any game in the city, but it’s probably not as great for the teams’ bottom lines.   
Friday night game
Friday morning and afternoon before the first game of the series I decided to throw on my Roberto Clemente shirt and blend in amongst the Yinzers. While I think this won me some points, it also created some confusion from the multiple people who asked me for directions or where they could find a bathroom and were met with my blank, helpless stares. 
Later on before the game, I changed into my Joe Ryan Grateful Dead shirt and became just another Twins fan jagoff. 

 
Ahead of game time we contemplated heading over to the Andy Warhol museum which is just blocks away from PNC Park, but decided we didn’t have enough time and that we’d tackle that the next day. Instead, we headed over to Southern Tier brewery down the street from the ballpark and had some beers with a large swath of Pirates fans listening to an acoustic guitar-playing singer banging out timeless hits like “Thong Song” and “No Diggity”. This was a pretty solid spot to have a few beers before the game, but it looked like there was no shortage of breweries around the park where you could do the same. 


 
About a half hour before game time, we strolled over to PNC Park and were able to get in pretty quickly. I had purchased seats up in Section 322 a few days before the game and the prices were pretty reasonable at around $25 a ticket. I like to get cheaper seats when I go to a ballpark for the first time as I expect to be walking around and exploring for a good portion of it. I feel most at home with the upper deck patrons at a ballpark anyways. These seats and really any section in the 300s near the third base line had a great view of the city and the bridge. 

 
Our seat neighbors for the most part were pretty engaged, but right in front of us, there was a group of girls likely in their late teens or early 20s that spent the entire game taking pictures of themselves and recording Tiktoks. This is not an exaggeration, it was the entire game. Just as I was losing hope in our youth, I noticed the group of girls to our left that were likely in their early 20s and were drinking beers and eating hot dogs and watching the game without a phone in sight. Let that be a lesson that there are not disappointing generations, just disappointing people. 
Some fun gimmicks at the game included the Warhol cam, which was a jumbotron filter honoring Pittsburgh’s famous purveyor of pop art, and the Pierogi race, honoring Pittsburgh’s famous Polish dumpling. Had we gotten a Michael Keaton-related activity, I think that would have covered the Pittsburgh Big Three.   

 
You’re likely not here to read about the game itself, and the Twins got shutout so there’s not a whole lot for me to write about on that front anyways. Joe Ryan pitched really well, the Twins hit a lot of singles but not in a row, and the home plate umpire was clearly doing a very bad job even from my seat in the 300 level. If you’re looking for a much more detailed writeup on the 3-0 loss, you can find a great one here.
The only thing worse than the result was that the Pirates' closer David Bednar, who is from Pittsburgh, walked out to “Renegade” by Styx for his intro music.  
One redeeming note: With legal sports betting in Pennsylvania I decided to place an “emotional hedge” bet on the Pirates moneyline so I would get to either see the Twins win or win some money. 15 bucks on the Pirates at +114 yielded a nice 17 dollar profit that paid for the jumbo 24 oz IC Light I had at the game.
After the game we were told there were fireworks, what we didn’t realize was that they would match the pyrotechnics budget of the helicopter Ride of the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now. To say these fireworks were a bit over the top would be like saying a Dinosaur Jr. show is a bit loud. We decided to watch them on the Roberto Clemente bridge since they were being fired off of a barge in the river right in front of the bridge. This seemed like a great idea until we started getting bombarded with smoke and actual fireworks shrapnel. Great view though!
Ballpark thoughts
PNC Park is as good as advertised. The sightlines are great from everywhere, the views are spectacular and it only has two seating decks which makes it really manageable to get around. The Clemente bridge is closed to traffic on game days which makes for an easy way to get there if you’re coming from downtown. The Pittsburgh fans are pretty dang good too. I was a little disappointed in the attendance for a beautiful Friday night in June but the ones there were very tuned in and loud. 
Going to a Major League ballpark for the first time always makes me consider where it ranks among the others I’ve been to so far. I have a hard time comparing Fenway and Wrigley to ballparks that were built in the last 30 years as it feels very apples to oranges. However, I would probably put those two in the top spots due to the joy and overwhelming sense of history one gets from attending a game there. That being said, I think my current top ten now including PNC, would be something like this:
1. Fenway Park (Boston)
2. Wrigley Field (Chicago, the good one)
3. Oracle Park (San Francisco)
4. PNC Park (Pittsburgh)
5. Target Field
6. Citi Field (Queens)
7. Coors Field (Colorado)
8. Kauffman Stadium (KC)
9. T-Mobile Park (Seattle)
10. Miller Park, it will always be Miller Park to me (Milwaukee)
Fenway and Wrigley are pretty interchangeable for me at 1A and 1B and so are Oracle and PNC at 3A and 3B, but it’s really all about personal preference. Wrigley is typically a more fun game experience with better sightlines than Fenway, but I like the architecture and quirkiness of the Green Monster at Fenway better. When comparing Oracle and PNC, they both have great views on the water but PNC gets the edge with the skyline and the Roberto Clemente bridge in the background and Oracle gets the edge on food and beer selection. 
The three I still haven’t visited that I’d really like to get to are Dodger Stadium in LA, Petco Park in San Diego (been to the park but in January during the offseason), and Camden Yards in Baltimore. 
Other Pittsburgh activities
My wife and I spend most of our vacations eating and drinking so while this section is titled “Other Pittsburgh activities” it’s mostly just going to be some of our favorite restaurants and bars to consider if you’re making the trip. 
As I mentioned earlier, we stayed in Lawrenceville. This was a really good hub if you want to be close to a lot of bars and restaurants that are walkable and cater to all ages. Of the neighborhoods we visited, we were definitely happy with our choice and it was validated by one of our Lyft drivers (shoutout David) who said we nailed it by choosing to stay there. Downtown had a lot of nice looking hotels if that’s more your scene and Squirrel Hill supposedly was nice if you’re looking for a more residential, quiet vibe. 
-Cork Harbour Pub was literally next door and was a solid home base/Lyft drop off spot for us. We ended up going all three days of the trip at some point in the day and even when we weren’t there at night, we got to pretend we were because we could hear it from our bedroom when we were trying to sleep. 
-Big Jim’s in the Run was a classic dive that naturally has been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. It was tucked into an odd, hidden neighborhood called Four Mile Run and is the most authentic Pittsburgh place we went to. I will admit that the food didn’t blow me away, but I would still highly recommend it just for the experience. This was also where I watched the final four innings of the Saturday loss and thanked my lucky stars that we explored a few more areas of the city instead of paying to watch the Twins get shutout two days in a row. 
-Dish Osteria Bar on the South Side was the best meal we had on the trip. If you don’t mind shelling out a little more money and have the foresight to snag a reservation (we had to grab one for 10 pm on Thursday) this is about as good as it gets for Southern Italian food. The pasta was perfect, the seafood was delicious, the drinks were great, and it was in a very nice, intimate setting. 
-I hesitate to even admit it, but the only time we ate at a Primanti Brothers sandwich was at the ballgame. I’m confident that a limited menu and a ballpark kitchen was not the best way to experience Pittsburgh’s most legendary sandwich chain but the capicola and cheese we got (topped with fries, of course) was still very good. I wish we would have made it to one of the locations around town and gotten the true experience but alas, I only have one stomach. 
-La Gourmandine was a great French bakery just up the road from us where we had a wonderful almond croissant and an apricot pastry for breakfast one day. It was a tough place to order because everything there looked so good, including the sandwiches. 
-S&D Polish Deli in the Strip was a good stop for pierogies and had some interesting Polish deli items to browse. 
 -Colangelo's was a solid pizza joint right around the corner from the Polish deli. I had a really tough time figuring out what they’re doing with pizza in Pittsburgh. Most of the places we saw or ate were similar to a Detroit style pizza which is fine by me, but then you have the unmelted cheese abomination of the Ohio River Valley style that’s served famously at Beto’s in Pittsburgh. I actually wanted to try it out of morbid curiosity but didn’t find the time.
-I ducked into William Penn Tavern to catch the fifth set of the Alcaraz/Sinner French Open semifinal while Sophie was shopping one day and that was a great spot to grab a beer and watch a game in the middle of the day. It looked a little more rowdy at night when we walked by however, so beware of that potential bro-fest.
-After the fireworks on Friday night, we wandered over the bridge into downtown and eventually settled at Emerson’s which was a good, hidden cocktail bar on the second floor. They had some really interesting cocktails and the food looked promising too. 
-Bar Marco was another good spot for drinks in the Strip that looked to have some good Italian food as well. 
-Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. was a huge Italian market that was fun to walk around if you like spending time in a place that has 40 different kinds of canned tomatoes. Think Cossetta’s in St. Paul on steroids. 
-After that dinner at Dish on Thursday night, we went to a bar called Dee’s in South Side Flats that still allows smoking and employed some bartenders with great accents. From what I could tell, South Side Flats and all the bars on Carson Street are basically Pittsburgh’s version of the old Combat Zone in Boston. In other words, this was an area I was entirely too old for, so we didn’t last long there. 
-Schenley Park was a good place to go for a walk in the city. The northern half of the park felt like being at a park that was in a city. It had an arboretum that we decided not to pay $22 for and had a couple weddings going on. The southern half of the park was a bit more rustic and while we may have gotten slightly lost in there, we did get to see a couple deer which was an unexpected surprise. 
-The Andy Warhol museum is very conveniently located only a few blocks away from PNC Park and was a good place to spend a few hours. It has seven floors that are broken into the different stages of Warhol's life and career. We later found out it’s half price on Fridays so that’s probably the time to go. 
Overall, I'd highly recommend making the trip out to Pittsburgh next time the Twins are in town, or just to see the Pirates. It's a highly underrated city if you know where to look and features arguably the best ballpark in the country that's been built in this century. 
Jump into the comments if you made it to the games this past weekend or have been to a game at PNC previously and have some experiences to share. 
 

The Twins had not played a series in Pittsburgh that fans could attend since April of 2018, with the last series the team played at PNC Park being a fanless two game series during the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The scheduling of this series on a weekend in early June at one of the best ballparks in the country allowed the opportunity for many Twins fans, this one included, to watch their team get shutout in a new and exciting destination!
My wife Sophie joined me on this trip and she got a nice (for me) or terrifying (for her) glimpse into our future when we were surrounded by scores of older, presumably retired couples wearing Twins gear at the gate awaiting our early Thursday morning flight to Pittsburgh. Our plans got pushed back a bit when our Delta gate agent got on the loudspeaker and asked for volunteers to take $500 per person to take a later flight. We were the first ones to take the offer and didn’t actually fly out until 12:30, but did so $1000 richer. Always take the extra pierogi money, friends. 
Neither of us had been to Pittsburgh before and while the trip was largely influenced by wanting to see the Twins play at PNC Park, I had heard from numerous people that Pittsburgh was a wildly underrated city and actually had a lot of appeal outside of the ballpark, and that proved to be true. 
The main things I knew about the city entering the weekend were that the local "Yinzers" speak with ridiculous accent, which had initially come to my attention during this sketch. I also knew that they liked to eat pierogies and sandwiches with fries on them. While all of those things were on display throughout the course of the weekend, we came to find that the city is also very picturesque. It was once the sixth largest city in the country which explains why it has such an impressive skyline for a city that currently only has about 300,000 people. It’s split up by the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers which meet to form the Ohio River, so you are never far from water or bridges and get some really great views.

When it comes to getting around town, the public transit options aren’t great. I would guess that’s largely due to the aforementioned rivers and bridges splitting up parts of the city and a lack of necessary connectedness, but Uber and Lyft were both pretty reliable. We took the bus from Lawrenceville, the neighborhood where we stayed, down to the Strip neighborhood and downtown a few times which was a good option for simple trips. The funicular at the Duquesne Incline was pretty cool too and only took about five minutes to ride to the top. Once you’re up there there are some great views (pictured above), especially at night, but not a whole lot to do except head back down. 
Pittsburgh is also the only sports market smart enough to have all of their professional teams wear the same colors. The Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, and even the Riverhounds in the USL, all don the black and gold. This results in a lot of cross-sport wearing of merchandise; for example there were a lot of Steelers shirts and jerseys at the Pirates game that didn’t look out of place. It seems like a great deal for fans; they can buy one black and gold shirt in their lifetime and fit in at any game in the city, but it’s probably not as great for the teams’ bottom lines.   
Friday night game
Friday morning and afternoon before the first game of the series I decided to throw on my Roberto Clemente shirt and blend in amongst the Yinzers. While I think this won me some points, it also created some confusion from the multiple people who asked me for directions or where they could find a bathroom and were met with my blank, helpless stares. 
Later on before the game, I changed into my Joe Ryan Grateful Dead shirt and became just another Twins fan jagoff. 

 
Ahead of game time we contemplated heading over to the Andy Warhol museum which is just blocks away from PNC Park, but decided we didn’t have enough time and that we’d tackle that the next day. Instead, we headed over to Southern Tier brewery down the street from the ballpark and had some beers with a large swath of Pirates fans listening to an acoustic guitar-playing singer banging out timeless hits like “Thong Song” and “No Diggity”. This was a pretty solid spot to have a few beers before the game, but it looked like there was no shortage of breweries around the park where you could do the same. 


 
About a half hour before game time, we strolled over to PNC Park and were able to get in pretty quickly. I had purchased seats up in Section 322 a few days before the game and the prices were pretty reasonable at around $25 a ticket. I like to get cheaper seats when I go to a ballpark for the first time as I expect to be walking around and exploring for a good portion of it. I feel most at home with the upper deck patrons at a ballpark anyways. These seats and really any section in the 300s near the third base line had a great view of the city and the bridge. 

 
Our seat neighbors for the most part were pretty engaged, but right in front of us, there was a group of girls likely in their late teens or early 20s that spent the entire game taking pictures of themselves and recording Tiktoks. This is not an exaggeration, it was the entire game. Just as I was losing hope in our youth, I noticed the group of girls to our left that were likely in their early 20s and were drinking beers and eating hot dogs and watching the game without a phone in sight. Let that be a lesson that there are not disappointing generations, just disappointing people. 
Some fun gimmicks at the game included the Warhol cam, which was a jumbotron filter honoring Pittsburgh’s famous purveyor of pop art, and the Pierogi race, honoring Pittsburgh’s famous Polish dumpling. Had we gotten a Michael Keaton-related activity, I think that would have covered the Pittsburgh Big Three.   

 
You’re likely not here to read about the game itself, and the Twins got shutout so there’s not a whole lot for me to write about on that front anyways. Joe Ryan pitched really well, the Twins hit a lot of singles but not in a row, and the home plate umpire was clearly doing a very bad job even from my seat in the 300 level. If you’re looking for a much more detailed writeup on the 3-0 loss, you can find a great one here.
The only thing worse than the result was that the Pirates' closer David Bednar, who is from Pittsburgh, walked out to “Renegade” by Styx for his intro music.  
One redeeming note: With legal sports betting in Pennsylvania I decided to place an “emotional hedge” bet on the Pirates moneyline so I would get to either see the Twins win or win some money. 15 bucks on the Pirates at +114 yielded a nice 17 dollar profit that paid for the jumbo 24 oz IC Light I had at the game.
After the game we were told there were fireworks, what we didn’t realize was that they would match the pyrotechnics budget of the helicopter Ride of the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now. To say these fireworks were a bit over the top would be like saying a Dinosaur Jr. show is a bit loud. We decided to watch them on the Roberto Clemente bridge since they were being fired off of a barge in the river right in front of the bridge. This seemed like a great idea until we started getting bombarded with smoke and actual fireworks shrapnel. Great view though!
Ballpark thoughts
PNC Park is as good as advertised. The sightlines are great from everywhere, the views are spectacular and it only has two seating decks which makes it really manageable to get around. The Clemente bridge is closed to traffic on game days which makes for an easy way to get there if you’re coming from downtown. The Pittsburgh fans are pretty dang good too. I was a little disappointed in the attendance for a beautiful Friday night in June but the ones there were very tuned in and loud. 
Going to a Major League ballpark for the first time always makes me consider where it ranks among the others I’ve been to so far. I have a hard time comparing Fenway and Wrigley to ballparks that were built in the last 30 years as it feels very apples to oranges. However, I would probably put those two in the top spots due to the joy and overwhelming sense of history one gets from attending a game there. That being said, I think my current top ten now including PNC, would be something like this:
1. Fenway Park (Boston)
2. Wrigley Field (Chicago, the good one)
3. Oracle Park (San Francisco)
4. PNC Park (Pittsburgh)
5. Target Field
6. Citi Field (Queens)
7. Coors Field (Colorado)
8. Kauffman Stadium (KC)
9. T-Mobile Park (Seattle)
10. Miller Park, it will always be Miller Park to me (Milwaukee)
Fenway and Wrigley are pretty interchangeable for me at 1A and 1B and so are Oracle and PNC at 3A and 3B, but it’s really all about personal preference. Wrigley is typically a more fun game experience with better sightlines than Fenway, but I like the architecture and quirkiness of the Green Monster at Fenway better. When comparing Oracle and PNC, they both have great views on the water but PNC gets the edge with the skyline and the Roberto Clemente bridge in the background and Oracle gets the edge on food and beer selection. 
The three I still haven’t visited that I’d really like to get to are Dodger Stadium in LA, Petco Park in San Diego (been to the park but in January during the offseason), and Camden Yards in Baltimore. 
Other Pittsburgh activities
My wife and I spend most of our vacations eating and drinking so while this section is titled “Other Pittsburgh activities” it’s mostly just going to be some of our favorite restaurants and bars to consider if you’re making the trip. 
As I mentioned earlier, we stayed in Lawrenceville. This was a really good hub if you want to be close to a lot of bars and restaurants that are walkable and cater to all ages. Of the neighborhoods we visited, we were definitely happy with our choice and it was validated by one of our Lyft drivers (shoutout David) who said we nailed it by choosing to stay there. Downtown had a lot of nice looking hotels if that’s more your scene and Squirrel Hill supposedly was nice if you’re looking for a more residential, quiet vibe. 
-Cork Harbour Pub was literally next door and was a solid home base/Lyft drop off spot for us. We ended up going all three days of the trip at some point in the day and even when we weren’t there at night, we got to pretend we were because we could hear it from our bedroom when we were trying to sleep. 
-Big Jim’s in the Run was a classic dive that naturally has been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. It was tucked into an odd, hidden neighborhood called Four Mile Run and is the most authentic Pittsburgh place we went to. I will admit that the food didn’t blow me away, but I would still highly recommend it just for the experience. This was also where I watched the final four innings of the Saturday loss and thanked my lucky stars that we explored a few more areas of the city instead of paying to watch the Twins get shutout two days in a row. 
-Dish Osteria Bar on the South Side was the best meal we had on the trip. If you don’t mind shelling out a little more money and have the foresight to snag a reservation (we had to grab one for 10 pm on Thursday) this is about as good as it gets for Southern Italian food. The pasta was perfect, the seafood was delicious, the drinks were great, and it was in a very nice, intimate setting. 
-I hesitate to even admit it, but the only time we ate at a Primanti Brothers sandwich was at the ballgame. I’m confident that a limited menu and a ballpark kitchen was not the best way to experience Pittsburgh’s most legendary sandwich chain but the capicola and cheese we got (topped with fries, of course) was still very good. I wish we would have made it to one of the locations around town and gotten the true experience but alas, I only have one stomach. 
-La Gourmandine was a great French bakery just up the road from us where we had a wonderful almond croissant and an apricot pastry for breakfast one day. It was a tough place to order because everything there looked so good, including the sandwiches. 
-S&D Polish Deli in the Strip was a good stop for pierogies and had some interesting Polish deli items to browse. 
 -Colangelo's was a solid pizza joint right around the corner from the Polish deli. I had a really tough time figuring out what they’re doing with pizza in Pittsburgh. Most of the places we saw or ate were similar to a Detroit style pizza which is fine by me, but then you have the unmelted cheese abomination of the Ohio River Valley style that’s served famously at Beto’s in Pittsburgh. I actually wanted to try it out of morbid curiosity but didn’t find the time.
-I ducked into William Penn Tavern to catch the fifth set of the Alcaraz/Sinner French Open semifinal while Sophie was shopping one day and that was a great spot to grab a beer and watch a game in the middle of the day. It looked a little more rowdy at night when we walked by however, so beware of that potential bro-fest.
-After the fireworks on Friday night, we wandered over the bridge into downtown and eventually settled at Emerson’s which was a good, hidden cocktail bar on the second floor. They had some really interesting cocktails and the food looked promising too. 
-Bar Marco was another good spot for drinks in the Strip that looked to have some good Italian food as well. 
-Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. was a huge Italian market that was fun to walk around if you like spending time in a place that has 40 different kinds of canned tomatoes. Think Cossetta’s in St. Paul on steroids. 
-After that dinner at Dish on Thursday night, we went to a bar called Dee’s in South Side Flats that still allows smoking and employed some bartenders with great accents. From what I could tell, South Side Flats and all the bars on Carson Street are basically Pittsburgh’s version of the old Combat Zone in Boston. In other words, this was an area I was entirely too old for, so we didn’t last long there. 
-Schenley Park was a good place to go for a walk in the city. The northern half of the park felt like being at a park that was in a city. It had an arboretum that we decided not to pay $22 for and had a couple weddings going on. The southern half of the park was a bit more rustic and while we may have gotten slightly lost in there, we did get to see a couple deer which was an unexpected surprise. 
-The Andy Warhol museum is very conveniently located only a few blocks away from PNC Park and was a good place to spend a few hours. It has seven floors that are broken into the different stages of Warhol's life and career. We later found out it’s half price on Fridays so that’s probably the time to go. 
Overall, I'd highly recommend making the trip out to Pittsburgh next time the Twins are in town, or just to see the Pirates. It's a highly underrated city if you know where to look and features arguably the best ballpark in the country that's been built in this century. 
Jump into the comments if you made it to the games this past weekend or have been to a game at PNC previously and have some experiences to share. 
 

The Twins had not played a series in Pittsburgh that fans could attend since April of 2018, with the last series the team played at PNC Park being a fanless two game series during the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The scheduling of this series on a weekend in early June at one of the best ballparks in the country allowed the opportunity for many Twins fans, this one included, to watch their team get shutout in a new and exciting destination!
My wife Sophie joined me on this trip and she got a nice (for me) or terrifying (for her) glimpse into our future when we were surrounded by scores of older, presumably retired couples wearing Twins gear at the gate awaiting our early Thursday morning flight to Pittsburgh. Our plans got pushed back a bit when our Delta gate agent got on the loudspeaker and asked for volunteers to take $500 per person to take a later flight. We were the first ones to take the offer and didn’t actually fly out until 12:30, but did so $1000 richer. Always take the extra pierogi money, friends. 
Neither of us had been to Pittsburgh before and while the trip was largely influenced by wanting to see the Twins play at PNC Park, I had heard from numerous people that Pittsburgh was a wildly underrated city and actually had a lot of appeal outside of the ballpark, and that proved to be true. 
The main things I knew about the city entering the weekend were that the local "Yinzers" speak with ridiculous accent, which had initially come to my attention during this sketch. I also knew that they liked to eat pierogies and sandwiches with fries on them. While all of those things were on display throughout the course of the weekend, we came to find that the city is also very picturesque. It was once the sixth largest city in the country which explains why it has such an impressive skyline for a city that currently only has about 300,000 people. It’s split up by the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers which meet to form the Ohio River, so you are never far from water or bridges and get some really great views.

When it comes to getting around town, the public transit options aren’t great. I would guess that’s largely due to the aforementioned rivers and bridges splitting up parts of the city and a lack of necessary connectedness, but Uber and Lyft were both pretty reliable. We took the bus from Lawrenceville, the neighborhood where we stayed, down to the Strip neighborhood and downtown a few times which was a good option for simple trips. The funicular at the Duquesne Incline was pretty cool too and only took about five minutes to ride to the top. Once you’re up there there are some great views (pictured above), especially at night, but not a whole lot to do except head back down. 
Pittsburgh is also the only sports market smart enough to have all of their professional teams wear the same colors. The Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, and even the Riverhounds in the USL, all don the black and gold. This results in a lot of cross-sport wearing of merchandise; for example there were a lot of Steelers shirts and jerseys at the Pirates game that didn’t look out of place. It seems like a great deal for fans; they can buy one black and gold shirt in their lifetime and fit in at any game in the city, but it’s probably not as great for the teams’ bottom lines.   
Friday night game
Friday morning and afternoon before the first game of the series I decided to throw on my Roberto Clemente shirt and blend in amongst the Yinzers. While I think this won me some points, it also created some confusion from the multiple people who asked me for directions or where they could find a bathroom and were met with my blank, helpless stares. 
Later on before the game, I changed into my Joe Ryan Grateful Dead shirt and became just another Twins fan jagoff. 

 
Ahead of game time we contemplated heading over to the Andy Warhol museum which is just blocks away from PNC Park, but decided we didn’t have enough time and that we’d tackle that the next day. Instead, we headed over to Southern Tier brewery down the street from the ballpark and had some beers with a large swath of Pirates fans listening to an acoustic guitar-playing singer banging out timeless hits like “Thong Song” and “No Diggity”. This was a pretty solid spot to have a few beers before the game, but it looked like there was no shortage of breweries around the park where you could do the same. 


 
About a half hour before game time, we strolled over to PNC Park and were able to get in pretty quickly. I had purchased seats up in Section 322 a few days before the game and the prices were pretty reasonable at around $25 a ticket. I like to get cheaper seats when I go to a ballpark for the first time as I expect to be walking around and exploring for a good portion of it. I feel most at home with the upper deck patrons at a ballpark anyways. These seats and really any section in the 300s near the third base line had a great view of the city and the bridge. 

 
Our seat neighbors for the most part were pretty engaged, but right in front of us, there was a group of girls likely in their late teens or early 20s that spent the entire game taking pictures of themselves and recording Tiktoks. This is not an exaggeration, it was the entire game. Just as I was losing hope in our youth, I noticed the group of girls to our left that were likely in their early 20s and were drinking beers and eating hot dogs and watching the game without a phone in sight. Let that be a lesson that there are not disappointing generations, just disappointing people. 
Some fun gimmicks at the game included the Warhol cam, which was a jumbotron filter honoring Pittsburgh’s famous purveyor of pop art, and the Pierogi race, honoring Pittsburgh’s famous Polish dumpling. Had we gotten a Michael Keaton-related activity, I think that would have covered the Pittsburgh Big Three.   

 
You’re likely not here to read about the game itself, and the Twins got shutout so there’s not a whole lot for me to write about on that front anyways. Joe Ryan pitched really well, the Twins hit a lot of singles but not in a row, and the home plate umpire was clearly doing a very bad job even from my seat in the 300 level. If you’re looking for a much more detailed writeup on the 3-0 loss, you can find a great one here.
The only thing worse than the result was that the Pirates' closer David Bednar, who is from Pittsburgh, walked out to “Renegade” by Styx for his intro music.  
One redeeming note: With legal sports betting in Pennsylvania I decided to place an “emotional hedge” bet on the Pirates moneyline so I would get to either see the Twins win or win some money. 15 bucks on the Pirates at +114 yielded a nice 17 dollar profit that paid for the jumbo 24 oz IC Light I had at the game.
After the game we were told there were fireworks, what we didn’t realize was that they would match the pyrotechnics budget of the helicopter Ride of the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now. To say these fireworks were a bit over the top would be like saying a Dinosaur Jr. show is a bit loud. We decided to watch them on the Roberto Clemente bridge since they were being fired off of a barge in the river right in front of the bridge. This seemed like a great idea until we started getting bombarded with smoke and actual fireworks shrapnel. Great view though!
Ballpark thoughts
PNC Park is as good as advertised. The sightlines are great from everywhere, the views are spectacular and it only has two seating decks which makes it really manageable to get around. The Clemente bridge is closed to traffic on game days which makes for an easy way to get there if you’re coming from downtown. The Pittsburgh fans are pretty dang good too. I was a little disappointed in the attendance for a beautiful Friday night in June but the ones there were very tuned in and loud. 
Going to a Major League ballpark for the first time always makes me consider where it ranks among the others I’ve been to so far. I have a hard time comparing Fenway and Wrigley to ballparks that were built in the last 30 years as it feels very apples to oranges. However, I would probably put those two in the top spots due to the joy and overwhelming sense of history one gets from attending a game there. That being said, I think my current top ten now including PNC, would be something like this:
1. Fenway Park (Boston)
2. Wrigley Field (Chicago, the good one)
3. Oracle Park (San Francisco)
4. PNC Park (Pittsburgh)
5. Target Field
6. Citi Field (Queens)
7. Coors Field (Colorado)
8. Kauffman Stadium (KC)
9. T-Mobile Park (Seattle)
10. Miller Park, it will always be Miller Park to me (Milwaukee)
Fenway and Wrigley are pretty interchangeable for me at 1A and 1B and so are Oracle and PNC at 3A and 3B, but it’s really all about personal preference. Wrigley is typically a more fun game experience with better sightlines than Fenway, but I like the architecture and quirkiness of the Green Monster at Fenway better. When comparing Oracle and PNC, they both have great views on the water but PNC gets the edge with the skyline and the Roberto Clemente bridge in the background and Oracle gets the edge on food and beer selection. 
The three I still haven’t visited that I’d really like to get to are Dodger Stadium in LA, Petco Park in San Diego (been to the park but in January during the offseason), and Camden Yards in Baltimore. 
Other Pittsburgh activities
My wife and I spend most of our vacations eating and drinking so while this section is titled “Other Pittsburgh activities” it’s mostly just going to be some of our favorite restaurants and bars to consider if you’re making the trip. 
As I mentioned earlier, we stayed in Lawrenceville. This was a really good hub if you want to be close to a lot of bars and restaurants that are walkable and cater to all ages. Of the neighborhoods we visited, we were definitely happy with our choice and it was validated by one of our Lyft drivers (shoutout David) who said we nailed it by choosing to stay there. Downtown had a lot of nice looking hotels if that’s more your scene and Squirrel Hill supposedly was nice if you’re looking for a more residential, quiet vibe. 
-Cork Harbour Pub was literally next door and was a solid home base/Lyft drop off spot for us. We ended up going all three days of the trip at some point in the day and even when we weren’t there at night, we got to pretend we were because we could hear it from our bedroom when we were trying to sleep. 
-Big Jim’s in the Run was a classic dive that naturally has been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. It was tucked into an odd, hidden neighborhood called Four Mile Run and is the most authentic Pittsburgh place we went to. I will admit that the food didn’t blow me away, but I would still highly recommend it just for the experience. This was also where I watched the final four innings of the Saturday loss and thanked my lucky stars that we explored a few more areas of the city instead of paying to watch the Twins get shutout two days in a row. 
-Dish Osteria Bar on the South Side was the best meal we had on the trip. If you don’t mind shelling out a little more money and have the foresight to snag a reservation (we had to grab one for 10 pm on Thursday) this is about as good as it gets for Southern Italian food. The pasta was perfect, the seafood was delicious, the drinks were great, and it was in a very nice, intimate setting. 
-I hesitate to even admit it, but the only time we ate at a Primanti Brothers sandwich was at the ballgame. I’m confident that a limited menu and a ballpark kitchen was not the best way to experience Pittsburgh’s most legendary sandwich chain but the capicola and cheese we got (topped with fries, of course) was still very good. I wish we would have made it to one of the locations around town and gotten the true experience but alas, I only have one stomach. 
-La Gourmandine was a great French bakery just up the road from us where we had a wonderful almond croissant and an apricot pastry for breakfast one day. It was a tough place to order because everything there looked so good, including the sandwiches. 
-S&D Polish Deli in the Strip was a good stop for pierogies and had some interesting Polish deli items to browse. 
 -Colangelo's was a solid pizza joint right around the corner from the Polish deli. I had a really tough time figuring out what they’re doing with pizza in Pittsburgh. Most of the places we saw or ate were similar to a Detroit style pizza which is fine by me, but then you have the unmelted cheese abomination of the Ohio River Valley style that’s served famously at Beto’s in Pittsburgh. I actually wanted to try it out of morbid curiosity but didn’t find the time.
-I ducked into William Penn Tavern to catch the fifth set of the Alcaraz/Sinner French Open semifinal while Sophie was shopping one day and that was a great spot to grab a beer and watch a game in the middle of the day. It looked a little more rowdy at night when we walked by however, so beware of that potential bro-fest.
-After the fireworks on Friday night, we wandered over the bridge into downtown and eventually settled at Emerson’s which was a good, hidden cocktail bar on the second floor. They had some really interesting cocktails and the food looked promising too. 
-Bar Marco was another good spot for drinks in the Strip that looked to have some good Italian food as well. 
-Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. was a huge Italian market that was fun to walk around if you like spending time in a place that has 40 different kinds of canned tomatoes. Think Cossetta’s in St. Paul on steroids. 
-After that dinner at Dish on Thursday night, we went to a bar called Dee’s in South Side Flats that still allows smoking and employed some bartenders with great accents. From what I could tell, South Side Flats and all the bars on Carson Street are basically Pittsburgh’s version of the old Combat Zone in Boston. In other words, this was an area I was entirely too old for, so we didn’t last long there. 
-Schenley Park was a good place to go for a walk in the city. The northern half of the park felt like being at a park that was in a city. It had an arboretum that we decided not to pay $22 for and had a couple weddings going on. The southern half of the park was a bit more rustic and while we may have gotten slightly lost in there, we did get to see a couple deer which was an unexpected surprise. 
-The Andy Warhol museum is very conveniently located only a few blocks away from PNC Park and was a good place to spend a few hours. It has seven floors that are broken into the different stages of Warhol's life and career. We later found out it’s half price on Fridays so that’s probably the time to go. 
Overall, I'd highly recommend making the trip out to Pittsburgh next time the Twins are in town, or just to see the Pirates. It's a highly underrated city if you know where to look and features arguably the best ballpark in the country that's been built in this century. 
Jump into the comments if you made it to the games this past weekend or have been to a game at PNC previously and have some experiences to share. 
 

The Twins had not played a series in Pittsburgh that fans could attend since April of 2018, with the last series the team played at PNC Park being a fanless two game series during the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The scheduling of this series on a weekend in early June at one of the best ballparks in the country allowed the opportunity for many Twins fans, this one included, to watch their team get shutout in a new and exciting destination!
My wife Sophie joined me on this trip and she got a nice (for me) or terrifying (for her) glimpse into our future when we were surrounded by scores of older, presumably retired couples wearing Twins gear at the gate awaiting our early Thursday morning flight to Pittsburgh. Our plans got pushed back a bit when our Delta gate agent got on the loudspeaker and asked for volunteers to take $500 per person to take a later flight. We were the first ones to take the offer and didn’t actually fly out until 12:30, but did so $1000 richer. Always take the extra pierogi money, friends. 
Neither of us had been to Pittsburgh before and while the trip was largely influenced by wanting to see the Twins play at PNC Park, I had heard from numerous people that Pittsburgh was a wildly underrated city and actually had a lot of appeal outside of the ballpark, and that proved to be true. 
The main things I knew about the city entering the weekend were that the local "Yinzers" speak with ridiculous accent, which had initially come to my attention during this sketch. I also knew that they liked to eat pierogies and sandwiches with fries on them. While all of those things were on display throughout the course of the weekend, we came to find that the city is also very picturesque. It was once the sixth largest city in the country which explains why it has such an impressive skyline for a city that currently only has about 300,000 people. It’s split up by the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers which meet to form the Ohio River, so you are never far from water or bridges and get some really great views.

When it comes to getting around town, the public transit options aren’t great. I would guess that’s largely due to the aforementioned rivers and bridges splitting up parts of the city and a lack of necessary connectedness, but Uber and Lyft were both pretty reliable. We took the bus from Lawrenceville, the neighborhood where we stayed, down to the Strip neighborhood and downtown a few times which was a good option for simple trips. The funicular at the Duquesne Incline was pretty cool too and only took about five minutes to ride to the top. Once you’re up there there are some great views (pictured above), especially at night, but not a whole lot to do except head back down. 
Pittsburgh is also the only sports market smart enough to have all of their professional teams wear the same colors. The Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, and even the Riverhounds in the USL, all don the black and gold. This results in a lot of cross-sport wearing of merchandise; for example there were a lot of Steelers shirts and jerseys at the Pirates game that didn’t look out of place. It seems like a great deal for fans; they can buy one black and gold shirt in their lifetime and fit in at any game in the city, but it’s probably not as great for the teams’ bottom lines.   
Friday night game
Friday morning and afternoon before the first game of the series I decided to throw on my Roberto Clemente shirt and blend in amongst the Yinzers. While I think this won me some points, it also created some confusion from the multiple people who asked me for directions or where they could find a bathroom and were met with my blank, helpless stares. 
Later on before the game, I changed into my Joe Ryan Grateful Dead shirt and became just another Twins fan jagoff. 

 
Ahead of game time we contemplated heading over to the Andy Warhol museum which is just blocks away from PNC Park, but decided we didn’t have enough time and that we’d tackle that the next day. Instead, we headed over to Southern Tier brewery down the street from the ballpark and had some beers with a large swath of Pirates fans listening to an acoustic guitar-playing singer banging out timeless hits like “Thong Song” and “No Diggity”. This was a pretty solid spot to have a few beers before the game, but it looked like there was no shortage of breweries around the park where you could do the same. 


 
About a half hour before game time, we strolled over to PNC Park and were able to get in pretty quickly. I had purchased seats up in Section 322 a few days before the game and the prices were pretty reasonable at around $25 a ticket. I like to get cheaper seats when I go to a ballpark for the first time as I expect to be walking around and exploring for a good portion of it. I feel most at home with the upper deck patrons at a ballpark anyways. These seats and really any section in the 300s near the third base line had a great view of the city and the bridge. 

 
Our seat neighbors for the most part were pretty engaged, but right in front of us, there was a group of girls likely in their late teens or early 20s that spent the entire game taking pictures of themselves and recording Tiktoks. This is not an exaggeration, it was the entire game. Just as I was losing hope in our youth, I noticed the group of girls to our left that were likely in their early 20s and were drinking beers and eating hot dogs and watching the game without a phone in sight. Let that be a lesson that there are not disappointing generations, just disappointing people. 
Some fun gimmicks at the game included the Warhol cam, which was a jumbotron filter honoring Pittsburgh’s famous purveyor of pop art, and the Pierogi race, honoring Pittsburgh’s famous Polish dumpling. Had we gotten a Michael Keaton-related activity, I think that would have covered the Pittsburgh Big Three.   

 
You’re likely not here to read about the game itself, and the Twins got shutout so there’s not a whole lot for me to write about on that front anyways. Joe Ryan pitched really well, the Twins hit a lot of singles but not in a row, and the home plate umpire was clearly doing a very bad job even from my seat in the 300 level. If you’re looking for a much more detailed writeup on the 3-0 loss, you can find a great one here.
The only thing worse than the result was that the Pirates' closer David Bednar, who is from Pittsburgh, walked out to “Renegade” by Styx for his intro music.  
One redeeming note: With legal sports betting in Pennsylvania I decided to place an “emotional hedge” bet on the Pirates moneyline so I would get to either see the Twins win or win some money. 15 bucks on the Pirates at +114 yielded a nice 17 dollar profit that paid for the jumbo 24 oz IC Light I had at the game.
After the game we were told there were fireworks, what we didn’t realize was that they would match the pyrotechnics budget of the helicopter Ride of the Valkyries scene in Apocalypse Now. To say these fireworks were a bit over the top would be like saying a Dinosaur Jr. show is a bit loud. We decided to watch them on the Roberto Clemente bridge since they were being fired off of a barge in the river right in front of the bridge. This seemed like a great idea until we started getting bombarded with smoke and actual fireworks shrapnel. Great view though!
Ballpark thoughts
PNC Park is as good as advertised. The sightlines are great from everywhere, the views are spectacular and it only has two seating decks which makes it really manageable to get around. The Clemente bridge is closed to traffic on game days which makes for an easy way to get there if you’re coming from downtown. The Pittsburgh fans are pretty dang good too. I was a little disappointed in the attendance for a beautiful Friday night in June but the ones there were very tuned in and loud. 
Going to a Major League ballpark for the first time always makes me consider where it ranks among the others I’ve been to so far. I have a hard time comparing Fenway and Wrigley to ballparks that were built in the last 30 years as it feels very apples to oranges. However, I would probably put those two in the top spots due to the joy and overwhelming sense of history one gets from attending a game there. That being said, I think my current top ten now including PNC, would be something like this:
1. Fenway Park (Boston)
2. Wrigley Field (Chicago, the good one)
3. Oracle Park (San Francisco)
4. PNC Park (Pittsburgh)
5. Target Field
6. Citi Field (Queens)
7. Coors Field (Colorado)
8. Kauffman Stadium (KC)
9. T-Mobile Park (Seattle)
10. Miller Park, it will always be Miller Park to me (Milwaukee)
Fenway and Wrigley are pretty interchangeable for me at 1A and 1B and so are Oracle and PNC at 3A and 3B, but it’s really all about personal preference. Wrigley is typically a more fun game experience with better sightlines than Fenway, but I like the architecture and quirkiness of the Green Monster at Fenway better. When comparing Oracle and PNC, they both have great views on the water but PNC gets the edge with the skyline and the Roberto Clemente bridge in the background and Oracle gets the edge on food and beer selection. 
The three I still haven’t visited that I’d really like to get to are Dodger Stadium in LA, Petco Park in San Diego (been to the park but in January during the offseason), and Camden Yards in Baltimore. 
Other Pittsburgh activities
My wife and I spend most of our vacations eating and drinking so while this section is titled “Other Pittsburgh activities” it’s mostly just going to be some of our favorite restaurants and bars to consider if you’re making the trip. 
As I mentioned earlier, we stayed in Lawrenceville. This was a really good hub if you want to be close to a lot of bars and restaurants that are walkable and cater to all ages. Of the neighborhoods we visited, we were definitely happy with our choice and it was validated by one of our Lyft drivers (shoutout David) who said we nailed it by choosing to stay there. Downtown had a lot of nice looking hotels if that’s more your scene and Squirrel Hill supposedly was nice if you’re looking for a more residential, quiet vibe. 
-Cork Harbour Pub was literally next door and was a solid home base/Lyft drop off spot for us. We ended up going all three days of the trip at some point in the day and even when we weren’t there at night, we got to pretend we were because we could hear it from our bedroom when we were trying to sleep. 
-Big Jim’s in the Run was a classic dive that naturally has been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. It was tucked into an odd, hidden neighborhood called Four Mile Run and is the most authentic Pittsburgh place we went to. I will admit that the food didn’t blow me away, but I would still highly recommend it just for the experience. This was also where I watched the final four innings of the Saturday loss and thanked my lucky stars that we explored a few more areas of the city instead of paying to watch the Twins get shutout two days in a row. 
-Dish Osteria Bar on the South Side was the best meal we had on the trip. If you don’t mind shelling out a little more money and have the foresight to snag a reservation (we had to grab one for 10 pm on Thursday) this is about as good as it gets for Southern Italian food. The pasta was perfect, the seafood was delicious, the drinks were great, and it was in a very nice, intimate setting. 
-I hesitate to even admit it, but the only time we ate at a Primanti Brothers sandwich was at the ballgame. I’m confident that a limited menu and a ballpark kitchen was not the best way to experience Pittsburgh’s most legendary sandwich chain but the capicola and cheese we got (topped with fries, of course) was still very good. I wish we would have made it to one of the locations around town and gotten the true experience but alas, I only have one stomach. 
-La Gourmandine was a great French bakery just up the road from us where we had a wonderful almond croissant and an apricot pastry for breakfast one day. It was a tough place to order because everything there looked so good, including the sandwiches. 
-S&D Polish Deli in the Strip was a good stop for pierogies and had some interesting Polish deli items to browse. 
 -Colangelo's was a solid pizza joint right around the corner from the Polish deli. I had a really tough time figuring out what they’re doing with pizza in Pittsburgh. Most of the places we saw or ate were similar to a Detroit style pizza which is fine by me, but then you have the unmelted cheese abomination of the Ohio River Valley style that’s served famously at Beto’s in Pittsburgh. I actually wanted to try it out of morbid curiosity but didn’t find the time.
-I ducked into William Penn Tavern to catch the fifth set of the Alcaraz/Sinner French Open semifinal while Sophie was shopping one day and that was a great spot to grab a beer and watch a game in the middle of the day. It looked a little more rowdy at night when we walked by however, so beware of that potential bro-fest.
-After the fireworks on Friday night, we wandered over the bridge into downtown and eventually settled at Emerson’s which was a good, hidden cocktail bar on the second floor. They had some really interesting cocktails and the food looked promising too. 
-Bar Marco was another good spot for drinks in the Strip that looked to have some good Italian food as well. 
-Pennsylvania Macaroni Co. was a huge Italian market that was fun to walk around if you like spending time in a place that has 40 different kinds of canned tomatoes. Think Cossetta’s in St. Paul on steroids. 
-After that dinner at Dish on Thursday night, we went to a bar called Dee’s in South Side Flats that still allows smoking and employed some bartenders with great accents. From what I could tell, South Side Flats and all the bars on Carson Street are basically Pittsburgh’s version of the old Combat Zone in Boston. In other words, this was an area I was entirely too old for, so we didn’t last long there. 
-Schenley Park was a good place to go for a walk in the city. The northern half of the park felt like being at a park that was in a city. It had an arboretum that we decided not to pay $22 for and had a couple weddings going on. The southern half of the park was a bit more rustic and while we may have gotten slightly lost in there, we did get to see a couple deer which was an unexpected surprise. 
-The Andy Warhol museum is very conveniently located only a few blocks away from PNC Park and was a good place to spend a few hours. It has seven floors that are broken into the different stages of Warhol's life and career. We later found out it’s half price on Fridays so that’s probably the time to go. 
Overall, I'd highly recommend making the trip out to Pittsburgh next time the Twins are in town, or just to see the Pirates. It's a highly underrated city if you know where to look and features arguably the best ballpark in the country that's been built in this century. 
Jump into the comments if you made it to the games this past weekend or have been to a game at PNC previously and have some experiences to share. 
 

A week ago, things were looking rosy in Minnesota sports land. Fast forward to today, the Twins are on a four game losing streak, the Wild crashed out of the playoffs and lost the draft lottery, the Timberwolves sill exist, and the Gopher football team went from losing their best receiver to likely losing their entire season.
 
Perhaps tonight is the night for the Twins to turn this ship around. I follow the Twins very closely, but I rarely, if ever, sit down and watch an entire Twins game uninterrupted. With the Twins playing their Wisconsin “rivals” to the east, and with nothing better to do on a Monday, I figured I’d jot down my thoughts as I take in a game and avoid going outside on a perfectly lovely 78 degree night.
 
I’m coming to you from my living room in Minneapolis, about 2 miles away from Target Field and roughly 50 Culver’s locations away from Miller Park.
 
The Twins are sending former angsty Pittsburgh-area teen with dad shoes Randy Dobnak to the mound, and the Brewers will counter with Adrian Houser.
 
It looks like Mitch Garver is out of the lineup again tonight for no other reason than to try to get his head right and reset from his horrific slump at the plate. Naturally I drafted Garver in my fantasy baseball draft along with two other Twins players. I broke my age-old ‘Don’t draft Twins players too early’ rule and this is what I have to show for it: Josh Donaldson (injured list), Rich Hill (injured list), Mitch Garver (Hasn’t gotten a hit in 8 DAYS!!!! list). Such is life.
 
6:30 p.m. CT -- The Twins Live pregame show is already trotting out the tired Randy Dobnak Uber storyline in the pregame show. Now that Dobnak is arguably the Twins best starting pitcher, I think it’s time for everyone to move past the cute, “he used to be an Uber driver” story. Unfortunately, I don’t expect it to slow down at all, and therefore I will be starting an UBER COUNTER for all the times they say “Uber” in the broadcast tonight.
 
6:35 -- UBER COUNTER: 8
 
7:05 -- I was hoping Justin Morneau would be handling color commentary, but as luck would have it, it looks like Jack Morris is working with Dick Bremer tonight. That’s right. Three hours……. With Jack Morris….I’m trying to stay calm, but…....

 
7:11 -- One of the things I love about the Brewers is they always have at least one guy on the roster who looks like he could have been out in the tailgating lot pounding beers and sausages before the game. I usually refer to these players as “Brewers Guys” but I think it would be more fun if they created an award for this called “Mr. Brewer” to be handed out each season to the player who most exemplifies what Brewers games are all about. By the way, has there ever been a pro sports franchise whose team name matches the vibe of their team better than the Brewers? They know what their fans are interested in and what makes a Brewers game experience great, and have really leaned into it.
 
When I lived in Wisconsin (2008-2012), they had some all-time great Brewers Guys, including but not limited to: Corey Hart, Prince Fielder, Casey McGehee, and the legend,
. After scanning the roster, the 2020 candidates for the Mr. Brewer award don’t seem quite as strong, but I think the best early options would have to be Brandon Woodruff, Justin Smoak, Ben Gamel, and Brett Anderson. Now that I’m thinking of it, Dobnak would be a perfect candidate if he played for the Brewers; more deliberation on this as the night moves along. 
7:18 -- After Houser got through the top of the Twins lineup in just eight pitches, Dobnak walked the Brewers leadoff hitter Eric Sogard in four pitches. A sign of good things to come, surely.
 
7:20 -- It’s a shame that the Brewers best player, Christian Yelich, will never be a candidate for Mr. Brewer. He’s too thin and he’s just too much of a Cali guy. The same was true of Ryan Braun when he was the Brewers best player.
 
7:22 -- UBER COUNTER: 9
 
7:24 -- It looks like the Brewers don’t do the cutouts behind home plate that are in vogue right now. I’m just going to assume they have a cardboard cutout of a drunk fan peeing on his seat in the nosebleeds to keep the vibe alive.
 
Side story: I have seen this happen twice in my baseball-going life; once at a Brewers game at Miller Park and once by a White Sox fan at the Metrodome.
 
7:28 -- END OF FIRST INNING: Tied 0-0
 
7:35 -- Luis Arraez comes up for the first time. Can we all agree the “Luis Arraez might hit .400” thing was really dumb? I don’t think his slugging percentage will even get to .400 this year.
 
Just as I say that, he slaps the Twins first hit to left field. I guess I’m now committed to criticizing Arraez before each of his at-bats.
 
7:39 -- GM Thad Levine has joined the broadcast and is talking at length about Byron Buxton’s effervescent smile. Shortly after, Buxton strikes out. No effervescence, for now.
 
7:45 -- Jack Morris complains about Zoom for the first time. Mark it off on your Jack Morris “Back in my day” bingo card.
 
7:49 -- Orlando Arcia comes up to the plate for the Brewers. Twins fans may remember his brother Oswaldo as the only Twins outfielder who was somehow worse defensively than Josh Willingham and Delmon Young in the early 2010s.
 
In what I assume was a joint tribute to his brother, Orlando hits one to the wall and allows Eddie Rosario to crash into the wall and not make the catch, putting the Brewers up 1-0.
 
7:52 -- END OF SECOND INNING: Brewers lead 1-0
 
8:02 -- GRAND SLAM ALERT: Eddie Rosario atones and hits his fourth career grand slam to put the Twins up 4-1. If Bernie Brewer is not going to go down the slide, I will slide down a flight of stairs.
 
8:05 -- Terrible hitter Luis Arraez comes to the plate again. (It didn’t work this time, Arraez strikes out.)
 
8:07 -- Tough to say what the worst local commercial being played on Fox Sports North is these days, but it seems like they have retired the worst of all time aka “the WOAT” from Kinetico:

 
Someday I am going to break into my worst enemy’s house and hang this framed image in their living room:

 
8:12 -- Justin Smoak is showing signs of a mullet coming from under his helmet, greatly aiding his Mr. Brewer candidacy. I think it has to be down to him and Brett Anderson at this point.
 
8:13 -- Jack Morris hates social media, mark it on your Bingo cards.
 
8:14 -- END OF THIRD INNING: Twins lead 4-1
 
8:29 -- END OF FOURTH INNING: Twins lead 4-1
 
8:31 -- In an effort to be transparent with my dear readers, I’ll admit I ate dinner throughout the entirety of the fourth inning. Shoutout to my lovely girlfriend Sophie for the rice bowl.
 
I can’t even imagine what newfangled technology from the last 20 years Jack Morris complained about while I was away.
 
8:45 -- Alex Avila just chased a foul ball in a dead sprint at an eight second 40-yard dash pace, which draws chuckles from the broadcast duo.
 
8:47 -- Dobnak continues to cruise and has barely broken a sweat on his handlebar mustache. He’s retired eight batters in a row and has only allowed one run through five.
 
8:48 -- END OF FIFTH INNING: Twins lead 4-1
 
8:52 -- Byron Buxton strikes out on three pitches against Freddy Peralta and his career 11.9 K/9 rate in the most predictable at-bat result since Buxton struck out on three pitches against James Karinchak earlier in the year. Buxton has struck out in all three at-bats tonight and each one has looked worse than the last.
 
9:00 -- Elsewhere, the Detroit Fightin’ Gardy’s just beat the White Sox to move to 9-5 on the year. Twins legend Niko Goodrum went 4-4 for the Tigers as they moved into first place. <<<<This is an insane sentence.
 
9:02 -- UBER COUNTER: 10
 
9:03 -- I’m removing Ben Gamel from the Mr. Brewer list. With his hair and tattoos he’s got more of an amphetamine-loving biker look than a true Wisconsin party guy look.
 
9:04 -- END OF SIXTH INNING: Twins lead 4-1
 
9:06 -- Dick is still holding out hope that the Twins might have fans at their games this year. Who wants to tell him?
 
After looking at these Brewers jerseys for two hours, I’m convinced their sets with updated branding this year are among the best ones they’ve ever had. A huge improvement over everything that featured their 1994-2019 logos.
 
9:18 -- “First time I’ve broadcast a Milwaukee game without being there, but what I wouldn’t give for two bratwursts and sauerkraut” -Dick Bremer.
 
Same Dick, same.
 
Dick goes on to mention he’s not a fan of the Secret Stadium Sauce at Miller Park. I’ve always liked the sauce and now I’m going down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what it’s made of.
 
9:20 -- Secret Stadium Sauce has its own Wikipedia page, who knew? Here’s the story:
 
“We were sort of running out of ketchup and mustard, and we needed a condiment. I took barbecue sauce, a little ketchup and mustard and smoked syrup and other ingredients and came up with secret stadium sauce. We said, 'We don't have [ketchup and mustard], but we have secret stadium sauce.'
— Rick Abramson
 
9:25 -- Apparently they didn’t pause the game so I could read up on the Miller Park brat sauce. While I was away, Tyler Duffey worked another scoreless inning. His ERA stays at 0.00 on the year.
 
9:27 -- END OF SEVENTH INNING: Twins lead 4-1
 
9:30 -- The Miller Park music crew goes from “Regulate” by Warren G and Nate Dogg (RIP Nate Dogg) right into “Xxplosive” by Dr. Dre. Apparently the eight inning is G-funk inning at Miller Park.
 
The Twins have looked mostly helpless against Freddy Peralta for three innings now. He has six Ks and no hits allowed as we head to the bottom of the eighth.
 
9:38 -- Swashbucklin’ Sergio Romo is out to pitch the eighth. Romo struggled in his last outing against the Pirates, which is ironic, because he currently looks like one, mixed with Serpico.
 
9:39 -- “I’m sure a lot of fans are wondering why teams use so many pitchers now. Starters used to go so much deeper into games and maybe they think that was better.” Jack Morris, projecting his own thoughts onto some mysterious “fans” that definitely don’t just exist in his head.
 
9:45 -- END OF EIGHTH INNING: Twins lead 4-2
 
9:53 -- As the night (hopefully) begins to wind down, it’s time to hand out the hardware! This year’s Mr. Brewer winner is Brett Anderson! Congrats to Brett for looking like an older version of roughly half of the really drunk guys I went to college with at UW-Eau Claire.

 
9:56 -- Freddy Peralta’s reign of terror (hopefully) comes to an end. He struck out eight batters in four innings, allowing just one hit.
 
Now for Taylor Rogers time….
 
10:00 -- Jedd Gyorko (pronounced Jerk-O) leads off for the Brew Crew. His name will always remind me of the “Jerk Store” episode of Seinfeld.
 
Jerk Store flies out for the first out.
 
Rogers strikes out something called "Mark Mathias" to end it. Phew.
 
10:10 -- FINAL: TWINS WIN 4-2
 
Only three hours later, the game is a wrap and the Twins get back in the win column. I wasn’t sure if this format would work for a game article and to be honest, I’m still not, but thank you for reading if you made it this far. I’ll leave you with this image of a brat with Secret Stadium Sauce as we reflect back on better times at the ballpark.