THREE RIVERS Stadium opened its gates for its first major-league baseball game 55 years ago today when the Pirates took the field wearing baseball’s first ever double-knit uniforms and lost to the Cincinnati Reds 3-2.
Seats halfway between third base and the foul pole in the 600 level for my dad, brother, and me that summer night in 1970 cost a whopping $3.15 each.
Three Rivers Stadium was the home to the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers from 1970 through 2000. The stadium, which took more than two years to build at a cost of $55 million, seated 47,971 fans for baseball and 59,000 for football. Located on the former grounds of Exposition Park on the city’s North Side, the stadium’s site was chosen in 1958, but 10 years of labor and political disputes delayed the start of construction until April 1968.
Unless you were in the new stadium for the first game, people watching on television couldn’t tell whether the game was in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, or another one of the many cookie cutter symmetrical playpens that were developed for both football and baseball, but worked for neither. Artificial turf clung to blacktop underneath, while hit baseballs bounced like a superball or skidded and rolled to the wall between even the speediest of outfielders.
After playing in steel and concrete behemoths put together in the early part of the 20th Century¸ baseball fans were transported into the future, whose attraction lasted about as long as a Myron O’Brisky hot dog at Forbes Field.
The dual-use stadiums soon fell into such disfavor that cities everywhere tripped over themselves in building new stadiums around the turn of the century that harkened back to those old ballparks from a century earlier.
Actually, Three Rivers was barely 20 years old when then-Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff suggested a 44,000-seat, baseball only ballpark in early September 1991. “Clemente Field” could open in 1996 with a grass field and the Pittsburgh skyline in the outfield, she said.
“This project must be started as soon as possible,” the Mayor said on September 7, 1991. “If we build it, we will finish the job of securing the Pirates’ future in this city.” Her plan came at a time when there were concerns about the team being sold and possibly moved.
The reaction from local politicians, businesses, and fans was so negative that in two weeks she abandoned the idea; 10 years later saw the Pirates finish their first season in an intimate old-style baseball facility, reminiscent of the old parks, right down to the color scheme from Forbes Field.
Meanwhile, Three Rivers lasted five seasons longer than Masloff’s proposal would have needed.
While I went to the implosion of TRS on a February Sunday morning in 2001 just to make sure people hadn’t changed their minds, my kids were sad because they were watching the end of the place where they had learned to love baseball and mourned its passing, just as I had done decades before when the wrecking ball broke apart sections of Forbes Field.
Love it or hate it, but that first decade of the new ballpark that sat on a sea of parking spaces was arguably the most successful in Pittsburgh sports history.
The autumn Steelers had abandoned Forbes Field and later Pitt Stadium to join their summer brothers in creating a following unparalleled in pro football history. Winning four Super Bowls after regular seasons between 1974 and 1979 and such miracles as Franco’s Immaculate Reception created an expectation that still permeates Steeler fans that nothing less than winning it all is unacceptable. Unmatched players like Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, “Mean” Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, Lynn Swann, and Chuck Noll enjoyed great success at Three Rivers.
In that 10-year span, the Pirates won six division titles and finished first or second every season, except for a third-place ending in 1973.They defeated the Baltimore Orioles twice in the ’70s to become World Champions.
Please have anyone younger than 55 re-read out loud the above paragraph, that since 1979, the Bucs haven’t won a post-season series, including a National League pennant.
The Pirates played with Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente, Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Andy Van Slyke, and Doug Drabek writing their names on the Three Rivers All-Star book. In the first 25 years of divisional play (all but the first season of 1969 happened at Three Rivers Stadium), the Pirates won more games and finished first (nine seasons) more often than any other club in their division. Their 2100 wins were 222 games above .500.