Opening Day is exciting, but when your teams starts the season on the road, it is definitely tempered down a little bit.
Instead of having a shiny, untouched record and holding a grand ceremony in front of your own fans, you start the season at some other ballpark, watching some other team celebrate the start of the new season for some other fans.
That’s how the 2025 Pirates season started off, and while the Pirates started off their season for seven straight games on the road, playing in front of fans that were actively rooting against them, I can absolutely guarantee that was easier than playing in front of their own fans at PNC Park.
On a gray, overcast day down at the North Shore, nearly 37,000 people packed into the ballpark for Pittsburgh’s Opening Day, seeing a team that lost two straight series and fell to a 2-5 record.
Fan favorites like Paul Skenes and Andrew McCutchen were still warmly welcomed, but the crowd was not afraid to let their grievances with this organization be known.
Several current players, including reliever Colin Holderman and Pirates’ free agency signing Tommy Pham were booed during the Opening Day intros.
Manager Derek Shelton stepped out onto the field in a chorus of booing and jeering, the kind of reaction that could make an unknowing bystander severely cringe.
Things didn’t get any better during the game. Birthday boy Mitch Keller got the home opener start, but a game that saw him struggle with control and be victimized by more disappointing defense saw the visiting New York Yankees take a 4-0 lead in the top of the third inning.
As you can imagine, an angry fan base did not handle the early results very well. Multiple chants of “Sell the team!” broke out during the game, including after Isiah Kiner-Falefa bobbled a ball from the shortstop position and during a Bryan Reynolds at-bat.
Bob Nutting, the, um, hmm….embattled owner of the Pirates made the very bold choice to walk the rotunda during the game and was mercilessly heckled b fans. A video of that encounter went viral on Pirates Twitter/X.
It was the culmination of anger that had boiled up for fans after a year of inaction. Now in the first full year of Paul Skenes, the organization took the incredibly risky bet of signing one-year and bargain bin deals in free agency, and banking on serious internal improvement from everyone currently in the system.
Baseball is such a long season. I wrote in a Pitt News column last week (shameless plug) that if there is any season to not overreact to, it’s the one that insists on playing 162 games.
But that bet that this organization took this year has not paid off. Their bullpen was a concern, but their biggest problem in 2024 was offense.
Their big trade acquisition is still weeks away from making his Pirates debut. Spencer Horwitz will be counted on to be a savior for this team when he finally recovers from that offseason wrist surgery and takes over at first base. In his absence, the Pirates have played no true first baseman in that role, with Endy Rodriguez taking the bulk of the reps.
Their big free agency signing, Pham, came into the game 2-for-23 on the year. He grounded out in his only at-bat in this game before a mysterious sickness took him out of the game, leaving recently acquired Alexander Canario out in left field in place of Pham.
Canario went 0-for-3 and recorded an error in his first inning of work.
Opening Day at PNC Park was a referendum on the current state of the organization, and the result was a resounding rejection of the way this team has been handled. Yankees fans rejoiced in watching the Pirates defeat themselves to the tune of boos, while some triumphantly wore Skenes Yankees jerseys, a frightening yet sadly possible reality in a few years.
Everyone will have a different main person to believe. Some will put the brunt of this team’s failures on Shelton, some on general manager Ben Cherington (who would have received a similar treatment to Shelton and Nutting had he been seen around the ballpark), and some will blame Nutting, the man who bought the team in 2007 and has seen only four winning seasons since.
The reality is that all three are to blame, and that is the true problem.
Now, back to the booing.
I don’t blame anyone for any booing that took place at that game. Not one bit. As a fan at games, the only real time I’ve ever booed my own team or own players is if I ever thought that they were not trying at all…which is rare, because these are professionals.
However, to pretend that this is unexpected or unacceptable is just wearing Rosé-colored glasses. Some (although that number is dwindling) will finger-wag fan’s behavior on Opening Day, but it was entirely predicable, and to be perfectly honest, I think it’s a very good thing.
The fanbase of the Pittsburgh Pirates is one of the most passionate out there.
You have to have passion to still show up to watch this team year after year, whether that’s on tv or in the ballpark. You have to have passion to still suit up in your Pirates shirts, jerseys, and hats and be seen in them. And you absolutely have to still have passion to go to that game and let your true feelings be shown.
I was lucky enough to be at the major league debut of Paul Skenes last year. That game was absolutely crazy, but the best part about that game was the atmosphere. How often can you capture a playoff game atmosphere (and attendance figure) for a game in mid-May? How often can you get nearly 40,000 people locked in on every single pitch?
That was a fan base that was so excited for any glimpse of winning baseball, and Skenes represented it.
We saw that in the summer as well, when a sellout crowd watched Skenes pitch seven innings and the Pirates blow out the New York Mets 14-2. A sellout crowd was loving every minute of it, even embracing players like Rowdy Tellez, who was public enemy number one just a few weeks prior.
It was yet another sign that if this organization gave something, literally anything for these fans to show up for, they will come. It was nights like those that reminded us that Pittsburgh is in fact a baseball town. It just needs to be treated like one by the folks who manage the club.
Today was another reminder of that, albeit in a different way. Fans showed their passion in a different way, one that resembled more of a tough love approach.
But it’s still love.
I love this team. If you’ve made it far into this ramble, you love this team too. And in that moment today at the ballpark, the way that fans had to show their passion was by booing as loud as they could.
Passion goes both ways. It truly does. Passion comes out in cheering and booing, chants and jeers.
But I will tell you this: the Pirates better be damn thankful that they still have a fan base that is passionate enough to still care about this team and this sport.
The only thing that is worse than fans that are angry is fans that are apathetic. And whether Skenes, who the Pirates were lucky at having the chance to draft first overall, is the only reason why fans aren’t apathetic, so be it. The Pirates are so lucky to still have fans who care, and who care this much.
How they have chosen to show that right now speaks far more about how the organization has gone about things than about the fans themselves.
Fifth Avenue Sports 
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