Downtown Lunchbreak: Hidden Baseball, December 2011

As I write this, I am sitting on a couch in Boston apartment located in The Fens. If I crane my neck, I can see Fenway Park. Boston is a baseball town, through and through. Pittsburgh relies more on its football and hockey teams, especially in light of the Pirates' record-breaking 19 consecutive losing seasons. But there was a baseball heyday in Pittsburgh at one point. Bill Mazeroski's walk-off homerun is a moment we're so proud of that every year it is celebrated on the former site of Forbes Field in Oakland.

During lunch one day last week, I scarfed down my lunch so I could go on a walk. It was beautiful out for the first day of December. I didn't have a destination in mind, so I wandered around and tried to take streets that I am not normally on or nearby. I walked down to the Boulevard of the Allies near where it becomes elevated, and noticed that the side of the wall that elevates the road was painted to look like a Forbes Field wall and was covered in ivy.


Walking along the wall a little farther, there was another marker hearkening back to Pittsburgh's baseball past (No. 9 = Bill Mazeroski).



And then, under the Boulevard of the Allies is a mural of Pittsburgh greats called, appropriately, The Legends of Pittsburgh.



It's December. In Pittsburgh. And somehow I managed to do a post about baseball. Go me!