May 4, 2015 4 min read

Babe Ruth was a genuine American hero (to many).

Oh, he drank too much; ate more than he should; he was married with an overly-keen eye for the ladies.

But despite his obvious flaws, he could hit baseballs farther than just about anybody else on the planet – more of them too.

While the NFL now rivals Major League baseball as America’s true national pastime, I hardly ever think about that other sport ’round this time of year.

There are 30 Major League teams playing in 17 American cities; the District of Columbia and, of course, that one team that plays in Toronto Canada.

The fortunes of most of those cities will rise and fall until late September, based on the fates of their respective teams.

There will be 4,860 games, minus play-off games, again this season.

To me, that’s never enough.

Any activity that allows me to get out of the house, smell freshly mowed grass, and freshly popped popcorn simultaneously, has value.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have gotten off to a so-so season.

It’s Andrew McCutchen’s fault.

He decided to get a haircut, and now he runs faster than most of the balls he hits.

His signature dreadlocks disappeared, and so has his batting average.

I’m superstitious about those kinds of things.

As any ball player and they’ll tell you they’re superstitious too.

They arrive at the ballpark at the same time every day and they make sure they go through the same pre-game routine – especially when they had a good game the day before.

I’m like that too.

I make sure I cuss the exact same way, every time Jordy Mercer strikes out.

This season the Pirates are expected to do better than last year, which wasn’t as good as they did in 2013.

I don’t care.

I’m just along for the ride.

It’s much easier in 2015 to be along for that ride than it was when I first started rooting for the Bucs in the late 1950s.

Most baseball fans, the ones who never got a chance to see Forbes Field in person, never saw a home game – until the 1960 World Series.

Home games were blacked out.

So, on June 18, 1961, when my father took me to see the Pirates play at Forbes Field, it was special because I happened to see a Pirates’ utility player, Don Leppert, hit a home run in his very first Major League at bat.

That was key, only because he’d only hit 14 more home runs in his entire career.

Thanks to Root Sports, which now broadcasts all but a handful of Pirates games in 2015, I saw the next Pirate, Starling Marte, do the same thing – except on the very first pitch on July 26, 2011.

By the way, Leppert and Marte are only two of the 117 players in history to hit home runs the first time they went to bat.

A Connellsville native, Gene Hasson, also performed that feat while player for the Philadelphia Athletics on Sept, 9, 1937. He only hit three more home runs in his Major League career.

There have been complaints that the games have gotten too long.

Especially since there’s a lot of interest being paid to younger fans who just may get fidgety after three hours at the ballpark.

I don’t blame them.

This season there are new rules that have been designed to speed up play, even if they don’t necessarily help shorten games.

We’ll see.

I can only say that when your team is in the thick of things, the lengths of games don’t seem to matter.

In 2013, my wife and I went to a double-header at PNC Park.

Not just any doubleheader.

If the Pirates had won both games against the St. Louis Cardinals, they would move into first place.

The Pirates won the first game in 11 innings.

They easily won the second game.

The entire experience lasted six hours, and 22 minutes.

That didn’t seem long to me!

Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20 year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net