Andrew McCutchen can still see the black shirts, hear the drawn-out call of Johnny Cueto’s name and feel a Pittsburgh ballpark shaking beneath a postseason crowd. For the Pirates great, October 1, 2013 remains less like a game from the record book than a scene built for the movies.
A night Pittsburgh had waited 21 years to see
The National League Wild Card Game against the Cincinnati Reds marked Pittsburgh’s first home postseason appearance in more than two decades. McCutchen, who won the 2013 NL MVP Award, recently revisited that night while speaking with Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins on the 6-1-1 podcast.
All three former stars have collected National League MVP honors, but the conversation took McCutchen back to the particular charge surrounding that one-game playoff at PNC Park. Pittsburgh’s players wanted the city involved in more than the usual way, and the club settled on a simple visual statement: wear black.
- Before the game, Pirates players discussed how they could make supporters feel directly connected to the postseason moment.
- McCutchen credited catcher Michael McKenry, now an analyst with SportsNet Pittsburgh, with helping spark the all-black idea.
- As McCutchen crossed the Roberto Clemente Bridge on the way to PNC Park, he saw the plan had taken hold across the crowd.
- By the time he reached the clubhouse, he said the sight of that black-clad gathering gave him the feeling Pittsburgh already had the night in hand.
- Inside the ballpark, Reds starter Johnny Cueto heard his name stretched into a relentless chant before Russell Martin delivered the home run that became one of the game’s defining images.
The sound that stayed with McCutchen
McCutchen called the atmosphere “something out of a movie,” saying it was not the sort of experience players encounter on an ordinary night.
He has played in front of large crowds over an 18-year major league career and has attended college football and NFL games, settings where sheer capacity can create a major roar. Still, he said nothing has matched the sustained volume he heard at PNC Park that evening.
More than 40,000 fans, he recalled, screamed through the entire game. The noise was not a brief postseason spike after one big hit; it was a constant presence from the stands, one that has remained unmatched in his memory.
McCutchen turned 40 on October 10, but the Wild Card win remains close at hand for him and for a Pirates fan base that turned a long-awaited October return into a black-out celebration.
