In Why Time Begins on Opening Day, Thomas Boswell wrote that a ballclub’s faithful finally learn the final score is only part of what matters, that “the process, the pleasure, the grain of the game count too.” In Pittsburgh this April, the grain of the game is a 100‑mile‑an‑hour fastball that rises like a hot air balloon and a mustache that looks painted on for use in a barbershop quartet. Paul Skenes breaks the old clock on the out‑of‑town scoreboard, starts it over, and dares the people in the cheap seats to remember what hope sounds like. Hope, as it turns out, is loud. It sings “Sell the team!” between innings, and it crackles each time this great big kid lights up another radar gun.
He has that first‑overall draft pedigree, a 6‑foot‑6-inch frame that makes the mound look undersized, a Dusty‑Hill‑in‑training lip sweater, and, because life is stranger than marketing, an LSU gymnast girlfriend in Livvy Dune with 13 million followers who know more about exit velocity now than they ever planned. Primanti Bros. hands out free sandwiches to anyone wearing a fake ’stache on days he pitches, Eat’n Park frosts one on its Smiley Cookies, a little kid on SportsNet Pittsburgh says his two favorite things about the second-year pitcher are “his mustache and Livvy Dunne,” and not even the haters can disagree.
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The numbers already read like myth. Eleven wins, a 1.96 ERA, 170 strikeouts, and the National League Rookie of the Year in only 23 starts last season. The first rookie in a decade to start an All‑Star Game, the first Pirate to make the All‑MLB First Team since teammate Andrew McCutchen’s MVP peak, and the face of a video‑game cover before he could legally rent a car.
The kid is so bright that you can convince yourself the rest of the roster is merely out of focus. You forget the club hasn’t made the NL Championship Series since Barry Bonds had a normal‑sized head and that the franchise owns two Cy Young Awards, both older than the Super Nintendo and one, Vern Law’s 1960 win, older than the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. You remember the golden age that was 1990–92, when Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, and Andy Van Slyke formed one of the best cores in baseball — and then remember they never got another shot. You recall 2013–15, when McCutchen danced in center, Canadian catcher Russell Martin framed pitches like Picasso, and the Wild Card round kept ending with the other guys hugging at the mound. Each time the window creaked, ownership asked the fans to paint it shut.
What’s changed? Not the money. The Pirates’ 2025 payroll ranks 26th, just under $78 million, or roughly what the Los Angeles Dodgers spend on Shohei Ohtani. Not the mood, either. On Opening Day, while the New York Yankees were turning a 9‑4 laugher, fans, myself included, filled the sixth‑inning lull with a chant we’ve practiced for years: “Sell the team, Bob Nutting!” A plane with the same message circled the park. Even the famed PNC Park bricks, 10,000 fan‑bought pavers honoring all sorts of personal milestones, got yanked up and dumped at a recycling yard, another little promise to us outsourced to the landfill.
Past miscues aside, it feels impossible that the Pirates could fumble a talent such as this. Then you check the old scrapbook. They let Bonds walk because $43 million in 1993 looked obscene — the San Francisco Giants thanked them with a new ballpark, a World Series appearance, and two decades of sellouts. They couldn’t match the Yankee bucks for Gerrit Cole, funny money for a future Cy Young winner who everyone knew would age like Justin Verlander. McCutchen, blessedly, came back on a modest deal because Pittsburgh feels like home, but he lost his prime seasons chasing postseason shares in San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee.
The worry, of course, is arithmetic. Skenes will reach arbitration in 2027 and free agency in 2030, and if he stays healthy, the price tag will read “Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million minus hitting but plus inflation.” The Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, or Yankees will need in‑his‑prime star power for a rebranded streaming deal. The Pirates will check their spreadsheets, cough politely, and wish him and Dunne well on Instagram. That’s the dread talking, but dread has a terrific track record around here.
Nothing about Skenes feels replaceable. He throws off‑center four‑seamers that climb through the zone like staircases, and he pairs them with a split‑change, a pitch that ought to be copyrighted, and a slider that tracks like a drone. He posted nearly six wins above replacement in 136 innings as a rookie and still won the Rookie of the Year award despite sitting out most of September, only because a front office terrified of good press invented the phrase “strategic workload reduction.” Scouts call him the best pitching prospect since Stephen Strasburg, but that sells short the electricity. Strasburg was a lab project whose arm eventually went bust. Skenes is a folk hero on the order of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill.
Around him, the roster looks like an unbalanced checkbook. McCutchen, 38, still turns inside‑out liners and still calls every young teammate “kiddo.” Joey Wentz and Justin Lawrence hold leads when they fall from the sky. Second-generation star Ke’Bryan Hayes can’t hit, but he makes third base look unfair. The rest of the lineup swings like it’s allergic to on‑base percentage. The Pirates will probably improve on their usual slow start, the Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers will cool, and the NL Central is nobody’s boulevard of giants, but .500 remains both ceiling and mirage. All of which leaves Skenes performing that old Pittsburgh trick: convincing 20,000 of us to pay $20 a game to accept process over result.
Boswell said the process has dignity because it’s unreasonable. Pirate fans, students of unreason, have watched the business office flatten that dignity into talking points. They watched Nutting remove Roberto Clemente’s number 21 from the right‑field wall to sell an alcoholic seltzer, then hurriedly glue it back after the Clemente family objected. They watched the ownership group apologize for the bricks but refuse to pay the recycling yard to retrieve them. They watched the payroll sink to neighborhood‑hardware‑store levels while ticket prices ticked up like downtown rents.
The franchise could, theoretically, choose to keep him. It could buy out his arbitration, tack on two or three free‑agent years, market him the way the Seattle Mariners once marketed Ken Griffey Jr.: Build around him with the money that disappears between the balance sheet and the promise of tomorrow. It could prove the cynics wrong and let a generational player grow old where he started.
Maybe that happens. Maybe 2025 is the moment Nutting glances at a half‑empty park, a half‑full balance sheet, and decides it’s more fun being the guy who pays for pennants than the guy who buys ski slopes. If so, Skenes will take the ball and finish the World Series stories that Hall of Famers Clemente and Dave Parker told and that Bonds and McCutchen never could. If not, he will walk, just another great Pirate poached by a wealthier operation.
Boswell’s notion still holds: Opening Day is a promise that baseball resets itself, that time rewinds, that last year’s heartbreak can’t touch this afternoon’s sky. Skenes gives that promise extra velocity. Whenever he starts, he starts the clock over for Pittsburgh — even if July reminds everyone whose watch batteries are missing. For now, that’s enough. For now, the fastball climbs, the crowd stands, and time begins again.
Oliver Bateman is a journalist, historian, and co-host of the What’s Left? podcast. Visit his website: www.oliverbateman.com.