This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
PITTSBURGH -- The view from PNC Park is one of the best in baseball. Look out from behind home plate and, depending on where you’re sitting, you can see the span of the historic Roberto Clemente Bridge, across the Allegheny River, over to the Byham Theater and the incredible downtown Pittsburgh skyline.
Even with that view, the Tigers couldn’t help but gaze up to the sky as they wandered onto the field ahead of batting practice Monday before their series opener against the Pirates. It was mid-afternoon, but thanks to the solar eclipse, it looked like dusk, complete with the lights of the Clemente Bridge.
Though Pittsburgh was just outside the path of totality, the scene was still surreal for a few minutes, peaking at 3:17 p.m. It wasn’t quite the view that the Guardians enjoyed in Cleveland, but it was still worth catching.
“Well, it’s one of those things that doesn’t hardly ever happen,” said reliever Andrew Chafin, who joined teammate Shelby Miller and Bally Sports Detroit reporter Johnny Kane for a segment watching it from the field. “So if you have the opportunity to take a peek at it, why not?”
It was sort of a team activity, but in shifts. The Tigers had just a handful of eclipse glasses, so players passed them around as they emerged from the dugout to take a quick look.
“I saw it at about 3:15, and you could barely see the sun,” Tarik Skubal said. “It was weird out there, though. It was eerie.”
So was it worth the hype? Depends on who you ask.
“Probably not,” Parker Meadows said with a laugh. “It was team bonding, though. We all got out and watched it.”
“I did see it. It was fascinating,” Kerry Carpenter said.
Manager A.J. Hinch said he was sitting next to Tigers television broadcaster Jason Benetti, taking it in.
“It was breathtaking,” Hinch said, with a slight hint of melodrama. “Breathtaking is the word we’re going to use, with how it was. But then I was very confused, because it reminded me of my teenage years in Oklahoma when a storm was coming in. So I thought I needed to go take shelter because a tornado was coming. But a very unique experience.”
Others had fun with it as well.
“I did see it,” Riley Greene said. “I can’t see right now, but I did see the eclipse.”
Mercifully, Greene was kidding. So, too, was Skubal ... we think.
“I mean, it won’t happen again until I’m probably dead, right?” Skubal asked.
Not quite that long. Though Skubal thought the next one visible in the United States would be 60 years from now, it’s actually on track for Aug. 23, 2044. That said, the path of totality will only cross into the U.S. around Montana and the Dakotas.
Unless Major League Baseball expands to Helena, the Dakotas or western Canada in the next 20 years, the Tigers probably won’t get a better look at that one.