the strikeout

by Lauren Daley

IN MID-SEPTEMBER 2013, the lovable losers, the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, had just ended a twenty-year losing streak and were only two wins away from clinching a spot in the playoffs, and the city was on its feet.

At the time, I was in my twenties and working as an investigative reporter for the alt-weekly Pittsburgh City Paper, which had been covering the Pirates all summer. Before this, the extent of my exposure to sports was attending an occasional Pirates game, and when I was five years old, I inexplicably walked around in my baseball hat telling people I was then-Pirates outfielder Andy Van Slyke, who I only liked because his name sounded like my favorite drink, Sprite. But by now, I had been in the news business a little over five years. Even though I wasn’t a newbie reporter, the gig felt challenging, new, and more exciting than ever, a calling.

On September 18th, the Pirates opened up batting practice to journalists covering their winning season, in addition to holding a press conference with their former star player, Bill Mazeroski. “Maz”—or “The Glove,” as he was known by baseball fans—played second base for the Pirates from 1956 to 1972, winning a World Series and becoming a 2001 Baseball Hall of Famer. A fourteen-foot bronze statue of him sits on the corner of 20 Mazeroski Way at the main entrance of PNC Park, commemorating his epic ninth-inning home run in Game Seven that clinched the Pirates’ dramatic win over the Yankees in the 1960 World Series. He’s a legend, and reporters from across other city news organizations clamored to get a spot at the presser.

When the press conference was scheduled, none of this mattered to me. My beat was hard and investigative news, and all of my colleagues knew that I was useless when it came to sports figures. But then, Pittsburgh City Paper news editor and sports aficionado Charlie Deitch ruptured his Achilles tendon just days before the Pirates’ late-season surge. His mobility was limited to a knee scooter, so he could not cover the press conference. Somehow, the assignment fell to me.

The paper wanted to do a special on Neil Walker, a Pittsburgh kid who now played for the Pirates; Walker looked up to Mazeroski and was now having his own dreams of a playoff realized. They both played the same position to boot—second base. The story almost wrote itself.

“You were my relief pitcher,” Deitch told me later, reflecting on his decision to send a young investigative news reporter to a sports event.

The twinges of anxiety enveloped my gut—sports were not my forte, in personal or professional interest. I was more comfortable in a tension-laden courtroom or covering police-brutality cases. But a story was a story. I struggled with competing emotions: dread at the fact I knew nothing about professional baseball and therefore doubted my ability to write anything newsworthy about it, and excitement to see the inside workings of PNC Park, where I had occasionally enjoyed tailgating in the parking lot and taking in Primanti Brothers sandwiches and cold beer with my friends and wife from the cheap seats.

The day of the press conference was brighter than ever without a cloud in the sky, perfect for the near one-mile walk from my office tower in Downtown Pittsburgh to the stadium on the North Shore. I wore a black blazer to signal professionalism, even though I was representing an alternative-newsweekly where jeans and t-shirts tended to be my uniform. With a job that took me places like strip clubs, protests, activist encampments and political rallies, I was always intentional about trying to eliminate any outward perception of stuffiness or inaccessibility to my fellow humans. My black-and-gold press pass—in Pittsburgh sports colors, nonetheless—swung around my neck as I crossed the iconic yellow Rachel Carson Bridge, notebook and camera-in-hand. The breeze off the river partially cooled the sweat from my nerves.

Once you cross the bridge, you enter a world of Pittsburgh sports country. The North Shore, as it’s known, houses both PNC Park and Heinz Field (so named at the time), home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Surrounding the baseball stadium are statues of Pirates’ royalty, Willie Stargell, Honus Wagner, Roberto Clemente and of course, Mazeroski. A haze of excitement began to form as their shadows stretched along the pavement.

I made my way through the metal detectors and entrance of the park and navigated to the press room. Once inside, I realized I didn’t know a soul, let alone which person was Neil Walker. No one had on jerseys with their names on the back like I anticipated.

Local press, former players, and Pirates brass milled around the press room. I saw a man standing behind the gaggle of TV cameras gazing at Mazeroski. He had short brown hair, the tiniest bit of beard and mustache gruff, and he stood a few inches taller than me. He had kind eyes that were trained almost meditatively on Maz. He looked nice.

“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting his gaze. “But do you know who Neil Walker is?”

He smiled. “I do,” he said. “I can introduce you after the press conference with Maz.” My nerves calmed for a moment. The interview was the first step to getting the story.

The conference started, and Mazeroski sat in the front of the room, at a table with a yellow-and-black pinstriped Pirates tablecloth that held up personal items from his legendary 1960 World Series to auction off for charity. His jersey, cleats, and bat were prominently displayed on stage. The man beside me smiled ear to ear. He seemed like a real fan.

Reporters volleyed questions at the Pirates legend:

How does it feel to let go of some of this stuff?

Do you know where the ball from the infamous Game Seven win over the New York Yankees is?

Who on the team today has the most promise?

That’s when Maz paused and pointed to the man I was standing beside.

“That guy right there, Neil Walker,” he said. The mass of press in the room turned toward my direction. I felt my face flush and sweat bead, then gush, on my forehead and to my hairline. My back-up black Pilot G5 pen began to slip from behind my ear.

Neil Walker looked at me and laughed. I wanted to die. I had asked Neil Walker who Neil Walker was.

“I was surprised, not shocked,” Deitch told me when I started to dig into writing about this. “No offense, but if something a little wacky was going to happen, it was going to happen to you.”

After the press conference, when Deitch learned of the flub, he braced himself. He had worked for years to cultivate a relationship with the Pittsburgh Pirates to get City Paper access to their press and sports events. “I thought we were going to get banned because one of my reporters asked who the fuck Neil Walker is. It should also not go unmentioned that you were at a press conference honoring Bill Mazeroski, probably one of the top three legends in Pirates history,” Deitch said. “And you had no idea who he was either.”

But, that day, as a dogged reporter, I knew I had to continue to get the story. I apologized to Walker and explained I was a news reporter and didn’t usually cover sports. I confessed that I was also a little starstruck by how big the room felt, even if I didn’t necessarily know the people in it. Framed jerseys lined the room with gold trim on walls. The flash from the photographers and lights from the video equipment felt blinding. Autographed baseballs were on display. Small spotlights lit the gold walls of the room. It felt holy, like a church, and I could sense the importance of baseball to my city.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Walker said. He leaned over toward me. He whispered that he came to the conference to see his idol and was a little starstruck himself. I felt relieved, and the embarrassment washed over me. I asked him why he was the only player there.

"I just wanted to see him more than anything," Walker told me and gestured with reverence toward Mazeroski with the row of television cameras focused on his 1960 World Series uniform. "I'm just fortunate to play the same position as someone like him, in the same organization." Walker smiled with his entire face, and I could sense his sheer joy at being in the same room with his idol.

Walker began to open up, ignoring the rest of the press humming around the room and the auctioning of Mazeroski’s memorabilia. Maybe it was our earnest intro to one another, or that he knew what it was like to be the new kid. He took me under his wing for the rest of the press conference. I had full access to him and the rest of the team during batting practice. Other reporters milled around talking to the coaches, but I stood in the red clay at the edge of the bustling field, watching Neil and taking in the enormity of the stadium. The nosebleed seats I always sat in felt so far away. I saw the Pittsburgh city skyline behind the PNC Park marquee and scoreboard, the Rachel Carson bridge, and the river where boaters would congregate during games in hopes of catching a ball. When practice was over, Pirates press officials led me to the coaches’ basement offices, where I interviewed manager Clint Hurdle, who shared Walker’s excitement.

“Everybody's got a favorite team,” he told me. “I grew up in Michigan—the Lions, the Tigers, it would have been like me playing for them. I can't imagine what Neil's going through."

And while this admittedly was not my favorite part—I even had access to the locker room after practice, where I tried to keep my eyes focused on the cubbies. I was not used to this kind of candor.

Working in newspapers afforded me the opportunity to interview and interact with all kinds of people: sports stars, drag queens, state senators, activists, city officials, adult entertainers, celebrities like Punxsutawney Phil, Neil Walker, William Shatner or Kamala Harris, and everyday people dealing with problems. And sometimes the problems were of my own creation; I once walked in wet cement on the way to a tense interview with a senator and had to conduct the entire thing with my shoes cemented to my feet. In the height of Twitter and the Occupy Pittsburgh movement, I once accidentally tweeted that police were “euthanizing protestors,” when I meant to write “alongside protestors” (and yes, I issued a correction, immediately). While my job was about bearing witness—regardless of the scene playing out—it was also about retaining my own humanity and to be able to truly see others.

On that September day at PNC Park, the things I saw stayed with me, including feeling so small on the field in comparison to the size of baseball, the Pirates, and my city. Walker interacted with other Pirates stars Andrew McCutchen and Pedro Alvarez. I watched him practice catching hits at second base. I saw him sign a baseball belonging to six-year-old mega-fan Bradyn Roberts. Walker told me he could relate to Roberts. Even as one of the biggest names in baseball at the time, Walker remained a fan himself, and the luster of the moments he found himself in before such a pivotal game hadn’t worn off. He retained his love of the game despite his rise to fame.

"It's everything I've dreamed of. I've been a Pirates fan since I was seven years old," Walker told me. "To see it as a fan, to be a part of it in the minors and to be here now—I couldn't ask for a better script.”

Neil Walker had a career-high sixteen left-handed home runs in the 2012-2013 season when I met him, tied with Mazeroski’s record from 1966. He ranked fifth among second basemen in the National League in home runs. Walker retired from major league baseball in 2021 after playing for the Phillies. Today, he works on the Pirates broadcast team, offering insights and colorful commentary during games.

As I watched Walker practice that day, I could feel his awe at his situation: the opposite of what I was used to feeling in my work. Constantly trying to prove myself as a reporter and dogging each story had become a way of life during my years in the newspaper business. Laughing felt forbidden, because even though you experienced some whacky encounters, putting your guard down to let humor in might mean you make a mistake. Turns out, I made a huge one anyway, and no one got hurt. In fact, my mistake opened the door to a rich, behind-the-scenes moment, and captured the essence of reporting as storytelling. It was well worth the strike out.

I didn’t walk away with a newfound love of sports but with a profound appreciation of those who make sports their profession. And in my profession, where you often see the worst in people, my time with Neil Walker was a reminder that the best in people still can—and often does—come out.

About the author:

Lauren Daley is a Pittsburgh native and former journalist. She currently works in user experience in upstate New York and slings creative nonfiction and freelance work on the side.