Andrew McCutchen Is Back Where He Belongs

The clubhouse is in a good mood during my early-May visit, because McCutchen and the Pirates are in first place. That’s notable for a multitude of reasons: for one, the team was projected to be terrible, and the players aren’t blind to that preseason chatter. “We knew where we were the last couple of years,” pitcher Wil Crowe says. “When a guy like that comes back, he doesn’t want to come back and be on a bad team! When he bought in, it gave us a real feeling of, ‘We’re going to go after this thing.’” McCutchen has never played for a team that’s won its division. Each of his postseason visits—three for the Pirates and one for the Yankees—came with Wild Card teams. 

I bring as much up on our drive to PNC Park. He’s lived a very full baseball life, but there’s also a jarring list of things he’s never done. Outside of never finishing a season in first place, McCutchen hasn’t played in a World Series, either. For that matter, he’s never even played in a League Championship Series, or hit a home run in any of his 53 postseason plate appearances. He’s never gotten one of the $100 million contracts that have been handed out left and right to other players during his career. He explains that he doesn’t really worry about all that. 

“I try to tell this to the average fan and they think I’m crazy—you play this game to ultimately win a championship. But at the end of the day, what is that trophy, really? It’s a hunk of freaking metal, right?” McCutchen laughs, referencing an infamous quote from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. “It’s a ring and a celebration for however long, and then the next year comes and it’s, ‘Do it again!’ If you really look at the grand scheme of things, you’re holding a piece of metal. If we win, it’d be great. But it doesn’t mean a lot to me, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s like, yeah, cool. I’m not losing sleep. At one point in my life, maybe I would have, but now I think whatever happens happens.” 

The Pirates have done an admirable job of treading water since their hot start, but it seems unlikely that they’ll stay in the race all season. If they’re still competitive by, say, the trade deadline, though, that’s a huge win for a team well ahead of schedule. “I was on the Brewers, like, this team is sneaky good!” McCutchen says of watching the Pirates from the other dugout. “People were like, ‘Uhh, they’re losing 100 games. They’re the Pirates.’ The team was good—I just don’t think they knew they were good. I hope we can win here. We had a great month of April and then hit a little bit of a dry spell. It’s baseball. Whatever. We’ll be good, bruh. It’s been fun so far!” 

Those are his last words before jumping out of the truck and guiding me inside the stadium. There are regal photos of him on the wall. He receives friendly greetings from stadium staff, many of whom were there during Cutch’s first stint in black and gold. He walks by a palette of Dasani bottled water and laughs about how that’s the stuff they put in the road team’s clubhouse—something he hated when he came to Pittsburgh as a visiting player. 

On the final game of the homestand, I treat myself to a stroll around PNC Park, which is firmly in the conversation for best stadium in America. It’s an absolutely gorgeous day on the banks of the Allegheny River, and as I grab a hot dog and settle into an unoccupied seat for an inning, Cutch cranks a home run. This triggers a pitching change, at which point the DJ puts on “Dang!” by Mac Miller, another untouchable figure in this city. It’s a perfect little slice of life in Pittsburgh—a place that just makes a little more sense when Andrew McCutchen is here, his presence as conspicuous as an air horn blaring down the interstate.