This weekend, the Pirates invited their season ticket holders to PNC Park for a special shopping event.  The Pirates home clubhouse would be transformed into a storefront, with jerseys, bats, etc being sold.

After sitting in traffic for about twenty minutes, I finally reached the park.

I decided to park near the right field gate, so I could walk along the Riverwalk outside of the stadium.

The Pirates had decked the exterior of PNC park with Christmas decorations.

They were all authenticated, from various “historic” games, such as balls from Brian Bixler’s first major league hit game, and balls from Nate McLouth’s 19th game of his hitting street.

The
y were $20 a piece.   The only balls I were interested in were ones with the special opening day stamp on them.  I wasn’t going to pay $20 or $25 though, so I just moved on.

I eventually made my way to the batting practice hats.
They were reasonably priced at $15.  Since my batting practice cap that I had worn throughout the 2009 season was well worn, I decided to get a new one to welcome the 2010 season.  The design is slightly different from the old version with the red above the ears being replaced with black.  The Pirates introduced the new BP caps at the beginning of 2009, but I held off on buying one since I had just got a BP hat at the end of the 2008 season (thanks to Ian Snell).

Having seen pretty much everything there was to see, I left after purchasing the hat.  I made not make it back into Pittsburgh until April 5th, unless there is another season ticket holder event.

Later that night Pittsburgh was struck by the northermost edge of the blizzard of 2009.  It made my every-other-night 3 mile run rather trecherous.

The next morning, there was five inches of snow , making my last minute Christmas shopping commute equally trecherous.