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
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