The most sickening sound in PNC Park history, by my highly unofficial reckoning, came on the afternoon of April 22, 2010. Jim Edmonds, in the twilight of his career with the Brewers at the time, launched what felt like the eleventy-billionth home run of the day for the visitors, just over the Clemente Wall. And because the place had emptied out an hour or two earlier, because pretty much everything in those years rang so hollow, anyway, that ball clanked off one of those blue seats out there so loudly, so obnoxiously that it just felt so ... I don't know ... easy, I guess.
The Pirates had been a joke long before that, of course, but that accounted for the runs 14, 15 and 16 of a final tally that, as some of you will ruefully recall, was 20-0.
I wrote that day that it was the lowest point in the franchise's century-and-a-quarter history. And trust me, I was referring as much to that sound as the score.
Flash forward to Wednesday night and the fourth inning of the Pirates' National League wild card game with the Giants.
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