The long way home

The best story in sports last night was not Jimmy Butler wrestling the  top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks to the ground and taking their season away, or the upstart Seattle Kraken beating the Colorado Avalanche in the Avalanche's barn to take a 3-2 series lead, or even the Golden State Warriors doing Golden State things to steal a win on the road in their nail-biting playoff series with Sacramento.

It was a pinch-hitter striking out in Pittsburgh.

("Oh for God's sake. Not your stupid Pirates AGAIN!" you just said)

Yes, but ... not really.

Not really, because this could have happened anywhere in baseball, except for the fact it never does. What happened was, a career minor-leaguer named Drew Maggi pinch-hit for Andrew McCutchen in the eighth inning of the Cruds' 8-1 shellacking of the Dodgers, and he got ... a standing ovation.

Heck, the ump even let him soak it in.

This is because that one at-bat was the last stop on a long journey for Maggi, who'll turn 34 years old next month. He began playing professional baseball in 2010 after the Pirates drafted him in the 15th round out of Arizona State, and a lot of bus rides in a lot of places have happened for Maggi in the 13 minor-league summers and 1,155 minor-league games since.

He's been a Lehigh Valley IronPig. A St. Paul Saint. An Arkansas Traveler and a Tulsa Driller and an Oklahoma City Dodger and, until he got the Call this week, an Altoona Curve. He's been in the bushes for the Pirates and the Angels and the Dodgers and the Twins and the Phillies, and the Pirates again.

He got called up once by the Twins but never played. Got an invite from the Indians in 2018 but was immediately dumped after testing positive for amphetamines and drawing a 50-game suspension -- something of a joke considering how many major-leaguers in the '60s, '70s and '80s used to gobble what they called "greenies" like M&Ms.  

All of it culminated in last night, when he stepped to the plate in PNC Park and took his swings in a major-league game for the first time ever.

Yeah, he struck out. But after 13 years and almost 4,500 plate appearances in the minors, plate appearance No. 1 in the majors will undoubtedly be the plate appearance he'll always remember.

"Anything is possible. Never give up," he said when it was done. "If you love something, go for it."

Even if the way home is the long way.