Column: The sickening sound of silence

Brandon Crawford crosses home after his fourth-inning grand slam Wednesday at PNC Park. — GETTY

DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS

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.

Milwaukee 20, Pittsburgh 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.

Edinson Volquez had loaded the bases with nobody out for Brandon Crawford, San Francisco’s .246-hitting shortstop. But he was ahead, 1-2, and Russell Martin, always confident he can handle any pitch in any situation, put down two fingers for the curve.

Which didn’t really curve.

“It was an OK pitch,” Volquez would say later, unconvincingly.

“Ideally, you’d bury that a couple inches lower, and I’d have to dig it out,” Martin said. “But man, give their guy credit: The book on him is that he doesn’t usually hit that pitch even where it went. And he put one swing on it, kind of plopped it up into the air …”

You know the rest.

Click it once to watch. But then, if you can stand it, click again to listen.

Listen to the roar that preceded the pitch, the maniacal din that engulfed the stadium in that moment from the stadium-record crowd of 40,629 that had stuffed every seat, every standing space, every inch of rotunda.

Then listen to what followed.

You’ll have to trust me and everyone else who was in here, the TV audio doesn’t do justice to the utter silence that followed. Not the ball landing over the Clemente Wall, not far from where Edmonds’ shot hit. But the ball leaving the bat.

“Dead silent,” Neil Walker recalled.

As if time had stood still.

As if everyone knew in that moment that not even this remarkably resilient team that had authored 41 comebacks in the regular season would bounce back from this.

Not after that one swing. And certainly not after seeing what had already been seen of Madison Bumgarner, the one pitcher San Francisco would need to take this one-game series.

By evening’s end, the Giants prevailed, 8-0, and everything else went poof. ‘Buctober’ lasted 23 hours, 21 minutes. All of that sizzling September, all the raised expectations, all that offense that was among the league’s most efficient, all of it, just popped into the sky like a failed firework.

“I can’t believe it’s just over,” Justin Wilson said in the mostly quiet clubhouse before immediately correcting himself. “I mean, I can. It’s baseball. It’s one game. Anything can happen.”

Especially when starting pitching steals the stage, as it did both ways here: Bumgarner was brilliant, hurling a shutout while striking out 10, conceding only four singles and a walk and throwing all but 30 of his 109 pitches for strikes. He was, to borrow Walker’s words, “doing whatever he wanted out there.” And Volquez was anything but his equal, charged with five runs on five hits, three walks and the one great gaffe to Crawford.

That’s about it, too.

Fuss over Clint Hurdle’s peculiar use of relievers, if you will. It’s certainly justified. He had no business leaving Tony Watson fresh in the pen in an elimination, nor saving Mark Melancon for a ninth inning that was tantamount to mopup duty.

Complain about the Pirates’ bats, too, if that makes you feel better. Dominant as Bumgarner was, it still would have been welcome to see someone other than Josh Harrison produce a couple knocks. Andrew McCutchen and Walker going a combined 0 for 7 won’t quell any continuing criticism of their postseason work.

But the real culprit here is the number one. One swing, one pitcher, one game.

The hot topic all week, of course, was the Pirates’ decision to go with Gerrit Cole in their regular-season finale Sunday in Cincinnati. Their motivation was clear: They wanted to force a tiebreaker Monday in St. Louis and win the Central Division, thus avoiding this one-and-done altogether. They fell short, thanks to Johnny Cueto’s arm and bat.

That topic might go white-hot this week, given that Cole looked infinitely better Sunday than Volquez did Wednesday, but it should be known that the clubhouse supported the decision that much more in light of this wild-card failure, as I find out in canvassing the place with that singular question.

Understand that much: It wasn’t just Hurdle’s decision to go with Cole against the Reds, though he correctly took full responsibility. The players wanted it. You just heard Martin describe that meeting in detail. They felt it was important to go for the division, in large part so they’d at least get a best-of-five out of the playoffs.

Not this.

I went to Cole, too, and he was no less defiant on this count: “I think it speaks to who we are and what we’re trying to do as an organization. Our ultimate goal is to win the World Series, and we wanted to set ourselves up for it the we felt was best. We went for it. You can’t take that away from us. We went for it.”

I won’t take that away. I expressed reservations Saturday night about going with Cole, mostly because the Pirates didn’t have much available for the potential tiebreaker in St. Louis. But I won’t begrudge the manager, the coaches, the players for believing in themselves enough to go for it. We’ll never know now what might have happened had they beaten Cueto.

But all that said, Bumgarner still did his thing, and it would have been impossible for any pitcher on the Pirates — Cole, Liriano or a prime-time Vernon Law, Bob Friend or John Candelaria — to outduel a guy putting up nine zeroes like he was sticking thumbtacks.

“The one thing Bumgarner did exceptionally well was use all his pitches,” Hurdle said, in a theme echoed emphatically by his players. “It was a different game that he pitched, a different game than we’d seen scouted. He was able to get his fastball in tight with the right-handers. He was able to spin the ball late, dump it late for chase. Used some changeups early after showing guys his fastball there in earlier at-bats. He was able to elevate. I mean, he had it going on.”

Best of three, maybe the Pirates push through. As it is, it’s one and done.

The evening had its moments. The pregame ovation for Hurdle’s introduction brought a louder cheer with each limp to the end of the line. Kent Tekulve’s ceremonial first pitch, fresh off a heart transplant, was moving beyond words. And the crowd’s spontaneous “RE-SIGN RUSS!” chant with his final at-bat, ignited by a hardy few in the upper deck and soon viral, undoubtedly resonated deeply with a front office that is very much feeling the pressure to do exactly that.

The season, too, had its moments and achievements and highlights and legitimate reasons to look to the future with eyes wide open. Keeping Martin, Volquez, even Francisco Liriano would be ideal. But with or without them, there’s a superlative outfield trio that, don’t forget, still includes Gregory Polanco. There’s everything you’d want in the infield except a first baseman, and it’s possible that will be Pedro Alvarez. The starting pitching and bullpen have plenty enough, too.

But the one goal for 2015, and you can mark it down already, will be avoiding this one game.

“We’re all about first place, about winning the division,” Melancon was saying. “We know what this feels like right now. It doesn’t feel right.”

Yeah. Too quiet.