So that's what PNC Park looks like when it's full

Like I said yesterday, I went to the Pearl Jam/Rolling Stones concert at PNC last night. It was, quite simply, amazing. Since this is a baseball blog I won't spend a whole lot of time in the details of the concert itself (you can find a good account of that here). From a baseball fan's point of view, well, first off, resodding the field last fall for the All-Star game seems pretty silly now because there's no way that the mammoth stage (which took something like 80 semi-trucks to construct) didn't do some massive damage to the outfield. The stage was centerfield. It wasn't in centerfield, it WAS centerfield, all of it. They also put what appeared to be a couple thousand fans into it and it had a video screen that was probably twice the size of the Jumbotron up. Bottom line, the thing wasn't light. The PG had a picture of it, but for some reason that link is broken. If it comes back up I'll link to it. Watching Mick Jagger prance, strut, and run around the gigantic stage for 2 hours lead my uncle, my dad, and I to the only logical conclusion. The 62-year old man covers more ground in centerfield than anyone that's played center for us this year except maybe Duffy (maybe).

Interestingly enough, in the hour+ intermission between Pearl Jam and the Stones, you could hear conversations in the crowd (which we estimated at 40,000+, the only empty seats were the bleachers and centerfield and parts of rightfield, for the obvious reason of being behind the stage, and some seats along the first and third base line that were behind giant speaker towers, there were at least 7,000 people on the field and maybe a thousand more on the stage itself) about how this was the fullest they'd ever seen PNC. When the Stones took the stage and the opening chords of Start Me Up ripped into the air you could actually feel the grandstand shaking (at least we could in section 329). After the concert and the encore ended the whole crowd poured out on to Federal Street at once giving off what was a downright giddy atmosphere from what they had just seen. I'd kind of like to think that it's what PNC Park would be like if the Buccos ever won a pennant or a World Series. Then again, I don't know when we'll get to make the comparison.