Chris Mack: Andrew McCutchen, Honorary Yinzer
PITTSBURGH (93-7 The Fan) - It's hard to imagine a guy who will make $14 million this year can truly assimilate as a naturalized, blue collar, dyed-in-the-black & gold wool, Yinzer.
Andrew McCutchen has done it, though.
What about his Player's Tribune piece or discussion with the media at Pirate City would grant such an honor?
What would put him in league with other great, honorary Pittsburghers, and native Yinzers alike?
What vaults a guy from "former center fielder" to "one of us?"
It's simple, really. It's the equivalent of getting down on a knee to propose to someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. (And we know McCutchen can handle that, even under pressure.)
It's openly declaring your love for this City and its people. It's saying, as Cutch did on Friday, "Pittsburgh is my home, it's my wife's home, so regardless of the outcome, we know we're always going to be in Pittsburgh. Our home's always going to be there."
This guy might get dealt to New York or Los Angeles or God knows where and go cash in on a contract in the next few years to the tune of $20+ million per year, and he don't care none, as one of your cousins from the North Side would say.
He's a Pittsburgher. One of us. In the Player's Tribune, when talking about walking to work from his downtown condo, he dropped the word only we are allowed to use as a term of endearment, saying "I'd walk right over the Roberto Clemente Bridge, among my fellow Yinzers."
C'mon. If Jake Arrieta walked over the Clemente Bridge tomorrow and called himself a yinzer while doing it, you'd grab him by that nasty faux-lumberjack beard of his and drag him halfway across Ohio before telling him he could walk the rest of the way back to Chicago.
Cutch says it, and we know he means it. Whether it's because he dreams of being a Pirate until the end, and bringing a World Series title to Pittsburgh, or whether it's because he married into the tribe when he married a Western PA girl, or because he comes from the same hardscrabble background a lot of us do (even if it was in Fort Meade, Fla instead of Aspinwall or Bloomfield or Carrick), or because he simply doesn't take any crap, we can easily identify with him.
Think about your worst day, or in McCutchen's words, "those days you just don't feel right?"
Imagine that you had that just about every day for four months, and the entire world was watching. And then after that stretch, your boss comes to you and tells you a younger guy is more talented than you and can do your job better than you, so you need to accept a demotion. But part of why you didn't do so hot at portions of your job for a while was because your boss wanted you to do it a way that you didn't agree with.
You'd be ticked off, wouldn't you?
But you need the job, and you like the guys you work with, so you bite your tongue, and you do what your boss tells you to do, right?
Is there anything much more blue collar than that? Than perseverance in the face of a harsh reality that's berating you every day with You're not as good as you once were. You'll never be that good again. If you ever want to be half that good again, you're going to have to work your behind off. Good luck, buddy!
So you put your head down, and you go to work. And you hope everything works out for the best.
You're a Pittsburgher. That's what you do.
And that's what Andrew McCutchen is. Whether he's a Pirate for life, as he's said he wants to be, or not. He's a Yinzer.
He's one of us.
