I have attended a Pittsburgh Pirates playoff game. It’s true.

Watching the Buccos battle the Braves in the NLCS as a young lad, I wonder what future me (now current me) would have said to young Phil, were the two to meet back then, were the topic Pirate baseball, and were the space-time continuum not destroyed by said meeting. It would be one of these things, I imagine:

“Get out while you can.”

“Don’t get too attached.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Wait ’till you see the park the Bucs will play in once they tear this place down.”

“Why didn’t you get any cheese on that soft pretzel? Rookie mistake.”

Now, this isn’t a post about the many, many trials and tribulations of the post-1992 Pittsburgh Pirates. That sad story has been told many times before, and I don’t care to rehash it here.

Nor is this a laundry list of complaints about MLB’s economic structure, which gives large-market teams an unfair advantage and is driving more fans away from the game.

This isn’t even another angry rant about Pirate ownership and management. Lord knows they deserve it, though. Pittsburgh may be a “small-market team,” but the market isn’t that small.

This is a yearning.

Being a Pirate fan, postseason baseball always sneaks up on me. I, like many other Pittsburgh sports fans, have resigned myself to low expectations when it comes to our baseball team.

“Just get us to Steeler training camp. Try to keep our attention until then.” And when we’re feeling crazy, we dream of a .500 season.

But many of us have stopped caring. “They don’t care about us. Why should I care about them?”

I’ve said that myself a few times. But I still care.

Pirate losses still hurt. Even if they’re just little pinches, rather than gut punches or stings…a pinch still hurts. The inevitable outcome of each season only serves to numb both the pain and my overall love of the game.

Right now, I won’t get much sympathy traveling down this road. Pittsburgh sports fans are in no position to complain. The Steelers just won the Super Bowl. The Penguins just won the Stanley Cup. We’re living large.

But when I turned on the TV tonight and switched to the Twins-Yankees game, I still yearned. Baseball in football weather. The crowd’s murmurs turning to roars with each ball that drops into the outfield. Magic in the air. Wouldn’t it be nice?

I usually lose interest in MLB sometime during July or August. Yeah, I turned on that Twins-Yanks game, but I didn’t watch the whole thing. The Penguins were playing, after all.

Baseball isn’t my favorite sport. It probably never would have been, though it didn’t really have much of a chance.

But what’s done is done. Forget about me.

My youngest brother loves baseball. He has never seen a Pirates winning season. I’d like to think that someday, that will change. Maybe he’ll even see the Pirates playing in October.

And hopefully, by then, he’ll still like baseball.