2013 NLDS Comeback vs Cardinals

Lore & Background

Pittsburgh baseball fans in 2013 had been waiting a long time. The Pirates had spent the early part of the decade as a rebuilding club, and by the time they posted a 92-win season and clinched the National League wild card, the city's appetite for October baseball was ravenous. The NLDS matchup with St. Louis—both teams carrying deep postseason pedigrees—felt like the kind of series that would define a generation of fans at PNC Park.

The Cardinals won the first two games at Busch Stadium convincingly enough to make the series feel decided. But the Pirates' clubhouse, led by a core that included Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte, Neil Walker, and a Pedro Alvarez who was hitting with a kind of cold-blooded fury, refused to accept the narrative. Games three and four at PNC Park were tight, physical, and decided by small margins, with the Pirates' pitching staff—A.J. Burnett anchoring the rotation and a bullpen that included a then-young group of relievers—holding the line when it mattered most.

Game five, back in St. Louis, was the one that would be replayed in highlight reels for years. The Pirates hung around, clawed their way back, and ultimately won it on a walk-off hit that sent the visiting crowd into a roar that carried across the Mississippi. For Pittsburgh, it was proof that the 2013 team was not a fluke and that the franchise's long, patient rebuild had produced something genuinely special.

In Their Own Story

The PNC Park lights hummed their low amber buzz over the empty outfield grass. A single fan—just one, a kid in a faded 1979 jersey—sat in the upper deck, chewing a pencil, trying to remember the exact sequence of the at-bats. The Cardinals had been ahead. The Cardinals had always been ahead, it felt like. Two games in St. Louis, the scoreboards glowing red, the crowd in the stands at Busch Stadium already doing the slow celebratory wave. And then the phone call. The text. The walk-off. The kid set the pencil down, pressed his forehead to the cold glass of the railing, and whispered, "They actually did it." Below him, the empty diamond sat quiet under the lights, the bases still chalked, the dust from a thousand feet of sliding and running still faintly suspended in the October air, as if the game had ended only seconds ago and the players were just now walking back into the dugout, still breathing hard, still not quite believing.

Reader's Guide

Game one, Busch Stadium: the Cardinals hit early and often, building a lead the Pirates could never fully close. The Bucs' lineup went down swinging but the scoreboard never flipped. Game two, same ballpark: a tighter affair, but St. Louis edged it out again, and the Pirates' season looked like it was over before the weekend.

Game three, PNC Park: the home crowd, still buzzing from the wild-card win, packed the stands. The Pirates took the lead, the Cardinals threatened, but Pittsburgh's pitching held. The first win of the series landed and the energy in the building shifted from nervous to electric.

Game four, PNC Park: another low-scoring, tension-strung game. The Pirates' bullpen came in with the bases loaded or runners in scoring position and got the outs. The crowd was on its feet before the final out was recorded. Two straight wins. The series was tied.

Game five, Busch Stadium: the walk-off. The Pirates were behind, then tied, then—on a hit that sent the ball into the gap or the stands—the visiting section erupted. The moment is the one. The one that gets retold over Sunday dinners, in barbershops on the Strip, in the parking lot of any sports bar in the city. "Remember that walk-off? Remember how they were down two and just kept swinging?" That's the sentence. That's the whole story in one breath, and it still lands the same way it did in October 2013.

Did You Know?

• The 2013 Pirates were the National League wild card team, meaning they entered the postseason without a division title and were the underdog in both rounds.
• A.J. Burnett, a veteran left-hander in the latter part of his career, became one of the emotional anchors of the Pirates' pitching staff during this stretch of the postseason.
• The Pirates advanced to the 2013 NLCS after the NLDS comeback, where they faced the Cardinals again—a rare back-to-back October matchup between the two clubs.
• Pedro Alvarez's power hitting during the 2013 postseason made him one of the most memorable Pirates bats of that era and a central figure in the team's October narrative.