If you're a student who likes to figure Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Zach Duke's ERA, find infielder Jose Castillo's country on a map or pick out the metaphor in announcer Bob Walk's commentary, then the Kittanning Junior High School has something for you.
An "Education Day at the Ballpark" pilot program, the first of its kind for the Pirates organization, is being developed by administrators and teachers at the Armstrong District school.
Duke visited there Thursday to sign autographs, talk about his fastball and help promote a plan to use PNC Park for educational purposes.
"Baseball is all about numbers, averages, wins and losses. It seems like everything in baseball relates to a number," Duke said. "Maybe they can be there when I'm pitching and do a ground ball to fly ball ratio. Hopefully I'll have a lot of ground balls in the game and I can get some good numbers off of them."
Kittanning resident Greg Toth, a sales manager for Great American Opportunities, an organization that does fundraising for schools, suggested the promotion. Toth works with the Pirates and decided to bring the Pirates and the school together.
Kittanning Junior High School Principal Michael Cominos said the idea is to have some school projects associated with baseball that are geared to the state education standards. Field trips are not conducted by the district unless they are curriculum based, he said.
"We want to have an educational reason to go," Cominos said. "We're trying to develop ideas using the ballpark, the broadcast of the game and the game itself to identify things with math, science, social studies, music and health and physical education.
"Anytime we can put our name on something like this and develop something for our kids and utilize a resource like the Pirates and PNC Park, were going to take advantage of that."
Cominos said the curriculum might have students using math formulas of trajectories and speed to determine the distance of a homerun or doing something for reading class such as identifying similes and metaphors used by the announcers.
"For social studies or languages -- a lot of players are from outside the U.S.," Cominos said. "What a perfect opportunity to explore Central America or Asia. We even have a player from Canada, Jason Bay."
Jim Popovich, Pirates senior account executive, wants the educators to design the program, but offered his ideas.
"This is our first time trying to do something like this," Popovich said. "Kids really enjoy the game of baseball, and they can learn something at the same time."
"We could incorporate the scoreboard," he added. "What if Freddy Sanchez goes 2-for-3 that day⢠What was his average and what is it now?"
Terri Smith, manager of premium sales for the Pirates, thinks the program will benefit the team and the students.
"We'll be able to bring down a lot of kids for a day game when we don't draw large crowds and get them interested in baseball," Smith said. "They'll have their lessons for the day and they'll be able to enjoy a baseball game."
