A trip to the ballpark once meant watching baseball and not a whole lot more.
Forbes Field, for example, featured no between-inning fan quizzes, no T-shirt tosses and certainly no Pierogie races.
Times, of course, change.
“I think a lot of teams and leagues realize that a lot of the fan base and a lot of the revenue base is not just diehards of the sport,” Whitehall resident Kevin Hutchinson said. “It’s more of a holistic entertainment experience than just the game.”
He is one of three Baldwin High School alumni spending the 2026 season as part of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Bucco Brigade, the folks who spread good cheer and team spirit at PNC Park and beyond. Hutchinson joins Liz Langer, a fellow 2024 Baldwin graduate, and Michaela Woods, class of ’17, on the squad.
A first-year Brigade member, Hutchinson began his Pirates employment in 2025 as a guest services specialist. He encountered Langer, a friend since middle school, during her initial season with the entertainment crew.
“I saw her at one of the games, when I was working and she was working, and I said, ‘Hey, how do I get involved?’” he recalled. “It looked like they got to do some cool stuff.”
That includes facilitating the fan-favorite escapades of Jalapeño Hannah, Cheese Chester and the rest, making their way toward the finish line at the end of every fifth inning.
For Baldwin Borough resident Langer, one Bucco Brigade activity in particular caught her attention.
“I was at a Pirate game, and I was curious about how to throw T-shirts at the ballpark,” she said.
So she did some research, found an application for the Brigade, filled it out, received an invitation to audition and eventually learned she made the cut.
As a cheerleader since second grade, she brings a well-honed sense of energy and exuberance to Pirates games.
“I knew I didn’t want to keep cheering in college, so I was trying to find a different avenue to kind of do the same thing or find my niche like that,” the University of Pittsburgh junior said. “And it turns out the Bucco Brigade was exactly what I was looking for, and I didn’t even know it.”
Woods, a Baldwin Borough native who works at the Children’s Institute of Pittsburgh with students who have autism, is in her third year on the Brigade, serving as a team leader.
“My mom sent me an application to be a Pierogie, because I’m a very slow runner. So it was just a joke in our family,” she said. “And I saw the Brigade application right below it, and because I’ve been in education for a long time, I felt I had the personality for it.”
She acknowledged that younger fans’ interest extends beyond baseball.
“A lot of the kids aren’t necessarily there to watch the game. They’re there to watch the entertainment. And so any way that we can make the kids smile, laughs are the best. That’s what we’re there for,” Woods said.
During hockey season, she does something similar as part of the Ice Breakers in-game entertainment unit at PPG Paints Arena.
Langer, too, has another sports-related gig. Her current internship is with the Pittsburgh Riverhounds and Riveters men’s and women’s soccer teams, serving as event senior associate.
“For example, we had Pup Night last week,” she said in early June, “and I was in charge of coordinating with all the vendors and making sure all the pups had a spot to go, and kind of helping out with the logistics of that event.”
At Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where he will be a junior, Hutchinson does broadcasting and writing for the school’s Falcon Media Sports Network. Locally, his activities include reporting for Pittsburgh Soccer Now, honing the skills he developed as an award-winning writer for his high school’s Purbalite publication.
Such experiences put him on track toward his desired career of working in sports media. Langer’s goal is sports-related community relations and charity foundation work, while Woods, a Duquesne University graduate, plans to seek a master’s degree in speech-language pathology.
For now, they are enjoying their time with the Bucco Brigade.
“We run around the ballpark the whole game, so you get to hear a lot of snippets of people’s conversations. And it’s amazing, getting to hear people’s stories from way back in the day, when they were kids or had their families there, or just that one foul ball they caught,” Langer said. “That is truly, truly why I love this job, just to be a part of the magic surrounding the Pittsburgh Pirates.”