For the love of baseball
Cranberry native living abroad traveled more than 5,000 miles to see the Pirates
BRADENTON, Fla. — Justin Loy remembers playing baseball as a kid in Cranberry and peering through the chain-link fence to see his father, David, who would race home from his job as a mortgage banker at Mellon Bank to attend every one of his son’s games — suit still on, tie loosened at the neck.
When Justin was 10, David surprised his son with tickets to a Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce luncheon, where the two dined with several members of the Pirates and Justin got a picture with Jim Leyland, who was about to begin his tenure as Pittsburgh’s manager.
Those are just two of the memories that have been floating through Justin Loy’s head as he traveled more than 5,000 miles this week with his family from their adopted home in the Czech Republic to see his favorite baseball team in Bradenton, a trip that honors the father-son bond he and David had through the Pirates.
“I’ll never forget what my dad did for me, knowing how much I love baseball,” Justin Loy, 43, said. “Now, I get to do that for my kids.”
Seeing the Pirates is something Justin Loy cherishes on a personal level, but it’s become much more than that for him and his family.
It has been a way for him to connect with his 14-year-old son, Jonah, as the two made a fatherson trip to the United States to see the Pirates three years ago. But it has also provided an opportunity for Justin and Andra Loy, who’ve lived in Europe for nearly two decades now, to show their kids a little slice of America.
On Wednesday, as the Pirates welcomed the Boston Red Sox to LECOM Park for a spring training game that was meaningless to most everyone else, Justin, Jonah and his sister, Anna, soaked it all in. They got Domino’s pizza, hot dogs and popcorn — simple pleasures that are tough to find back home.
They staked out a spot for autographs and wound up meeting Chris Archer, Steven Brault, Ke’Bryan Hayes and Oneil Cruz, joking with the affable Brault that he’d probably fit in well over in Europe.
It was a similar experience to three years ago, when Justin and Jonah met Josh Bell and still gush over their interaction with former Pirates outfielder Austin Meadows.
“We don’t get to do that sort of stuff regularly,” Justin said.
The decision to wrap a family trip around the Pirates started by design. David Loy died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma when Justin was 19 and was first diagnosed with cancer around the age of 40. So when Justin reached that milestone, he and Andra thought a fatherson trip to see the Pirates would be the perfect way to honor Justin’s dad.
“We tried to create that love of the Pirates in the best way possible,” Justin Loy said. “And to make something good out of my dad passing away.”
According to a May 2016 study prepared by Research Data Services, Inc. for the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Convention Bureau — the most recent set of data available — 103,742 fans attended the Pirates’ 15 home spring training games that year. Of the non-Manatee County attendees, 27.8% came from other Florida counties, 71.3% came from other states, including 33.4% from Pennsylvania, and just 0.9% came to Bradenton from other countries.
Technically, this trip is a family vacation for the Loys, whose kids are on spring break. The group spent the first three days of their trip at Walt Disney World, and they headed to Pirate City on Thursday to see more baseball before flying home Friday.
Although Justin Loy grew up north of Pittsburgh, he moved to Massachusetts because of David’s job in 1986 and to the Czech Republic 18 years ago to pursue a teaching job.
It was supposed to be only a one-year thing, Justin said, but he started to really like the people and the place. A couple of years later, he met Andra, an Oklahoma native pursuing the same sort of dream. They wound up getting married and starting a family.
Justin Loy watches the Pirates as much as he can back home. It’s a seven-hour time difference, so a 7:05 p.m. game doesn’t start until 2 in the morning. Justin and Jonah, who subscribe to MLB.TV online, will catch those via highlights or condensed games. It becomes a family event when the Pirates play during the day — prime-time viewing in Europe.
Justin Loy has been obsessed with baseball for as long as he can remember. After Syd Thrift was fired as Pirates general manager in 1986, Justin submitted a job application to replace him. Justin was 10. His grandparents served as his references. David encouraged Justin to do it. Justin said he actually got a reply letter, too, inviting him to a game.
“Stuff like that makes a fan for life,” Justin said.
Before the 2008 Beijing
Games, there was an Olympic baseball tournament in the Czech Republic where Justin said he met major league pitchers Stephen Strasburg and Mike Leake and chatted with an assistant general manager for Team USA. He’s currently reading a baseball book by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik called “The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players.”
“I don’t know what it is,” Justin said. “I’ve just always loved baseball.”
Picking spring training over Pittsburgh also was intentional, Justin said. While they love PNC Park, what attracted them here was the sunshine, the ability to interact with players and soak in what Justin called “a relaxed atmosphere.”
“It’s a different experience,” Jonah said. “It’s refreshing.”
If the Loys ever move back to America, Justin would almost assuredly purchase season tickets, he said. In the meantime, there will be more trips to Bradenton or Pittsburgh to see the team they love, regardless of whether the price tag could easily exceed $6,000.
“We don’t get the opportunities very often to see the Pirates,” Justin said. “You cherish those times where you can touch baseball again, and you do what you can to stoke the flame. I know my son and I have a common bond together because of it. There’s just something rich about that, about baseball.”