I'll say it again, if only to reinforce the point with new information, this isn't going to go away.

Morning to you.

Good Thursday morning on Dan Kovach,ich, D.K. Pittsburgh Sports.

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Last night at PPG Paints Arena, a Pat McAfee of ESPN, local dude from Plumborough, had an event

that, I'll be honest with you, I had no idea what it was supposed to be.

But it was basically the equivalent of a talk show playing out on a stage in an arena.

Sold out almost instantly 13,000 people there.

And he invited, among others, Ben Rothlisberger, Sidney Crosby, Yvgeny Malkin, Chris LaTang, and Paul Skeens.

Skeens gets up on the stage, gets a big roar from the crowd.

Really cool, really cool.

For somebody who's new to us, both as a ball player and as a person, wonderful to have

that moment.

It's different than cheering him going on to the mound when he's all, you know, super intense and getting ready to strike people out. This is a lot less formal to say the least. And you could tell he appreciated it. And then, and then, McAfee and Skeen's are standing in front of this long, extended stage they had.

Everything kind of goes silent for a moment, which if McAfee was hoping to avoid an uncomfortable situation was a mistake on his part, because that crowd broke into the loudest, longest, most animated, sell-the-team chant yet, including even

what was heard at the home opener last Friday.

And it took McAfee, you could tell like about an extra second and a half to figure out what

was going on, at which point he said a

bad word and then went, oh no, because he realized that they're doing this with Skeen's standing

...