PITTSBURGH — Paul Skenes doesn’t just make baseballs go fast. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ young ace can make merchandise fly off shelves, too.
Fans began lining up outside PNC Park more than five hours before Saturday’s game between Pittsburgh and Cleveland in hopes of landing a bobblehead featuring the reigning National League Rookie of the Year.
The gates didn’t open until 90 minutes before the first pitch. Lines stretched out in all directions from the park early Saturday afternoon, including one that snaked over the Roberto Clemente Bridge behind center field, which links Pittsburgh’s North Shore to the city’s downtown.
We know how unique today’s Paul Skenes Rookie of the Year bobblehead giveaway is and how popular it is for our fans. We don’t want any fan who attended today’s game to not receive one.
Any fan who scanned into today’s game after the first 20,000 bobbleheads were given away… pic.twitter.com/e1lZNIEJBL
— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) April 19, 2025
Demand grew so great that the club — which has endured its share of public relations issues during the season’s opening weeks — pledged to make sure everyone in the expected sellout crowd who did not receive one will have an opportunity to obtain one.
Team president Travis Williams called interest in the bobblehead “unprecedented,” and in a social media post, the team added that it realized “how popular it is for our fans.”
The promotion also happened to align with Skenes’ fourth start of the season. The top pick in the 2023 amateur draft dropped to 2-2 after allowing two runs over seven innings in a 3-0 loss to the Guardians.
This is hardly the first time an item featuring Skenes drew outsized attention. A one-of-a-kind card featuring Skenes sold for more than $1 million at auction last month.
The card, manufactured by Topps, included a patch of the No. 30 jersey Skenes wore during his big league debut. It generated the kind of buzz typically reserved for iconic collectibles featuring Hall of Famers Honus Wagner, Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey Jr.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
