Aren't Our Redlegs Fabulous?

America's Team talks (and for now walks) the walk

*

*

Get a load of these guys.

Struttin’ ‘round the stockyards of KC, wearin’ the metaphorical 10-gallon hats, actin’ like Abner Doubleday was a junior partner in their sporting enterprise. Can we tell you who we are? Damned straight we can.

“America’s Team,’’ said pitcher Andrew Abbott, who has been an America’s Teamer for all of 10 days.

“We’re America’s Team,’’ said shortstop Matt McLain, a grizzled MLB vet since May 15.

That’d be. . . who again?

The New York Yankees? The Cubs, the Packers, Google? Don’t the Dallas Cowboys own the patent on America’s Team? Evidently not. Evidently, the Cincinnati Reds are Our Team. God bless the Cincinnati Reds. Stand beside them. Guide them.

“We’ve known what we’ve had all year, dating back to spring training,” TJ Friedl told the media Wednesday night. “We knew the potential we had in this clubhouse.”

Well, I’ll be.

The ‘23 Reds are still collectively young enough not to know what they don’t know, and that’s a good and possibly powerful thing. What the mind believes, the body achieves, and all that.

Happy KC baseball fans attend a Royals game

*

Just because the Reds’ 5-games-and-counting winning streak has happened against two last-place teams who are collectively 47 games under .500 is no reason our boys shouldn’t gaze lovingly in the mirror. You play who’s on the schedule.

They win with unfortunate starting pitching, they win with warning-track power. They haven’t been this close to .500 (1-game under) since April 12. . . 2022. To be fair, these Reds run wild, have a very good bullpen (back end, anyway) and save their great at-bats for when games are on the line. They deserve their 34-35 record.

What do you make of America’s Team being so openly and lovingly. . . confident?

I’m a little flummoxed. I mean, on the one hand, what the hell. If this helps the players win ballgames, they can change clothes in phone booths* and whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy down Vine Street if they want.

“Act like you’ve been there before’’ is a wonderful saying. But nobody uses it anymore.

* Superman did that, children.

Howevuh. . .

This new Look at Us stuff. This surging wave of — what? — confidence, innocence, narcissism, flexing — seems a little Out There for a team that is bottom-line OK. Average. Middling, at least for the moment.

You have to earn the hero suit, right?

The bona fides precede the big talk. Or maybe that’s just the OG way to look at it.

Even the Bengals kept their confidence on a leash, all the way to KC last January, where the Burrowheads announced their presence in Arrowhead, and promptly lost.

The Reds have decided the Reds are America’s Team. OK. Cool.

This could have wider implications.

Is the Republic of Cincinnati “America’s City’’?

Why do you call us a Republic, Doc?

Because sequestered down in deep lower lefthand corner of the state as we are, we don’t readily identify with the rest of Ohio. What do we have in common with Cleveland, other than the citizens of each burg send their tax dollars to Columbus? We don’t have much to do with Columbus, either.

We are the most geographically diverse place in the state, excepting arguably the southeast. We have more in common with Louisville than with Toledo. Isn’t Toledo in southeastern Michigan?

Cleveland loves the Buckeyes. We have our own quasi-ams to cheer for. Cleveland is an Eastern city, Columbus is Midwestern. We’re Southern. Cleveland leans liberal. Leans? It damned near falls over. We do not. Columbus leans whichever way the political winds blow.

So, yeah. The Republic of Cincinnati.

Enquirer

*

America’s City filled with America’s Citizens, loving America’s Team. Why not?

We here in the Republic are sturdy folks, loyal to our town, maybe even a little defensive about it. We’re mostly polite and welcoming, we go to work each day, we don’t expect handouts, we quietly assume our superiority and if you don’t like that, well, there’s the river, hop on a boat.

We love our beer. That’s important when a town seeks to be America’s quintessence.

But there is this:

The best teams are emblematic of the cities they represent. Pittsburgh is the Steelers. Dallas is the Cowboys. Screwed-up DC deserved Danny Snyder for two screwed-up decades.

Normally, a presumptuous, arrogant and self-applauding description such as America’s Team belongs to Dallas. Dallas brags because bragging is what Texans do. Dallas has nothing much else to brag about, except maybe great shopping malls.

Cincinnati? Cincinnati doesn’t do that. Modesty has always been the way.

Is that changing? Are we ready for all this youthful swag?

We’ve seen Joe Burrow’s big confidence envelop the Bengals, from the corner office down. We’d call Saint Joe cocky, except he delivers on his cockiness. Burrow practically screams self-assurance. His mates follow his lead.

In one hellacious fortnight, Elly De La Cruz has boogaloo-ed in the footlights. Deion did that, but his time here was brief and no one ever identified Prime as One of Us. It’s safe to say we’ve not seen a debut quite as amusingly brazen as the one offered by The World’s Fastest Man these past couple weeks.

(Who, for perspective’s sake, has gone 0 for his last 12 and K’d 15 times in 40 big-league plate appearances.)

So?

History might look at this little window of Reds history as the start of something monumental, and wholly American in the Great Again sense of the word. Or history might flick it off its lapel, like lint. Being America’s Team in America’s Town is no easy task. I’m not sure we want that designation.

Enjoy the moment. It’s all we know for sure.

Now, then. . .

PROGRAMMING ANNOUNCEMENT. . . I’ve got another Hemingway in the wings for tomorrow, then we’re off to Tuscany and the Italian Riviera. (Aren’t we special?) A reminder that I’ve scheduled 10 or so Greatest Hits posts in my absence. They’ll appear in your inbox same as always. Maybe you read ‘em the first time, maybe not.

Meantime, I’ll take notes on my overall fabulous-ness and relay them upon my return.

Ciao, Mob.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Elvin Bishop didn’t do much that was successful commercially. This one is a hoot, an extended boogie that holds up well through all its seven minutes. What are some of your favorite tunes that were too long for AM radio back in the day?

I’m thinking Layla, for one. Let It Rain, definitely. Free Bird, Stairway to Heaven. Youse get the idea.