I forgot you are closer to my age than Sam’s. You would remember him. I didn’t know them well, stayed in touch with Janie for several years. She was in grad school at Uk the last I knew.
I always tell people I fell in love with White Castles in utero. Born in Louisville while Dad finished school. Mom worked and had young children.
That road would also be the US 68 buffalo trail highway. Furay would certainly represent the country and folk input segment of Buffalo Springfield and which the KY Bluegrass meadow was literally and historically a pastural buffalo spring field, what with all the inherent salt lick features. But apparently they named the band from Buffalo-Springfield road roller equipment that had been parked outside where the band lived on the West Coast
Your Cincinnati Reds have stolen exactly 1 base so far this season, that by Jonny India, one of four MLB outfits to have achieved this lofty level of derring-do. I'm not sure if Stephenson and staff have thrown out anyone yet? First week of the season appears steals and attempts have sorta doubled from last season but still not above the numbers we used to see in the last century
Say hey, Reds score 1 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th for a 6-4 win! Philles 1/1 SB and the Reds notch #2 on their season SB total with also another CS to boot
Then you'll get the same people blasting Bell for using relievers in the one inning/max effort non 9th inning only closer paradigm and not sticking with them over multiple innings ... blasting him for sticking with his closing hammer Diaz on 5 days rest striking out the 1-2-3 on 14 pitches in the 8th and how stupid he was for allowing Diaz back and blowing up in the 9th ... or not saving Diaz for only the 9th
Your humility belies your ability, Sam. You turned in a great Hemingway. Won't Back Down is a natural for situational ballpark music. I'd nominate Summer Wind by Sinatra for 7th inning stretch music. Maybe better suited to an east coast team. But I think it would sound great on a summer Saturday night at any ballpark.
Sam, Enjoyed your raptures on Cinci's beautiful sports memories. Let's hope generations can keep them going.
First song I heard in Cinci on a visit in the 1970's was Old Black Water, Doobie Brothers, when I saw the Ohio River rolling for the first time. Back then, it was rumored you shouldn't throw a match on it or it would most likely light up.
Nice effort Sam. After you guest Hemingway it really gives you a greater appreciation for Doc's talents. I found it very humbling and thought he makes it seem really easy. It aint easy....
Excellent Hemingway, Sam. Love hearing from a young one out in the trenches helping raise the young. I used to enjoy driving back and forth from Highland Heights to Frankfort on 27/62. Once had to wait for a group of wild turkeys to get out of the road in southern Campbell County. All twenty miles of Pendleton followed by all twenty miles of Harrison. I guess you coached Mr. Kentucky basketball Dontae Allen whose name is on a road sign. I hope he had fun again when he left UK. The other road sign I enjoyed was for Philip Sparks (think that's right), Nobel prize winner for chemistry.
Casual Reds fan, tolerate football. My younger cousin married a Michigan girl. She dresses the kids for some of the games. I like the helmets.
Come back whenever you can spare the time. Well done.
That's interesting you'd travel 27 like that, Kat. The other way on 62 is the shortest (and definitely most windey and harrowing) way from Lexington to my hometown. You and Sam have probably seen my Dad's dump trucks through the years he used to park and commute to hauling from Butler quarry parked across from the little diner just south of the flashing light
Sometimes I would take that route because of storms. Semis have a hard time on 75 in high winds. Protecting my Elantra was high priority. The new bypass around Cynthiana removes the charm of downtown. I’m sure I have seen those trucks. I’ve been in central KY almost 15 years now. Sold my property in 21.
The family business hauled water locally & cattle up 27 from the Sunrise entry point to Cincinnati stockyards from Robertson/Bracken counties and until '7o coal up from Manchester with racked flatbed trucks that we'd resale from a yard with truck scales like a very small Clay-Ingels with also sand, river gravel, concrete blocks, fertilizer etc. My Dad started there at Butler with a single axle dump truck after an apparent '7o collapse in the cattle market around then and they got out of the coal business then too. I literally have left tons of piles of rocks that little single split axle C5o dumper could uniquely access all around the I-75/275 spaghetti junction from driving the #o1 truck my first summer home from college in '76. Latonia racetrack about every 2 weeks would call up for that smallest truck they had to spread 11-12 tons of ag lime onto and into their track because I guess they figured it made the least compaction
Almost all the old KY state highways were originally preexisting buffalo traces that more take hilltop and valley cowpath like meandering terrain tracks of least resistance through most of the state. 27 there however is/was a straight old state highway because the British Army in the frontier was all hot & heavy to mount that siege of Bryan's Station where those Boone girls you were talking about I believe were at the time and cut through the wilderness which led to the ambush that was the Battle of Blue Licks where Israel and their cousin Thomas were killed
Here's my route suggestion. Go take the Augusta Ferry (in Masters Tribute) to KY and down through Germantown (my Hitt ancestry) and backroads to totally tour all around my Mt Olivet (pop < 5oo, no stoplights) Robertson County seat hometown (won't take long) and then east on 62 through Sardis and up 62 by way of Shannon (my Maryland Mullikin ancestors' homestead ca 179o) back into Maysville entering by old 68 winding Buffalo trail rd by the now haunted Hayswood Hospital birthplace. If you're at the flashing 4way in Mt Olivet and drop down onto Court Street at the bottom of the hill there still should be a big gravity water hose there where my Dad ripped his finger off when he hooked his wedding band on a piece of angle iron jumping down off the water truck one evening. Batman with a dump truck was back at Butler driving the #o2 truck the very next day too
There's another day trip or 2 that would incorporate a trip on 616 first up to Abigail to where Insko Rd marks what I think is the first homestead at the Bracken/Mason/Robertson tri-County confluence then reverse and to the other end of 616 (past Bee Lick rd from MtO and then Bee Lick lane where we lived) and swing south to Blue Licks with a side to the Johnson creek covered bridge and/or a drive by of the old Woodie Fryman farm on the Ewing rd off 68 in a big convoluted loop that you could circle back around past the covered bridge to come up past Sardis on 62 and come out on 68 at May's Lick if you really wanted to get lost... we grew up riding our bikes all over those places as kids. The old Insko Trucking HQ (my GPs' original home) is about a mile toward Blue Licks on 165 west (technically south) from Mt Olivet on the left, there would be a wide gravel pull off lot opposite a rickety barn should still be there (this would be where my GF's mother was born in the family farm old house).... If you pass a carlot on the right you just passed it a little ways back so turn around 😆
This TML was clearly written by the artificial intelligence of ChatGPT. How do I know this? Since I was born, I was taught that Michigan fans could only communicate with the modern world by flinging their feces at an alphabet board. Since I detect no odor on my iPad, this isn’t that. This is nicely done and coherent. Coherent to a Michigan fan means two people who get an early inheritance from the same uncle in Ohio…co-herents…like my two numbskull nephews from Ann Arbor said to me.
Congratulations to the person that prompted the ChatGPT to entertain us today. I enjoyed the writing.
Will forever be a Reds fan but I’ve also wondered how the franchise has been able to get so much mileage out of an era nearly 50 years old. Good call out
Sam, let me congratulate you on a job well done. And while I can’t argue with you on really any point you made regarding the Reds, Bengals and Cincy sports in general, I do have some thought. Being a babe of 38, you weren’t EVEN around for the last crowning moment in Cincy sports, the 1990 miracle “wire to wire” year and that being said, IMO, you and your generation are justifiably jaded.
I, on the other hand, am a certifiable OG. I will turn74 this June. I’m a born Cincinnatian who only lived there until I was 9. My life was lived mostly in the Dayton area. But, I did come back to go to and graduate from UC. Like you, I was a teacher (elementary) then an administrator. I spent my life wanting nothing more than to live in the Cincinnati area BUT never did. AND, I’m writing this reply from my home in Pennsylvania. So, you say, what’s my point?
Well, my point is…I was alive and aware during, what I’d call, all of the Cincinnati sports glory days. And because of that fact, like your dad, I always have hope. My love for the city, it’s food, it’s sports teams, etc; has no expiration date. As I read your piece, I kept thinking…he’s right. Everything’s changed and, most of it, not for the better. BUT…I just can’t give up. I understand and feel your frustration . My love for the Bengals is at an all time high. And, I’m a guy who actually saw the Bengals play in Nippert Stadium (from my Calhoun Hall dorm) back in 1968, for Gods sake! I attended my one and only WS game, Game 1 of the 1970 series at Riverfront and witnessed in person Brook Robinson’s magical plays at 3rd AND the controversial play at the plate when Carbo missed the plate, the catcher missed the tag and the umpire missed the call.
I have celebrated and suffered with all of the Cincinnati sports teams for as long as I can remember. Yet, even after the Reds management destroyed my hopes last spring by giving the team away, I just can’t give up. I am hopeless I know.
So, as I said, I can’t argue with you on any of your points but I just can’t give up my love of Cincinnati and it’s sports. Just can’t. You have a fine writing style and I enjoy reading your thoughts. Only one thing bothers me…your love for “that school-up North.” WTF?!?!
I was around in 90 however. I was 5, nearly 6. Remember every pitch. But nothing has happened to reel in the six year olds of the past ten years, and that is unfortunate.
I'm with you on the Reds. The only thing that could beat my spirit down as a fan more would be if they brought Bob Boone back as Manager. I still have hope they will get it right with this rebuild, because of the old saying "it's always darkest before the dawn". But, other than that, I am not sure what is going to happen.
In any event, Happy Easter and Happy Passover to everyone!
Y'know these Reds could make like a Steve Carlton 26 and single digits loss phenom out of one of the young pitchers. And I'm afraid Greene is morphing into Mario Sotoville who will give up lots of late one run cannon shots that will chase Ws away from him
Speaking of special education, old school shoutout from this '75 Deming Black Devil. George Clooney overlapped me my last semester him at Augusta High with Bracken and Pendleton the rest of the old 38th district. You blew the doors right off Doc's franchise ramblin' on, I'm truly impressed to the point of being tickled and i wonder if your Dad was as much of a fan of Jim McIntyre with Knuxhall as i was? Johnny Cash's cover of Won't Back Down with Petty strumming and backup vocals should also be in at least the 7th inning stretch protocol
Nice take. Interesting you note the "wasteland" (an apt description) years of '00-'09 ... I lament them as well. We've live in, and raised our kids in, Arkansas (unabashedly Cardinals' country) and while I tried to get my son (aged 5-15 during those years) all aboard the Reds' train like his old man, he couldn't resist the siren call of the Cardinals and as such, was lost for life to Redbirdism. I do think the Reds' decade of irrelevance contributed significantly. We have a nice and good natured rivalry now. But I think you're spot on that a good chuck of millenials were lost during that period.
A lotta points that hit home with this 45-year-old, Sam. Liked how you framed it all, almost a melancholic trip down memory lane, applicable to any Reds fans of our generation. Great job!
You have it right about Seattle in the summer, too. I was stationed at Fort Lewis from '05-'07. It amazed me that the natives there would complain about sunny 80 degree days, with no humidity, as being "hot."
I told several, while stationed there, that I'd take a Pacific Northwest summer any day, and twice on Sunday, over a sweltering Cincinnati summer. One of my biggest regrets, while there, is not ever having the proper camera to take a proper photo of Mount Rainier in the distance, from Fort Lewis. Definitely one of the most beautiful sights these eyes have ever seen, though. Never got tired of seeing it daily while out there.
Yes, the first Saturday of May is creeping up on us. I'll likely make my sojourn down to the new and improved Turfway, as I have in past years -- even back when the betting windows and simulcast area were in that dingy dungeon -- and place my bets. Adds a bit of spice to the fastest two minutes in sports.
Great job, but as I am much closer to your father’s age and you are my son’s age, I must disagree about baseball being past its time. I know it’s a clever saying that someone came up with and others use way too often (sorry, Doc). Opening Day isn’t just a party, it’s a celebration of our love for baseball and our Reds. It’s what this franchise could still be if ownership can just put together a consistent competitive team. I also long for the days of no DH and double switches, but I do see small ball making a comeback. Go Reds!
It's my theory a man on first distracting both the pitcher and defense, in both positioning and pitch selection and delivery, is more conducive to scoring runs than that same runner at second, particularly when it approaches 3o% that guy gets CS or picked off in the attempt. There are appropriate time and places for small ball and certain jackrabbit Judies whose game it can enhance ... but it seems overplayed to me that many teams will or should feature it
I forgot you are closer to my age than Sam’s. You would remember him. I didn’t know them well, stayed in touch with Janie for several years. She was in grad school at Uk the last I knew.
I always tell people I fell in love with White Castles in utero. Born in Louisville while Dad finished school. Mom worked and had young children.
Nice tune. Richie Furay from just up the road in Yellow Springs.
That road would also be the US 68 buffalo trail highway. Furay would certainly represent the country and folk input segment of Buffalo Springfield and which the KY Bluegrass meadow was literally and historically a pastural buffalo spring field, what with all the inherent salt lick features. But apparently they named the band from Buffalo-Springfield road roller equipment that had been parked outside where the band lived on the West Coast
Your Cincinnati Reds have stolen exactly 1 base so far this season, that by Jonny India, one of four MLB outfits to have achieved this lofty level of derring-do. I'm not sure if Stephenson and staff have thrown out anyone yet? First week of the season appears steals and attempts have sorta doubled from last season but still not above the numbers we used to see in the last century
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-stolen-bases-2023-after-first-week
Sortable, which you can learn stuff playing around with that:
https://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/stat/stolen-bases-attempted-per-game
https://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/stat/stolen-bases-per-game
Tied for #3o o.5pg CS:
https://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/stat/caught-stealing-per-game
Say hey, Reds score 1 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th for a 6-4 win! Philles 1/1 SB and the Reds notch #2 on their season SB total with also another CS to boot
Then you'll get the same people blasting Bell for using relievers in the one inning/max effort non 9th inning only closer paradigm and not sticking with them over multiple innings ... blasting him for sticking with his closing hammer Diaz on 5 days rest striking out the 1-2-3 on 14 pitches in the 8th and how stupid he was for allowing Diaz back and blowing up in the 9th ... or not saving Diaz for only the 9th
https://www.redlegnation.com/2023/04/08/nick-lodolo-strikes-out-12-but-phillies-walk-off-cincinnati-reds-on-saturday/
Your humility belies your ability, Sam. You turned in a great Hemingway. Won't Back Down is a natural for situational ballpark music. I'd nominate Summer Wind by Sinatra for 7th inning stretch music. Maybe better suited to an east coast team. But I think it would sound great on a summer Saturday night at any ballpark.
Sam, Enjoyed your raptures on Cinci's beautiful sports memories. Let's hope generations can keep them going.
First song I heard in Cinci on a visit in the 1970's was Old Black Water, Doobie Brothers, when I saw the Ohio River rolling for the first time. Back then, it was rumored you shouldn't throw a match on it or it would most likely light up.
Nice effort Sam. After you guest Hemingway it really gives you a greater appreciation for Doc's talents. I found it very humbling and thought he makes it seem really easy. It aint easy....
Excellent Hemingway, Sam. Love hearing from a young one out in the trenches helping raise the young. I used to enjoy driving back and forth from Highland Heights to Frankfort on 27/62. Once had to wait for a group of wild turkeys to get out of the road in southern Campbell County. All twenty miles of Pendleton followed by all twenty miles of Harrison. I guess you coached Mr. Kentucky basketball Dontae Allen whose name is on a road sign. I hope he had fun again when he left UK. The other road sign I enjoyed was for Philip Sparks (think that's right), Nobel prize winner for chemistry.
Casual Reds fan, tolerate football. My younger cousin married a Michigan girl. She dresses the kids for some of the games. I like the helmets.
Come back whenever you can spare the time. Well done.
That's interesting you'd travel 27 like that, Kat. The other way on 62 is the shortest (and definitely most windey and harrowing) way from Lexington to my hometown. You and Sam have probably seen my Dad's dump trucks through the years he used to park and commute to hauling from Butler quarry parked across from the little diner just south of the flashing light
Sometimes I would take that route because of storms. Semis have a hard time on 75 in high winds. Protecting my Elantra was high priority. The new bypass around Cynthiana removes the charm of downtown. I’m sure I have seen those trucks. I’ve been in central KY almost 15 years now. Sold my property in 21.
The family business hauled water locally & cattle up 27 from the Sunrise entry point to Cincinnati stockyards from Robertson/Bracken counties and until '7o coal up from Manchester with racked flatbed trucks that we'd resale from a yard with truck scales like a very small Clay-Ingels with also sand, river gravel, concrete blocks, fertilizer etc. My Dad started there at Butler with a single axle dump truck after an apparent '7o collapse in the cattle market around then and they got out of the coal business then too. I literally have left tons of piles of rocks that little single split axle C5o dumper could uniquely access all around the I-75/275 spaghetti junction from driving the #o1 truck my first summer home from college in '76. Latonia racetrack about every 2 weeks would call up for that smallest truck they had to spread 11-12 tons of ag lime onto and into their track because I guess they figured it made the least compaction
This thread is a reason I love this gig. Are these good backroads for a weekend amble?
My route really ends at Georgetown, but that is almost Frankfort. Not as challenging as Wayne's. There are some nice stretches. Easy road.
Almost all the old KY state highways were originally preexisting buffalo traces that more take hilltop and valley cowpath like meandering terrain tracks of least resistance through most of the state. 27 there however is/was a straight old state highway because the British Army in the frontier was all hot & heavy to mount that siege of Bryan's Station where those Boone girls you were talking about I believe were at the time and cut through the wilderness which led to the ambush that was the Battle of Blue Licks where Israel and their cousin Thomas were killed
Here's my route suggestion. Go take the Augusta Ferry (in Masters Tribute) to KY and down through Germantown (my Hitt ancestry) and backroads to totally tour all around my Mt Olivet (pop < 5oo, no stoplights) Robertson County seat hometown (won't take long) and then east on 62 through Sardis and up 62 by way of Shannon (my Maryland Mullikin ancestors' homestead ca 179o) back into Maysville entering by old 68 winding Buffalo trail rd by the now haunted Hayswood Hospital birthplace. If you're at the flashing 4way in Mt Olivet and drop down onto Court Street at the bottom of the hill there still should be a big gravity water hose there where my Dad ripped his finger off when he hooked his wedding band on a piece of angle iron jumping down off the water truck one evening. Batman with a dump truck was back at Butler driving the #o2 truck the very next day too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon,_Kentucky
4th Gen- Archibald is my guy, my Dad's Mother's line
https://www.fmoran.com/mullican.html
There's another day trip or 2 that would incorporate a trip on 616 first up to Abigail to where Insko Rd marks what I think is the first homestead at the Bracken/Mason/Robertson tri-County confluence then reverse and to the other end of 616 (past Bee Lick rd from MtO and then Bee Lick lane where we lived) and swing south to Blue Licks with a side to the Johnson creek covered bridge and/or a drive by of the old Woodie Fryman farm on the Ewing rd off 68 in a big convoluted loop that you could circle back around past the covered bridge to come up past Sardis on 62 and come out on 68 at May's Lick if you really wanted to get lost... we grew up riding our bikes all over those places as kids. The old Insko Trucking HQ (my GPs' original home) is about a mile toward Blue Licks on 165 west (technically south) from Mt Olivet on the left, there would be a wide gravel pull off lot opposite a rickety barn should still be there (this would be where my GF's mother was born in the family farm old house).... If you pass a carlot on the right you just passed it a little ways back so turn around 😆
This TML was clearly written by the artificial intelligence of ChatGPT. How do I know this? Since I was born, I was taught that Michigan fans could only communicate with the modern world by flinging their feces at an alphabet board. Since I detect no odor on my iPad, this isn’t that. This is nicely done and coherent. Coherent to a Michigan fan means two people who get an early inheritance from the same uncle in Ohio…co-herents…like my two numbskull nephews from Ann Arbor said to me.
Congratulations to the person that prompted the ChatGPT to entertain us today. I enjoyed the writing.
😇
😂
Nice work.
Will forever be a Reds fan but I’ve also wondered how the franchise has been able to get so much mileage out of an era nearly 50 years old. Good call out
Sam, let me congratulate you on a job well done. And while I can’t argue with you on really any point you made regarding the Reds, Bengals and Cincy sports in general, I do have some thought. Being a babe of 38, you weren’t EVEN around for the last crowning moment in Cincy sports, the 1990 miracle “wire to wire” year and that being said, IMO, you and your generation are justifiably jaded.
I, on the other hand, am a certifiable OG. I will turn74 this June. I’m a born Cincinnatian who only lived there until I was 9. My life was lived mostly in the Dayton area. But, I did come back to go to and graduate from UC. Like you, I was a teacher (elementary) then an administrator. I spent my life wanting nothing more than to live in the Cincinnati area BUT never did. AND, I’m writing this reply from my home in Pennsylvania. So, you say, what’s my point?
Well, my point is…I was alive and aware during, what I’d call, all of the Cincinnati sports glory days. And because of that fact, like your dad, I always have hope. My love for the city, it’s food, it’s sports teams, etc; has no expiration date. As I read your piece, I kept thinking…he’s right. Everything’s changed and, most of it, not for the better. BUT…I just can’t give up. I understand and feel your frustration . My love for the Bengals is at an all time high. And, I’m a guy who actually saw the Bengals play in Nippert Stadium (from my Calhoun Hall dorm) back in 1968, for Gods sake! I attended my one and only WS game, Game 1 of the 1970 series at Riverfront and witnessed in person Brook Robinson’s magical plays at 3rd AND the controversial play at the plate when Carbo missed the plate, the catcher missed the tag and the umpire missed the call.
I have celebrated and suffered with all of the Cincinnati sports teams for as long as I can remember. Yet, even after the Reds management destroyed my hopes last spring by giving the team away, I just can’t give up. I am hopeless I know.
So, as I said, I can’t argue with you on any of your points but I just can’t give up my love of Cincinnati and it’s sports. Just can’t. You have a fine writing style and I enjoy reading your thoughts. Only one thing bothers me…your love for “that school-up North.” WTF?!?!
Thanks, Eric.
I was around in 90 however. I was 5, nearly 6. Remember every pitch. But nothing has happened to reel in the six year olds of the past ten years, and that is unfortunate.
Go Blue.
Well, kid, that was a great post. Well done.
I'm with you on the Reds. The only thing that could beat my spirit down as a fan more would be if they brought Bob Boone back as Manager. I still have hope they will get it right with this rebuild, because of the old saying "it's always darkest before the dawn". But, other than that, I am not sure what is going to happen.
In any event, Happy Easter and Happy Passover to everyone!
Y'know these Reds could make like a Steve Carlton 26 and single digits loss phenom out of one of the young pitchers. And I'm afraid Greene is morphing into Mario Sotoville who will give up lots of late one run cannon shots that will chase Ws away from him
Speaking of special education, old school shoutout from this '75 Deming Black Devil. George Clooney overlapped me my last semester him at Augusta High with Bracken and Pendleton the rest of the old 38th district. You blew the doors right off Doc's franchise ramblin' on, I'm truly impressed to the point of being tickled and i wonder if your Dad was as much of a fan of Jim McIntyre with Knuxhall as i was? Johnny Cash's cover of Won't Back Down with Petty strumming and backup vocals should also be in at least the 7th inning stretch protocol
Nice take. Interesting you note the "wasteland" (an apt description) years of '00-'09 ... I lament them as well. We've live in, and raised our kids in, Arkansas (unabashedly Cardinals' country) and while I tried to get my son (aged 5-15 during those years) all aboard the Reds' train like his old man, he couldn't resist the siren call of the Cardinals and as such, was lost for life to Redbirdism. I do think the Reds' decade of irrelevance contributed significantly. We have a nice and good natured rivalry now. But I think you're spot on that a good chuck of millenials were lost during that period.
Well done, Wolverine fan. (That's really hard for a Buckeye to say.)
Thank you for your service, both to our country and to TML today. And to our students. Need good people in the trenches to learn 'em up.
A lotta points that hit home with this 45-year-old, Sam. Liked how you framed it all, almost a melancholic trip down memory lane, applicable to any Reds fans of our generation. Great job!
You have it right about Seattle in the summer, too. I was stationed at Fort Lewis from '05-'07. It amazed me that the natives there would complain about sunny 80 degree days, with no humidity, as being "hot."
I told several, while stationed there, that I'd take a Pacific Northwest summer any day, and twice on Sunday, over a sweltering Cincinnati summer. One of my biggest regrets, while there, is not ever having the proper camera to take a proper photo of Mount Rainier in the distance, from Fort Lewis. Definitely one of the most beautiful sights these eyes have ever seen, though. Never got tired of seeing it daily while out there.
Yes, the first Saturday of May is creeping up on us. I'll likely make my sojourn down to the new and improved Turfway, as I have in past years -- even back when the betting windows and simulcast area were in that dingy dungeon -- and place my bets. Adds a bit of spice to the fastest two minutes in sports.
Great job, but as I am much closer to your father’s age and you are my son’s age, I must disagree about baseball being past its time. I know it’s a clever saying that someone came up with and others use way too often (sorry, Doc). Opening Day isn’t just a party, it’s a celebration of our love for baseball and our Reds. It’s what this franchise could still be if ownership can just put together a consistent competitive team. I also long for the days of no DH and double switches, but I do see small ball making a comeback. Go Reds!
I love the Reds, but unfortunately that is how your generation sees Opening Day. Mine sees it as the party and not much more.
It's my theory a man on first distracting both the pitcher and defense, in both positioning and pitch selection and delivery, is more conducive to scoring runs than that same runner at second, particularly when it approaches 3o% that guy gets CS or picked off in the attempt. There are appropriate time and places for small ball and certain jackrabbit Judies whose game it can enhance ... but it seems overplayed to me that many teams will or should feature it