It's Always About Pitching. Always.

Reds nearing the abyss. Plus, thoughts on Jimmy Buffett

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The Reds open a three-game series tonight against the Mariners, who went 21-6 in August and are 39-17 since June. The Club is starting TBD tonight, followed by IDK tomorrow and WTF Wednesday.

The Reds conga-line of Google Guys — Chasen Shreve, god love ya — is not endless. There might be a wily lefthander somewhere, pitching for a company team in some industrial town in Zagreb, but we haven’t seen him. Maybe Midland has a guy. I don’t mean to make light of the situation at the Small Park. Well, maybe I do. Sometimes, we laugh to keep from crying.

It’s always foolish to predict the future in baseball, and in recent weeks we’ve fired up the Obit Machine for the plucky little shavers more than once. Guts and resilience are no match for good pitching, though, and so this time, the abyss is real. It resembles the top of the 8th yesterday.

I love David Bell bringing in his best pitcher in the most dire situation. Frequent Perusers will note I’ve advocated that for years. Do not coddle your closer. Do not perma-lock him into the 9th inning for cheap 2- and 3-run saves. The biggest outs of any game aren’t always in the 9th. The only quibble I had Sunday with Bell was, he should have pitched Alexis Diaz to start the 8th, when it was 5-5, not waited until Derek Law put Diaz in an impossible spot three batters later.

But that’s a small second guess. Bell was aggressive and forward-thinking. I’d love to see the Reds seamheads take a deep-dive look this offseason at the idea of using their best reliever in the most crucial situations all the time.

We can talk all we want about the Reds inevitable slide owing to factors other than pitching. Make up your mind: Are their hitters getting themselves out by being desperately aggressive? Or are they taking too many strikes?

Have they lost their daring abandon on the bases? Will Elly De L’Aquino be the hitter he was in June, or will he be Javier Baez?

Yep, injuries really are a reason, not an excuse. The ball-gods practiced soul surgery on this team when they removed India and McLain from the lineup. Might as well have taken a spleen or two.

But, paraphrasing James Carville here (lookimup, kids):

It’s the pitching, stupid.

Baseball is always about pitching. Always. Who has it, who doesn’t, who does the best job acquiring it. The 13th or 14th pitcher on the roster is always more valuable than a bench player who can pinch-run or play defense. COVID, of all things, has suddenly crippled an already hobbling staff of throwers. When you’re running Google Guys* out there game after game — when you’re forced to use on Sunday the pitcher who was supposed to start Monday — well, the abyss owns nine of your toes and gravity is real.

(*Google Guys. A term yours truly invented a few months ago, after I’d Googled “Levi Stoudt’’. Or maybe, it was “Silvino Bracho”. Go ahead and put it on a T-shirt, Cincy Shirts.)

The Reds are too close to write off. Close? They’re tied with Miami, AZ and SF for the last wild card spot. After the 3 with Seattle, they don’t play anybody with a winning record.

It’d be foolish to dismiss them, even with that pitching staff. But the obituary has already been written. It’s just waiting for someone to hit Send.

Now, then. . .

I DIDN’T LIKE “MARGARITAVILLE”.

What is wrong with you? Nobody doesn’t like Margaritaville. It’s the best Song-as-State-of-Mind ever recorded. It sums up the beach fantasies of everyone who ever wanted to chuck his cubicle into the Dumpster and drive ‘til the road met the sunset.

Only Jimmy Buffett could write that song. Only he could get away with a line that rhymes flip-flop and pop-top. Margaritaville has sent two generations, maybe three, possibly four, in an endless search for a. . . salt shaker. Think about that, Bitterman.

You don’t like Margaritaville, you’re a bore, a drip and the kind of guy who hates life. Now gimme that tequila, that parrot, that pair of shorts and the damned salt. Go listen to Yoko or something.

I hear you. I loved Buffett, for all the reasons you did. I just thought that song was a cynical and a deliberate attempt at creating a brand.

It worked.

Oh, yeah. It did. Definitely. By the time he died, Buffett was a billionaire, his name synonymous with boats, beaches and overpriced cheeseburgers. And I’m not suggesting any of it was contrived. Buffett was an original.

I just liked his other, less commercial side. I think Living and Dying in Three-Quarter Time was his best album. That’s who Buffett was, before he became Buffett. Come Monday is as lovely as a ballad gets.

I didn’t like Fins. I really didn’t like Cheeseburger in Paradise. I felt like they were written with dollar signs in mind. Cynical pandering.

I liked The Captain and the Kid. A Pirate Looks at 40. Pencil Thin Mustache. I loved He Went to Paris:

Summers and winters Scattered like splinters. And 45 years slipped away.

Some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic, but I had a good life all the way.

This was smart Jimmy, an A-student of the human condition. The novelty tunes made him rich. To too many folks, they also came to define him. I liken Jimmy to Jim Croce. Croce, too, wrote beautifully about love and loss and what it was like to be alive. He’s best known for. . . Bad, Bad LeRoy Brown. Yuck.

Buffett wrote most of Margaritaville in five minutes, while sitting at an airport gate in Austin, TX. The Washington Post:

Buffett told the New York Post in 2018 that he initially planned to call it “Wasting Away Again in Austin, Texasville”.

A car wreck on the road ahead delayed Buffett’s drive back home to the Keys, putting a little more time between him and that first round of breakup margaritas in Austin.

“There was a wreck on the 7-Mile Bridge,” Buffett said in a 2020 interview. “I wrote the end of the song while waiting in traffic.”

Thank you, Jimmy. It has, indeed, been a lovely cruise.

FANTASTIC W. . . SPOILED?

Deion Sanders debuted as Colorado’s football coach by beating a team favored to beat his, by 20 points. Buffaloes 45, TCU 42. Wow. But I don’t know what to make of his reaction to his team’s shining moment:

“We’re gonna continuously be questioned because we do things that have never been done. And that makes people uncomfortable,” Sanders said. “When you see a confident Black man sitting up here and talking his talk, walking his walk, coaching 75 percent African Americans in a locker room, that’s kind of threatening. Oh, they don’t like that.

“But guess what, we’re gonna consistently do what we do because I’m here, and I ain’t going nowhere. I’m about to get comfortable in a minute. I’m about to get comfortable in a minute.”

OK. On one hand, I’m reading and nodding my head, Damned right. All true. Not many would have the guts to say it.

Then again. . . This should have been a celebration of his team.

Its’ no secret that “confident Black men’’ make some people “uncomfortable.’’ But not all people. Not by a long shot. Any big-time college or pro dressing room you enter in 2023 is going to be filled with “75 percent African Americans.’’ That’s been true for half a century.

Why wreck a sports moment with a social statement?

Sanders acts as if he’s the first Black man to win a big game. That’d be news to Dusty Baker and Doc Rivers and Mike Tomlin, who faced more hurdles than Sanders.

Big W. Good for the Buffs. Good for their coach. Maybe let the W speak for itself next time.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . These moments we’re left with. . .