Jon and I made a trip to Cincinnati this weekend to take in a little live music and a nice ball game. The Reds had their season-high streak of five games in a row to keep going, and we would have loved to have seen them stretch it to six.
Before the game, the Screaming Mimes played to a crowd of about 50 concert goers plus a zillion people in line for the $1 concession stand. Even an hour before game time, the line was already impressive, and showed no sign of slackening as the game went on.
After the show, we enjoyed the feature presentation…up until the sixth inning. We don’t like to think about that part, though. Instead, we’ll share the photo of a Drew “Stubby” Stubbs and Joey “Baby Kangaroo” Votto high five after the Paul “Soft J” Janish home run.
Alas, we didn’t have a lot that was good to talk about when we recorded in the eighth inning. Thankfully, the inning was short and so was the podcast.
The CTS and I are Cincinnati-bound tomorrow to catch the game and the pre-game show. I encourage all the Red Hot Audience to check out the show. It’s not even supposed to be too hot tomorrow.
After a night in the Queen City, we’ll venture to Vivay, Indiana for the Swiss Wine Festival. I have no idea whether it’ll be lame or awesome, but I’m confident it’ll be full of super-sweet Indiana wine. So if you happen to see a couple of Reds fans wandering up the river Sunday afternoon, sticky and loopy on blackberry wine, help a sister out and hook me up with cheese and crackers.
Around the Red Hot household, as in Redsland at large, sentiment about the Reds’ manager is somewhat negative. Assuming, of course, that you consider things like “Dusty Baker has screwed this team” and “whomever he wants on the roster I violently oppose deep in my soul” to be negative, per se.
But this negativity makes for uninteresting content on a blog. The occasional rant is all well and good, but compelling blogging presents a new perspective, something you haven’t already thought yourself, and/or amusing nicknames for players.
So to up the ante a little, I’m challenging myself and you to come up with *nice* things to say about Dusty Baker. He’s a nice guy, after all. There must be a few positive words to say in his favor. For example:
Since the same field positions always bat in the same order, he must write one of the fastest line-up cards in the league.
All of the whiffs he encourages his hitters to commit provide a nice breeze for fans at the game.
He gives Cincinnati fans something to agree on.
More in the comments as I think of them. Feel free to chime in.
Aaron Harang had an emergency appendectomy last night. He is expected to recover OK, but it is season-ending surgery.
I guess the Reds won’t be trading Harang this season after all. Hopefully he’s healthy again soon and back to form for 2010.
In other news, Scott Rolen returns to the line-up today after a few days with the AAA Louisville Bats. Brandon Phillips returned to the lineup yesterday upon recovering from being hit in the wrist.
I imagine some women must stumble into it, entirely by chance, meeting their future hubby at a bar or night club or some other gathering place where they could have met anyone, in any profession. Others, I imagine, are AAA groupies, purposely positioning themselves for the life. Either way, I doubt the young bride is entirely prepared for the obstacles that she will face in her married life.
Including being required to name your son “Brady,” if the life stories of Rachel Dunn and Abby Kearns are any indication. Yesterday, the Washington Post printed a story that went into some depth on their experiences, as well as those of some of the other Nationals players’ wives.
Check it out. The story’s a bit wordy, but how can you encapsulate the personal lives of so many people in less? Besides, this is all the words these ladies are likely to get all season. Hopefully it distracts them from the Nats’ performance for a minute.
not-George Grande: “The final line on Bronson Arroyo…he can only be the loser in tonight’s game.”
Me: “That’s not true; he could get a no decision.”
CTS: “Sure, if you’re talking about the decision.”
On famed crappy player Willy Taveras, McCoy wrote this.
As far as I’m concerned, and many other fans are concerned, Taveras can rot on the bench the rest of the season. I’ve seen nothing to merit the millions the Reds have flushed down the toilet when they brought this guy in.
Welcome to the club, Mr. McCoy! It’s kind of a depressing place, but it’s always better to let these things out than to hold them in.
This year I haven’t really considered the Washington Nationals a real team. They’re just so bad, it’s hard to take them seriously. I mean, they’ve consistently been winning only a third of the team for most of the year. In the world of bad teams, that’s truly atrocious.
So you might think the Cincinnati Reds would be able to beat up on the Nats. If so, you would be wrong. The series started off well, with the Reds finding a magical bat for Johnny Gomes and a magical bag of things for Bronson Arroyo to ingest giving them a 7-0 win.
Then things started to fall apart. Aaron Harang started the second game, received no run support, and the Reds were shutout 2-0.
Last night I flipped the game on to discover it was already 7-0. Wow. What the hell happened to Johnny Cueto? Oh, yeah, he pitches for the Reds.
Still, the Reds did mount a bit of a comeback, scoring 4 in the 7th thanks to Joey Votto and Drew Sutton’s first home run. It wasn’t enough.
With the loss, I at first thought the Reds had lost the series to the Nationals. But no, this is a 4-game series. That won’t happen until today.
On the bright side, Adam Dunn continues his streak of homering in Great American Ball Park every year of his major league career. So there’s that.
Going in to tonight’s game, the Reds and Cardinals were tied in the series. They were also tied in the season, in games against each other. Not only that, but looking at their overall series records, the Reds had the same number of losses as the Cardinals had wins.
Loading ...
By Amanda
How does one become a baseball wife? 
By Zeldink