If you’re setting up a little one for a lifetime of disappointment as a Reds fan, you should definitely sign them up to participate in the Reds Heads. For $20, you get:

• Exclusive members-only experiences at Great American Ball Park
• Four FREE ticket vouchers to select Reds home games for club member
• Exclusive members-only gear: club jersey, baseball cap, drawstring Jay Bruce replica jersey backpack and wristbands
• Membership card with lanyard
• Reds Heads temporary tattoo
• Exclusive Reds Heads Newsletters
• FREE ticket to the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame
• FREE kids meal at Bob Evans Restaurant
• FREE one-day admission to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

Many of these items do come with catches. You can’t send your kid in to the Hall of Fame alone, for example, and while you’re there, you might as well buy a year-long pass because one of the “experiences” is likely to require that of you later. Also, the “experiences” are never on dates that the ticket vouchers are good for, so if you are from out of state and were hoping to be able to leverage as many of your club perks as possible, you’re going to be out more gas than you expected.

Even so, it’s probably worth $20 for the shirt and backpack.

And if you act quickly, you can be among the first 1,000 fans at Redsfest to join up and thereby get the illustrious “Reds Heads limited-edition merchandise item,” as in, “mommy, mommy, take me to the store now for the latest limited-edition merchandise item!”

This isn’t from the Women in Baseball series at We’ve Got Heart, but it’s always nice to read an interview with a woman in sports, even peripherally.

Check it out: So You Want to Work in Sports?: Diana Iakoubova, Marketing Coordinator, Yardbarker Network

You love your sporting news through the filter of a blogger who has no particular credentials, yet manages to put together better insight than 95% of ESPN. After you’ve read about the wacky misadventures of the Red Hot Family, you can check out:

• http://cincinnati.majorleaguebaseballfansite.com/ It’s an aggregater too cool to even have an name other than it’s URL. True, most of what you’ll find here is links to blogs you already visit, but where else will you find awesome sports photos that have had inappropriate aspect ratios hard-coded so they’re all stretched out?
• For something more polished, check out MASN Online, the official website of the mid-Atlantic Sports Network.
• And when you need a little something political to go with your sports news, go to The Tricky Trail Times. Keep looking: there is some baseball in there.

The Reds have announced their 2009 schedule, and it’s the best schedule they’ve had in years. The host division rivals and the Indians for the lion’s share of their weekend series, including two weekend stints with the Cardinals. The month of September is pretty lame, with 16 away games, but the Reds should be pretty lame by then, too, so I expect it’ll work out.

…you notice this headline on your Reds feed:

Reds could bring back Weathers

Considering that he did about as well in the closer spot a couple years back making $2.5 million as Cordero did this year pulling down $10 million, it may be a thrifty approach. Makes it hard not to roll your eyes, though. Same old Reds.

No Adam Dunn next year, though, unless they sign him as a free agent. Boy, that would be a great move on his part, wouldn’t it? Out of the frying pan and back into the frying pan. What’s the speculation on where Dunn will end up next year? And what’s the whole draft pick situation with him? I’ve always been a little confused by that one.

Even Griffey remains in the Reds headlines, as he was named a “public diplomacy envoy” by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and charged with spreading “the values of the United States” by helping to spark “interest in America and in our culture.” He’ll go to Panama in January to begin this mission while his agent is working out where he’ll sign, seeing as he’s a free agent this year too.