Here’s one of those boring generic computerized ticket stub designs.  Well, it’s boring except for those two magic words.

Let’s see… As I recall, I spent that weekend in Cincinnati with friends, and had my camera along.  By the time we got to this Sunday afternoon game, I only had a few pictures left, so I wasn’t really thinking about taking pictures during the game.  Then I snapped off a few toward the end just to finish the roll.  It was one of those games that just seemed to blend in with all the others…

Dibble pitched.  Reds won.  Ball thrown.  Seats…  

Well there you go.

Here’s a picture I took back in September of 1990 when the Reds won the West.  A friend had purchased the tickets a couple of months in advance, hoping it would be a good game–maybe the clincher if we were lucky. 

I really didn’t pay a lot of attention to baseball for much of that year, what with other things in life going on, but every now and then during the season I’d stop to smell the rosin bag so to speak, and I’d see the Reds were still in first place.  It really got to be very exciting, the Hunt for Reds October.  Sweet Lou Piniella was taking them wire-to-wire.  Rijo and Browning and the Nasty Boys.  Larkin, Davis, O’Neill.  Sabo with those goggles.  I remember a friend of mine saying she liked Todd Benzinger.  I said I thought Hal Morris was better, and wondered why she liked Benzinger.  She thought he was cute.  Well, we were all excited about the Reds for one reason or another.  And a bunch of us were excited to be going to what could turn out to be the big game!

It rained.  The Reds were losing to San Diego officially when the tarp came out.  A lot of people left, but quite a few stayed around to watch the scoreboard because if Los Angeles lost, the Reds were in.  I think that’s how it went.  Anyway, when the significant final score popped up, the celebration was on.  I think they played M.C. Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This over the stadium speakers.  People were cheering and high-fiving and dancing all over the place. 

Reds players emerged to wave to the crowd, and be interviewed.  They were all wearing white hats and t-shirts with a design I couldn’t make out from so far away.  Later–like days later–when my brother and I were going out to buy a division-winning t-shirt of our own, I reminded him of the white one the players were wearing, even though I didn’t know what was on it.  He said he was already planning on getting that white one.  And that was my first experience with the so-called official t-shirt as worn by the players, which I’ve seen at every big winning moment since.  That’s the first thing players do anymore–rush off the field to hurry into their official shirts and hats.

Anyway, that sure was a good time.  So as you can see, I put the shirt design on the above picture.  I also cut & pasted the scoreboard with the dramatic division-winning announcement: "1990 National League Western Division Champions!" 

If I’m not mistaken, M.C. Hammer is from Oakland.

The Reds’ annual Winter Caravan is over.  The caravan consists of various Reds players, brass, and radio guys traveling around Reds Country stopping  here and there along the rout to spread the word about Reds baseball.  People come out to see them during their stops. 

I’ve never been, and don’t know what goes on at a caravan stop.  I imagine they set up a big tent and light the oil lamps.  People sit comfortably on big pillows.  After the ceremonial gong is banged, veiled Reds cheerleaders emerge to belly dance.  Food is served: stuffed dates, and a little couscous and baba ghanoush.  Then Reds elders address the visitors, telling them what’s in store for 2007 as far as they can tell before Spring Training has started.  After a brief Q & A there’s more entertainment, including camel rides and performing monkeys.  Mr. Red amazes the crowd by swallowing flaming swords, and Gapper walks over hot coals without setting his hairy feet on fire.  Impressive!  Later, people will gather ’round the hookahs to mellow out before it’s time to break camp and move on to the next town.   

   This caravan stuff piques my interest in buying tickets.  I just checked the Reds website to see when single game tickets go on sale.  It doesn’t say, as far as I can tell.  But you can buy season tickets in a variety of packages.  I also see there’s a story about the Reds’ Winter Caravan.  It looks like it was pretty good, but it wasn’t quite what I had imagined. 

I was saddened to hear about Vern Ruhle dying from cancer recently.  Ruhle took over as Reds’ pitching coach when Don Gullett was fired mid-season 2005.  Considering how bad the Reds pitching staff was at that time, Ruhle faced a daunting challenge.  Some people might want to run like a rat from a sinking ship, while others brim with excitement for the challenge of turning things around.  Vern Ruhle took the challenge.

I was looking at some baseball cards a while back. Vern Ruhle’s rookie card is in the ’75 set.  I pulled it out, as I am wont to do when I get thoughtful about a player.  There he was, looking off into the distance, having come off a 20-win ’74 season with 5 wins for Montgomery, 13 for Evansville, and 2 for the Detroit Tigers.   Ruhle would be named the Tigers’ Rookie of the Year in ’75.  As I was spending my allowance on those baseball cards, Vern Ruhle was embarking on a Major League career full of promise; a man living the dream.

Back before I got  the XM satellite radio, I’d have put my right hand on my first mitt–a MacGregor by the way–and swore I’d never pay for radio.  Then in Nov ’05 , someone offered me their free promo radio with one month free service for free, and I figured sure, I’ll try it.  And just in time to not listen to baseball.   

But it was the lure of all that baseball that got me to officially sign up a month later.  The first baseball action I heard was during that WBC in March ’06 of last year.  The game was South Africa vs the U.S.  Bud Selig was in the booth with a guy named Mike gushing praise for Roger Clemens, I guess for showing up to pitch.  They talked about a lot of things: 

Selig said WBC ratings were "spectacular" and it was "a watershed moment for baseball."  He quickly moved on, saying there will be an attendance record in MLB in 2006, completely avoiding the controversy over Antarctica being grossly under-represented in the WBC.    Regarding Bonds approaching Ruth, Selig said it was time to find out what went on and when it went on.  He went on to say that with wildcards, revenue sharing, and interleague; MLB is more popular than ever before.  (Nice deflection!)  "My job is to keep moving it forward."  On to the NL Central and the Cubs trying to win a World Series for the first time since the invention of the toaster: Selig said it’ll be tough because St. Louis & Houston are in the way, and Pittsburgh and Milwaukee are improving.  That was about it.  No mention of the Reds.  Yeah, there are a lot of teams in the NL Central.  It’s hard to remember them all.

Clemens left the game after 4 1/3 with the U.S. up 17-0.  Selig and Mike sounded choked up as they fumbled for words to describe the emotional moment.  Mike said there was a standing ovation as The Rocket left the mound.  Then he described the scene by saying, "look at that!"  followed by a dramatic pause.

The game ended with South Africa on the unfortunate end of the mercy rule.  They mentioned how nice it is to have games on satellite radio.  Selig said he has it in his office and listens to it all the time.  He didn’t specify XM or Sirius, but unless Selig is a big Howard Stern fan, I’ll assume it’s XM.  Selig then got gushy about great players playing baseball.  He said players like Mike Schmidt are the heart and soul of baseball and care about the sport more than themselves as we keep the sport moving forward.  Ok.  The Pete Rose situation.  I get it.  It was interesting. 

So here I sit, $13 per month for about 10 months later, still enjoying XM.  If XM didn’t have MLB, I probably would have kept it anyway for all the music choices, Burbank on WLW, and all that.  Baseball just makes it better.

I got my first pack of baseball cards in 1971.  Topps, black-edged.  Each pack included a metal chip of a player.  I was a kid discovering what a great game baseball is and it didn’t take too long to get hooked on card collecting.  By later standards, my first year’s collection was pretty small — only a couple hundred cards.  Mainly, I got them when my mother would toss a couple packs in with the groceries at the checkout line down at Shop Rite or wherever. 

My interest grew as my collection grew.  Over the next couple of years I drove my mother nuts reminding her not to forget the baseball cards.  In 1974 I had over half the cards of each team, and I wondered what it would take to get a complete set.  In ’75 I went for it.  But it wouldn’t be cheap: allowance, birthday money, mowing lawns — whatever.  Stacks of wax packs.  The cards piled up.  It was a magic moment when I first got all the players on one team.  One down–23 to go.

Late summer.  Rosters were filling up. I was trading with my brother — also a card collector, but he was not going for a complete set — and some friends, to get cards I needed.  Still, some cards seemed impossible to find.  And I was racking up huge piles of doubles, triples, quadruples, and Denny Doyles.  Denny Doyle, Denny Doyle, Denny Doyle.  I groaned every time I opened a pack and there’d be another Denny Doyle.  Not to mention good ol’ Buddy Bradford and Bob Apodaca. 

For that matter I also had plenty of **** Dragos, but would it have killed Topps to sprinkle in a few **** Tidrows or Steve Renkos? 

I knew my cards well enough to do the "got ‘im — don’t got ‘im" routine each time I opened a pack.  When it’s late in the summer and school’s about to start, a pack that is all "got ‘im, got ‘im, got ‘im" is very frustrating. 

Bob Gibson.  The biggest name I didn’t have was Bob Gibson.  I had a dozen Denny Doyles, but no Bob Gibson.  I felt like Charlie Brown looking for Joe Shlabotnik.  Where were all the Bob Gibson cards?  Then school started.  I found out a kid in my class collected cards and supposedly had a Bob Gibson.  He wouldn’t trade him to me for anything.  Wouldn’t sell him either.  I never actually saw the card, but he claimed to have him, and it was really irritating.

Time was running out.  It was time for some serious wheeling and dealing because I didn’t think I could buy enough packs to get every card.  I only had so much money, and my mother would only buy so many.  My friends knew what I was trying to do, and were helpful.  Trouble is, they were all Reds fans, and wanted to trade mainly for Reds cards, and I was running out of good ones.  And they only wanted the better players, naturally, since those were harder to come by.  I only had one extra Johnny Bench.  Two of Tony Perez.  Also, since my friends knew how much I wanted a complete set, they knew even an obscure player had a high value to me, and they’d ask for more in return than a guy was worth.  "You want Pete Rose for Ed Brinkman?  Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a few more Denny Doyles instead?"

It was fun trying to get them all.  Very disappointing to come up about a dozen short.  I did get better at trading though.  I knew all about most players — the faces, positions, teams, and how good they were.  I learned to better judge how badly a person wanted a card, to get a better idea of what I could get in return.  Was the guy telling the truth when he said he only had one of that player’s card, but was willing to part with it if I offered enough?  Maybe, and maybe not, and two can play at that game.  This kind of stuff would come in handy the next year as I tried once again to get a complete set of Topps baseball cards one pack at a time.

Fourteen 1975 Denny Doyles.  That’s what I ended up with.

Some of what’s been going on this off-season…

Rich Aurilia left as a free agent to go play for the Giants.  Aurilia won the Ernie Lombardi Award, which means he was voted Reds most valuable player last season.  Yeah, we don’t need any swelled heads around here.  And I hear the Giants are known to have players with swelled heads. 

Jeff Conine joins the Reds.  He’s no spring chicken at 40, but he has 2 World Series rings with the Marlins, so he knows his way around.  Looks like he’ll platoon with Hatteberg at 1B.

Pitching sensation Bronson Arroyo (14-11 / 3.29) won both the Good Guy Award and the Johnny Vander Meer Award.   The Vander Meer one is for pitching excellence (Vander Meer tossed consecutive no-hitters in 1938.)

Catcher David Ross got a 2-yr deal.  He caught for Arroyo last year, which worked out well, except for that rough stretch between Arroyo’s 9th and 10th wins.  Valentin and LaRue caught for the Reds last year too.  Valentin re-signed.  LaRue was traded to K.C.

Well, it just wouldn’t be the off-season without a Griffey injury to report.  Griffey broke his hand in December.  Details are supposed to be a closely-guarded secret, but as is all too common these days, there have been leaks.  An unnamed source with the Reds revealed that the accident occurred in Griffey’s home and appears to have involved the left hand.  Word on the street is that Griffey’s left hand is in some sort of cast.  But how?  How did this mysterious accident happen?

I will now take it upon myself to make something up:

• Griffey is known as The Kid.
• Kids like to play video games.
• Nintendo introduced the Wii game in early December, then acknowledged the motion controller has a weak strap.
• The Wii controller has caused people to damage things and injure themselves by swinging the controller around with too much force.

Well, there you go.  My totally made-up theory is, Griffey got a Wii, was playing a sport simulation game like golf or bowling, got all excited by the game action, and slammed his controller hand into the coffee table.  Of course this assumes Griffey bowls left-handed.  Seems as good a story as anything, I guess.

Seriously — I’m hoping for a speedy recovery.

And that’ll do it for now.  There’ve been other things going on, like Alex Gonzalez at SS, and new-look uniforms.  Maybe I’ll mention that stuff later.

I took this picture.  It’s my oldest from Riverfront Stadium.  Well, technically that’s not true; there were a few others from earlier in this game, equally fuzzy.  I don’t remember much from this game, but I recall the excitement of this moment with George Foster up in the 9th inning with the bases loaded and the Reds losing a close one.  That powder-blue Expos pitcher bearing down.  The crowd a-buzz with eager anticipation.  Foster struck out, I think, and that was that.  I also remember that I took this picture with my old 110 camera, wondering if the pictures would look ok from the relatively dim light of the night game.  (I tweaked the brightness and color with the computer.)    

A quick google search shows me the Reds 1980 schedule.  I see Montreal came to town a couple times.  I believe this was the July 16th game in which the Reds lost 6 to 4.  The box score shows that Mario Soto started for the Reds and went 7 innings, allowing 5 runs/4 earned.  Doug Bair pitched 2 innings in relief.  Foster had no RBIs.  Yeah, that sounds like the game.  I see that Ron LeFlore, in his first year with the Expos, stole his 51st base of the season.  LeFlore is an interesting story, having played baseball in prison before being signed by the Detroit Tigers.  There was a made-for-tv movie about him.  LeFlore went on to steal 97 bases in 1980 to lead the NL.  Omar Moreno of the Pirates was second with 96.  Cincinnati’s Dave Collins was a distant third with 79.  You can find just about anything on the internet.  This stuff came from the online Baseball Almanac.

That’s going to do it for turf memory no. 1.  I don’t miss that artificial turf at all, but I did see a lot of good stuff down there at Riverfront. 

In 1976, my brother and I liked to play APBA baseball — you know, the one with the cards and the dice. This was the Big Red Machine era, and of course the Reds had a strong APBA team.  Whichever of us used the Reds usually won, and I usually wanted to be the Reds.  It got to the point where my brother didn’t want to play if I was the Reds again, so I’d give in and pick some other team.  Then my brother would say, "ok, then I’m the Reds," and we’d wind up rolling around knocking stuff over, wrestling over who got to be the Reds.  Ah, the good old days.

Last month, when going through boxes of Christmas decorations, I came across a box with that old APBA game in it.  There were the big cardboard batting result charts, injury chart, manager options booklet, the dice, and a shoebox full of player cards, each in a team envelope.  There were team sets for ’76, ’77, and ’79.  (I don’t know why no ’78.  I guess it was a lean year.)  Hit with a wave of nostalgia, I took out the ’76 Reds and flipped through the cards just to see those great names again: Rose, Bench, Morgan, Perez…  then I noticed something I’d forgotten–the nicknames.

APBA player cards include the player’s nickname.  I don’t know where APBA got these nicknames.  Some are familiar, like Tony "Dog" Perez, and Johnny "J.B." Bench.   Some I’d forgotten, like Dan "Cobra" Driessen and George "Yahtzee" Foster.  And some I don’t recall at all, like Cesar "Tony Blake" Geronimo, Dave "Elmer" Concepcion, and Joe "Pea" Morgan.  "Pea" Morgan?!  I’ve heard of "Little Joe", but "Pea?"  Peter Edward Rose is just "Pete."  George Kenneth Griffey is "Ken."   Then of course there’s "Champ" Summers and "Mandrake" Flynn. 

It was fun to look back at the nicknames from the Reds,  and across the Leagues — some familiar to me, like Mark "Bird" Fidrych, Fred "Chicken" Stanley, and Ron "Penguin" Cey.  Some not, such as Brooks "The Head" Robinson, and Tim "Big Head" McCarver.  Oh, I probably could have found all this nickname stuff on the internet, but then that really wouldn’t have had the same old dusty nostalgic feel as holding those old cards in my hands.  And in conclusion…

Match the player to his APBA nickname:

1. Thurman Munson           a) Gentle Ben
2. Bill Lee                        b) Secretariat
3. Paul Blair                     c) Chiquita
4. Darrell Evans                d) Spaceman
5. Dave Winfield              e) Cakes
6. Joe Torre                     f) Howdy Doody
7. Willie Stargell               g) Motor Mouth
8. Jim Palmer                   h) Scrap Iron
9. John Montefusco           i) The Godfather
10. Frank Tanana                 j) The Count

Special appreciation goes to all those known only by their nicknames, including: Boog Powell, Rusty Staub, Cookie Rojas, and Reds bench coach Bucky Dent, who happens to have a well-known second nickname which will not be included in this writing.  Thank you. 

Answers: 1-h, 2-d, 3-g, 4-f, 5-b, 6-i, 7-a, 8-e, 9-j, 10-c

I wonder if people still play this game?

I wonder if they still make this game?

I wonder what this game is going for on ebay?

Just curious. 

You might even call me "Mr. Curious."

***CAUTION***  Grammatical Entry.  Please avoid this entry if you have an aversion to grammar.

Sometimes runs batted in is written RBI and sometimes RBIs.  I prefer RBIs because I say it that way.  Like I might say, "Dave Concepcion has 950 [are-be-eyes]."  I usually say acronyms as if they are words, and if a word is a plural noun, I usually put an s on it, so if RBI is a word/noun, I like to put an s on it.  However, if I were writing a formal essay, I’d avoid the s. 

Some sports writers don’t use the s.  Some do.  I can understand writing, "Dave Concepcion was a great SS, and has 950 career RBI."  I’m used to it, and when I read it, I’m thinking runs batted in.  When I see RBIs, I read it as [are-be-eyes], and I just happen to prefer RBIs. 

Whet gets me is when people say [are-be-eye] to mean multiple RBIs.  Like someone might say, "Ozzie Smith has 793 [are-be-eye] and is in the Hall of Fame, while Dave Concepcion has 157 more [are-be-eye] and isn’t."  To me that just sounds wrong.  That [are-be-eye] hits my ear with a jolt like reaching for the doorknob and getting zapped with static electricity.  Ouch! 

So in conclusion, I don’t mind plural RBI in writing, but when people say a player has multiple [are-be-eye], it bugs me.

>Congratulations to Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr., this year’s inductees into the Hall of Fame.