Some science fiction - or another rant - or a thought on the signing of Jocketty - or some randomness

Once upon a time, there was a baseball team. Actually, there were thirty of them, until two of them from Florida went away because no one ever came to see them play. Then there were twenty-eight. Oh, they were glorious things, except for the Yankees and the Red Sox, who were the epitome of what eventually broke baseball, which was just a small scale tragedy in a drastically mutating world. When what was left of the human race - after Pakistan nuked Israel and then the US nuked Pakistan and then Russia nuked the US and then China nuked Russia and then surprisingly Switzerland nuked China - went to Mars and abandoned Earth, it was discovered that baseball just couldn't be played on Mars, for the atmosphere was too thick and it was too expensive to build ballparks that had to contain a thousand foot home runs. The first generation lamented the loss of their beautiful game, but subsequent generations forgot baseball ever existed because it was easy to play football on the surface of Mars, and they all got a kick out of the hits which sent men flying twenty yards down the field.

Once upon a time, there were mighty sluggers who hit 500 foot home runs. That was before children stopped building strong bones and muscle by sitting in front of the television during the time they were supposed to be out running around developing their bodies.

Once upon a time, there was a team called the Cincinnati Reds who had won more championships than only three other teams, yet the Information Age had decided that the Cincinnati market was too small to be worthy of attention and tried to bury it beneath the avalanche of Yankees and Red Sox crap, which was bought by people across the country who just liked to root for the frontrunner. There was all of this country music singing about the "simple life," lamenting change and praising the "country" way of doing things, yet it never said root, root, root for the home team or anything like that, and people who lived in the Cincinnati area wore Yankees caps like the guy in the restaurant right now or that guy right outside the window with the Red Sox cap...

I just don't get it. I guess I am more old-fashioned than any of these people who hang those communist stars on their houses and proclaim superiority over city folk, because I just think it's criminal to root for a team just because they've won for a few years instead of sticking to your own team. Now that the Reds have demonstrated a desire to win this year, I wonder how many bandwagoners will join us faithful if the formula works. Finally getting rid of John Allen, who has been there throughout the losing, may have been the biggest step towards ending this seven year losing streak. Signing Dusty Baker, Francisco Cordero, and Walt Jocketty is, in my not so humble opinion, going to change these losing ways.

I understand sabermetrics, but I think the overemphasis on stats is making people overlook what is going on here. There is a winning attitude here that you can't quantify. Jocketty has been to the playoffs seven times in his stint with the Deadbirds. (That's in 13 seasons - more than half!) (An aside - to demonstrate how much I hate that team, I even hate the cardinals I see sitting outside on trees and flying around in the winter weather. Environmentalists would abhor me if they saw my brain seeing these birds fall dead out of the sky!) Anyone who says that Jocketty isn't serving as a second GM is kidding themselves. And anyone who thinks Wayno has done a good job in his stint is overlooking the succession of failures like The Trade, Ryan Franklin, Jason Ellison, Mike Stinkton, Rheal Cormier, etc, etc, etc. (Stop with the Phillips Arroyo thing - they just don't outweigh the bad.)

I am so happy. I hope to see Bob Castellini on the winter caravan this year just to thank him. And in other news, I will be around Reds country to go to the winter caravan. I will be around Reds country all summer. I am going to Spring Training. And I will be in Cincinnati for the summer, which means I will be at the ballpark more often than not. Here's some math. If I have gone to about thirty Major League Baseball games every year for the past three years, doesn't that mean that if I'm in the city of my team, I will go to forty this year? Ha! I'll serve as a clubhouse accessless beat writer! Ha ha! Well, we need another voice on the Reds with the Post closing, don't we?

Oh, I can't wait for this season.