An Open Letter to Reds Fans
After a rough start to the 1982 season, Reds second baseman wrote an open letter to fans of the team
Cincinnati Reds
Joe Morgan’s Mysterious Dodgers Connection
Joe Morgan made a career out of beating the Los Angeles Dodgers. The damage varied from beating L.A. in the regular season to knocking them out of the playoffs. Over a nine year span, Morgan’s teams ended the Dodgers season five times, including two defeats on final day of the season. But one thing many don’t know …
Reflections on Riverfront Stadium
I didn’t grow up going to Wrigley Field or Fenway Park. I cut my teeth as a baseball fan at the concrete monolith known as Riverfront Stadium. I attended my first big league game there in 1975 when the Reds hosted the Astros. Over the years there were lots of memories, some shenanigans and a …
That Time I Met Johnny Bench (Twice)
If you were a kid in southwestern Ohio in the 1970s and you could eat anywhere you wanted, the answer was clear: Johnny Bench’s Home Plate. Bench owned two restaurants in the Cincinnati area at the time and one of them was near the Northgate Mall, which was about 40 minutes from my house. I …
That Time I Met Eric Davis
Note: This is a guest post from Nate Dunlevy My love affair with baseball began with the same cliches that every child of the ’80s retells. I don’t know if it was staying up late to watch Bill Buckner make the same error I made a thousand times, or if it was the wood paneling …
Schmidt & Brett in 1971
The most important day of the 1980 baseball season may very well have taken place in June of 1971. June 8th was draft day. The Chicago White Sox held the #1 pick and chose a high school catcher named Danny Goodwin from Peoria Central High School. Goodwin was the consensus #1 choice, a 6′-2″ 195 …
The Birth of the Game Winning RBI
It seemed like a good idea at the time. At the beginning of 1980, Major League Baseball implemented Rule 1004-a, which established a new batting statistic called Game Winning RBI. A batter would receive credit for a GWRBI if they recorded ”the r.b.i. that gives a club the lead it never relinquishes.” Introduced during the …
My Top 3 Larry Bowa Moments
I was an outsider. A malcontent. I grew up as a Phillies Phan in Reds Country in the 1970s. Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton were my guys, but I also had an obsession with shortstop Larry Bowa. He was small and feisty and played great defense. In T-Ball, I played shortstop and wore his uniform number …
Joe Morgan Comes Home
After eight seasons in Cincinnati, second-baseman Joe Morgan was looking to prove he could still contribute as he entered his age 36 season. He won back-to-back MVP awards and two World Series with the Reds in 1975 & ‘76 but his offensive numbers fell sharply after that. He hit just .236 in 1978 and .250 …
The 80’s are my 50’s
I grew up reading Angell, Halberstam, Kahn and others wax nostalgic about baseball in the 1950’s. The pictures they painted of sun-drenched afternoons at Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds made the era come to life. I’m sure it was a magical time with great baseball. They can have it. This isn’t an indictment of …
