By Stan Randolph:
With this year being the 150th anniversary of professional baseball, I thought back to the city that had the first pro team – Cincinnati. We can track pro baseball for all of the 150 years through Cincinnati.
My first experience with pro baseball in Cincinnati was as a kid spending my early childhood years in Dayton, Ohio (home of Pete Rose). My uncle had tickets from time to time that he received as owner of a business near Cincinnati. Even though I have been told that I was taken to a couple of games back when I was 4 and 5, in once instance got to meet some players, my first true memory was as a teenager when my family traveled back to Ohio from our home at that time in Washington state to see family.
My uncle had box seats 10 rows up from the first base dugout. The Reds were playing the St. Louis Cardinals. The two things that really stand out to me from that game was how great it felt to be sitting in the sun watching Reds baseball and the fact that at that game Johnny Bench got his 1,000 hit by bunting down the third base line (probably the only bunt base hit he ever had in his career). They played a double header, which is something I wish Major League Baseball would bring back. I got to watch the many stars I had only seen on TV and from the baseball cards I collected for years. The starting line-up had Bench at Catcher, Tony Perez at 1st, Joe Morgan at 2nd, Pete Rose at 3rd, Dave Concepcion at SS, and George Foster, Cesar Geronimo, and Ken Griffey in the outfield and Jack Billingham on the mound.
That is 4 Hall of Famers – Bench, Morgan, Perez as well as manager Sparky Anderson, and one that could be in the Hall – Rose, as well as the father of a Hall of Famer – Griffey.
Growing up as a fan of The Big Red Machine always kept be looking at the box scores and watching the Saturday game of the week whenever they played. When they won back to back World Series in 1975 and 1976 I was on cloud nine. At that time no other Major League team was even close, which when you figure that their pitching was good but not great, seems even more impressive. Sparky Anderson was an incredible manager.
As the years moved on, I kept focus on the Reds through the Ray Knight years, the Nasty Boys years, the Pete Rose player/coach years, watching Barry Larkin (HOF) show what a professional short stop looked like, and even today with players like Joey Votto, Scooter Gennett, and the new addition of Yasiel Puig I will find myself checking the box scores as the season progresses.
Being a lifelong Reds fan has provided me with lots of enjoyment and frustration but it has and will be worth it all as baseball starts up again. I am 60 years old this year and my dad always said I was born a baseball fan (as all of my family before me and now down to my children and grandchildren) so I figure I have been a fan for 40% of the time professional baseball has been around.
I have lived in Washington state for almost 50 years now and raised my children to be Seattle Mariner fans. We would go to a couple of games a year when they were younger and watch many more games on TV as they grew up but I have never lost my love for my Reds.