Wednesday, April 07, 1999
Baseball fire still burning in Cincinnati
BY JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The vibe still rumbles from Opening Day. The players' strike of 1994 is finally over in Cincinnati.
In roaming the stands Monday for a story about the things happening to fans for the first time this season (first hot dog, first foul ball, first person to be told to get behind the yellow line of standing-room-only etc.), I was struck by how eager the fans were to embrace baseball, the way they had before Aug.12, 1994.
No matter whom I met, the subject always turned to the same thing: People wanted Reds baseball to be what it used to be — the place to be on a nice spring/summer/fall day in Cincinnati.
It's hard to believe Cincinnati used to be that. It's as though all these new ballparks and new franchises and new home-run records have nuked us back into the Stone Age as a baseball town.
There's still some life left
Although I've never bought into the doom and gloom of Cincinnati not being able to compete even if it had a good team and ultimately a new ballpark, I did question if there were any embers left in the ashes.
In the last five years, I've talked with a lot of fans. All colors, ages, sexes. Five years of rooting through the ashes. Finally, some embers.
Embers in the words of Diane Borman of Blue Ash as she talked baseball while feeding strained sweet potatoes from a jar to her 6-month-old son, Jake, wearing a Reds cap. Huge cheeks on that boy, Jake, bigger than even Don Zimmer's. Cheeks like the late Dizzy Gillespie blowing the horn. Next to Jake, father Jon. Next to Jon, Jake's sister, Kelly, 3, sipping a Sprite. Kelly was at her “fourth” Opening Day; the first one was when she was still in the womb.
Embers in the words of Mike and Annette Durham of West Chester, parents of 14-month-old Vincent, who I assumed (wrongly) was attending his first Opening Day. All of the Durham kids — Jessica, 6; Nicholas, 5; Kelly, 3 — attended their first opener before they'd hit their first birthdays. Most of them “attended” their first opener before they were born ... as did the next Durham, due in August. If the baby is a boy, he'll probably be named Trevor; if a girl, probably Natalie. If Greg Vaughn has 40 homers by the break, probably the naming session gets interesting.
Embers in the words of West Chester's Lonnie Stinson, 29, and the eyes of his 3-year-old son, Derek, bonded by baseball and a grandfather who rarely missed a Reds game on radio in Columbus.
What strike?
Embers in the words of Dan Neely, 37, of Colerain Township, the first Reds fan to be told,“Behind the yellow line!” by an usher on the green level. (The order came .21 seconds after Loretta Lynn had finished off the word “... brave” in the national anthem.) Embers in the words of Darrell Clemons, 44, of Batavia, the first Reds fan to be told, “Don't smoke down here, or I'll have to ask you to leave the ballpark.” (Ninety minutes earlier, he'd been eating lunch uptown at Tina's when he and his buddies were offered blue box seats at $16 apiece. They jumped on them; that wouldn't have been the case the last four years.)
Embers in the words of Joan Bova of White Oak, eating the first hot dog of the new season. Embers in the words of her friend, Nancy Kohrs of Highland Heights, the first fan to kill a twenty and a ten at the concession stand (four beers, two brats, two dogs.)
Embers in the quintet of Americana that was chucking, ducking and catching the first foul ball of the season off a Reds bat, down in section 118 of the blue seats on the right-field line: Kerry Ketring, 52, of Loveland (ducked); Brian Freed, 24, of College Hill (deflected); Bob Springate, 46, of Harrodsburg, Ky. (booted); Denny Brown, 52, of West Chester (caught), and Ryne Earley, 7, of Hillsboro to whom Brown offered the ball.
“I have one at home,” said Ryne, who was named after Sandberg.
Ryne turned down the ball. He didn't know about the strike. He was 2 then.
Amazing thing. For the first time in five years, nobody else in the ballpark on the river knew about the strike, either.
Enquirer reporter John Erardi welcomes your comments at 768-8446.
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