Craig Ullery is a baseball nut. Or, more precisely, he is crazy about the Cincinnati Reds.

This is a hobby, not a career. Assistant superintendent for Mason Schools, he is a husband and a father of two. He has coached basketball. Baseball is not his life. But it surely is an important piece of it.

His wife gave him a trip to Reds fantasy camp a couple of years ago for Christmas. He'll be 51 years old next month, but he played like a boy, ending up with a respectable batting average and seriously aching muscles. "He was so sore, he could hardly move," according to his wife, Vickie.

"Worth it," he says.

He is undaunted, more or less, by the Reds' dismal record this year. "I still go to the park every chance I get," he says. And he drags along the rest of his family when he can. "Keeping the faith" he calls it.

He has some sports memorabilia - a home-run ball signed by Vada Pinson, the bats he used at fantasy camp. "Nothing of much value, except to me." In his basement, he has hung all 13 Sports Illustrated covers featuring Pete Rose. "He should be in the Hall of Fame. Absolutely."

A fan. He likes the history, the feel of the game. In this, he is not unique. Baseball is not merely America's national pastime, it is our national idiom. In criminal justice, there's the three-strike rule. In social circumstances, we talk about getting to second base. And if your boss wants to pat you on the back, she might say that your marketing proposal is a home run.

We know what this means.

In Cincinnati, we might be willing to part with a department store or three, but we stepped up to the plate, so to speak, when it was time to build a new baseball park. And we have been buying tickets here, even though Major League Baseball itself is in a slump. Attendance is up 32 percent over last year at the new Great American Ball Park, a name bought and paid for by Reds owner Carl Lindner. I admire his class. He could have made us call it the Great American Insurance Ball Park.

But he did not.

So it sounds an awful lot like what we might have called it on our own.

But by next season, a little of the shine may have worn off the new ballpark. Those who are not baseball nuts will probably need more encouragement to come inside. A winning team, for instance.

When Carl Lindner and his lieutenants decide what to do about next season, when they wrestle with being a "small market team" and with free agents and players' agents and what it costs to get starting pitchers these days, I hope they will consider the team's place in this community.

In March of this year, talking about the new ballpark with Enquirer reporters, Lindner said, "I'm trying to use this to meld the city together. I mean, to pay the people back that helped vote for the thing. I sure would like to help give something back."

Craig says, "The Big Red machine gave us something to rally around, unified the whole city. We need another home run."

Baseball is not our whole life.

But it surely is an important piece of it.

E-mail lpulfer@enquirer.com or phone 768-8393.