Tiny Dunn Day

It's a little late, but here's some fun from Saturday's game with the Phillies. You can't hold the lateness against me. I can't operate well with Tiny Casey being MIA (and don't miss the clues here if you haven't seen them already). Anyway, onward. It rained pretty much all day up until the time the game started. That was quite lucky, as we were pretty sure that once we got there we'd be turning right around and going home.

There were stacks of Adam Dunn figurines right inside the gates. 40,000 Tiny Dunns is quite a sight to behold. I hear that Griffey said they were an excellent likeness to Austin Kearns. Apparently some people didn't care much for their Tiny Dunns, as there were headless and armless Adams everywhere. Poor Tiny Dunns.

The game began with not one, but three ceremonial first pitches. One by a guy that survived a stroke (I have a feeling I was supposed to know who he was, but I didn't recognize his name), another by a racecar driver I'd never heard of, and I can't remember who threw the third, but whoever it was threw it far above Mr. Red's reach.

The only thing I can really say about the actual game is that it was over way too fast. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as it was getting colder very fast by the end. However, innings three through seven are pretty much a blur of various outs. By the sixth or seventh inning we decided one solitary hit would be just as good as a win. Quinton McCracken had a pretty bad time of it after dropping what should have been an easy flyball out. The worst part of it was that he had it. It was in his glove, and then it was on the ground. Yes, he should have caught it, but the booing during his next at-bat was just awful. It's a pretty common thing in Cincinnati, but I really hate it. I think Christina and I were the only ones not booing.

Anyway, after that debacle, Ryan Howard (Least Favorite Philly) was on second instead of out and the inning continued instead of ended. David Bell doubled shortly thereafter and put the Phillies up 1-0. Now, if that were the end score, people could blame McCracken all they wanted, but it wasn't. The Phillies scored again, and the Reds lost by 2, so, all said, McCracken's error doesn't really matter. Unless you want to say that the run pushed all the momentum to the Philly side, which I won't deny.

Dunn, on Tiny Dunn day, with Tiny Dunns being waved at him from every direction, had an opportunity to end the game in the same dramatic fashion Griffey had employed earlier in the week. Instead of a two-out three-run walk-off homer (or even a base hit for that matter), Dunn struck out, and thus ended the game. The Phillies won 2-0. Then, without fanfare, we left Cincinnati, had waffles at Waffle House, and went home. Very surprisingly, there were no drunk kids in the Waffle House. There was no one at all. Just another strange event in the week of weirdness.