Hi Blog! It's been 4 years! I am shocked it's still here. Anyway, I've still been hearting the Reds, it's just quite difficult to write insightfully about hearting them when I'm at work for 90% of the games. Just thought the 5-0 start was a fantastic reason to see if I could still log in to little We Heart the Reds. I can! Let's go REDS!!!! Also, Tiny Casey loves seeing his full-size counterpart on TV again.
Whoa holiday! I'm back at the blog. Now that I'm here, though, I can't think of anything to say. Or rather, I can't narrow anything down to something say-able. Not posting for a couple months at a time creates this problem.
I'll start with this: I'm not sure why, but I've been feeling better about the second half of the season. I don't know if it's the new management or just the new half or what, but I feel better about it. I don't know that the Reds are doing any better, as we're still near the bottom of the division (though at least now the Pirates are under us where they rightfully belong). I think part of it is that I've been able to learn a bit more about the games on a more regular basis now that the newspaper hasn't been disappearing every day. Just knowing what's going on helps.
I think it must just be knowing that we're not in last place anymore. Not in last place and sweeping the Braves. Even losing to the Cubs by embarassingly large margins hasn't been able to break through the tiniest little glimmer of optimism I've let come back. You know, I'd love to think the Reds could still pull something amazing out of their asses. They've still got about a million games left against the Brewers. I suppose something could happen. It'd be nice if the rest of the division would keep sucking, too.
So there's what you get when I let my mind wander off and write whatever it thinks it wants to talk about. At least I stayed with baseball.
COMPLETELY RANDOM CHANGE OF SUBJECT
It doesn't appear likely that the mystery of the ballpark trashcans is going to be solved this season. Prospects for attending any games this season look dim. Tiny Casey and Tinier Dunn are getting bored of looking at the same trash cans over and over, but there's no more investigating to be done around here. All the research is complete.
I wonder how one becomes a Blog of Note.
Hey! I'm online! I've been online for more than 5 minutes without getting kicked off! It's a miracle! Anyway, I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that I still heart the Reds. I can only see about 1 1/2 games a week, I can't manage to stay online long enough to get any information on the team and all I know about most games is whether they won or lost, but I still heart them as much as ever. The last nearly two months have not been pleasant. I hope they pull out of this crap, soon. At least they haven't been losing by quite so many runs lately. It looks a little less depressing. Also, I want to know what the hell is going on with Arroyo. Is this just how he pitches when he's not trying to prove he's too good for Cincinnati, or is something actually wrong? And one more little tidbit. I haven't been able to keep up on Freel's injury lately, but I hope all is going well for him, and Farney as well. His little world was probably rocked pretty good, too. Go Reds!
In my quest to solve the mystery of the Great American Trash Cans, I enlisted the help of a great, though small, detective. Tiny Agent Casey and his protege, Tinier Dunnson, are on the case. The two are very thorough. To begin the investigation they researched the different kinds of recepticles they might be looking for.
I'm not used to this whole working during baseball thing. As it turns out, it sucks. I don't get to see anything. And apparently I'm going to whine about that all season, but I gots ta make a livin'. In the last several days the Reds have finally won a game against the Diamondbacks, won another series with the Cubs (though barely) and lost the first game of the series with the Brewers. The common theme of all the games (until today's) was pretty good pitching backed by crap at the plate. This is made all the more disappointing by the hot start last year. Granted, last year we had a few more big bats in the lineup. One that I still miss a great deal. Because, you know, I knew him personally and all (that was sarcasm in case you didn't get it. I feel like an ass explaining it, but no one ever gets it). DAMN YOU AOL AND YOUR RANDOM BIAS AGAINST PARAGRAPH BREAKS!! Tonight it seems the offense might finally have started putting things together, scoring 6 runs. Unfortunately, those 6 runs were less than the Brewers' 10. If Coffey hadn't blown up and given up those five runs, though, Cincy might have been able to pull off another victory. That is assuming, of course, that the rest of the game went the way it did. But if you've seen Back to the Future you know what happens if you change the past. Hamilton contributed two of the Reds' runs with his third homer of the season. Encarnacion and Griffey also helped the score. As for pitching, Milton did not have too terrible an outing. He only gave up one home run in his five innings, only three hits, and three runs. Santos and Saarloos allowed a run a piece. Coutlangus continued looking pretty darn awesome and allowed no runs on one hit. Coffey, however, allowed five runs, four earned (thanks mostly to a Bill Hall grand slam) in one-third of an inning. Tomorrow it's game two. Matt Belisle attempts to keep his good times rolling against Milwaukee's Dave Bush. The game's on FSN at 7:10. Guess where I'll be!
New blog to link for you. New for me anyway. I've been meaning to check this out for a while but I am lazy and have failed to do so until now. It's quite entertaining. Go check out Redus and Weep.
I finally got to see Hamilton do something live!!! I missed his first major league at bat. I missed his first major league start. I missed his first major league hit. I missed his first major league home run. Granted, three of those were contained in one game. Tonight, thanks to the wonders of this thing called a "night off" I got to see his second major league home run. I think he's going to be pretty exciting.
Anyone else think Jeff Brantley's air time consists of more laughing than anything else?
That would be my new favorite Real Man of Genius and I just thought you all should know it, since I heard the commercial during tonight's game. FOUR!!!
Tonight was another 1 run loss for the Reds, this one coming at the end of 11 innings. Thanks to the extended nature of the game, I was able to hear/see more than the last inning of the game. Still, I was not able to bear witness to Josh Hamilton's first major league hit/homerun. I'm sorry to have missed it, but I'm sure I can find a number of replays. There's probably one up on Reds.com already. It's going to be quite the popular story in the Cincy area.
Kyle Lohse started the game for the Reds. The only players not to leave the bench or bullpen during the course of the game were Chad Moeller, Victor Santos and Jon Coutlangus.
Dunn started off his evening with a solo homer in the 1st. Hamilton's 2-run bomb came in the 3rd. Brandon Phillips finished out the scoring with his own solo shot, also in the 3rd.
Even with those three home runs, the Reds could not pull out a win. The Snakes jumped out to the lead in their half of the 1st on a 3-run homer from Chad Tracy. Hamilton and Phillips gave the Reds the lead in the 3rd, but Chris Snyder's home run in the 4th brought the game to a tie. It stayed that way until the bottom of the 11th, when Arizona finally managed to put the game out of its misery, handing the Reds loss number 4, with a score of 5-4.
