...to attend a baseball game at the Great American Ball Park, hosted by the Cincinnati Reds, the so-called "Royalty of Baseball," the oldest team in major league baseball, established in 1869, that's four years after the end of the Civil War, the first team to host a night game under the lights, and be subjected to the same slew of asinine between-inning "promotions" and contests, not to mention the pre-game cheerleaders...
...and the made-up "mascot" Gapper that you might find at a Tampa Bay Devil Rays "game." Even the hydrocephalic yet strangely magnetic Mr. Red...
Nice enough park, though, but as a replacement for a riverside concrete doughnut, nothing can compare with Pittsburgh's PNC Park, where we saw a Pirates-Brewers pitching duel in July 2001. Too bad the Pirates should be relegated, European soccer-league style, to the minor leagues, along with my boyhood idols the Kansas City Royals. (Calls to mind the time that I watched, alone, in my Hutchinson, Kansas basement, Chris Chambliss end the Royals' inspired 1976 playoff run with a toilet-paper festooned walk-off home run in Yankee Stadium.)
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That's a shame about the Reds -- I always thought it was a cool tradition when they got to open the season first every year as a token to their seniority. Unless there's a pig carrying out baseballs or Birdzerk, there's no room at the major league level for between-inning promotions. Soy oil night is okay too, though, I guess.
I remember the Chambliss homer, too. But not watching it. Either because of the Eastern time zone or stricter parents, I had to go to bed at 9 pm. When the Yanks were in the playoffs, my dad would write the final score (sometimes with commentary) on a card and leave it by my bed, and I would wake up and see what happened. Funny, huh?
It actually is a bit strange that I remember seeing that game as well. I can't swear to it, but as of now I believe I saw it real-time. According to Wikipedia (my source for all non-nuclear-physics data), Game 5 was Thursday, October 14, 1976, but I'm not sure when it ended. Maybe playoff games in the 1970s still started at 7 pm Eastern... that would be 6 pm Central...assuming a three-hour game, 9 pm would have been about the outer limit for bed time for me at that time...in the second grade...but who knows....there may have been a special dispensation due to the playoffs.
As for GABP promotions, believe me, if there had been a pig or any other barnyard animal delivering baseballs, and/or a member of Birdzerk (esp. Harry Canary) providing inter-inning entertainment, I would have been the first to prostate myself before it like the original cargo-cult member.
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