Good morning folks. A terrific day in the east, really beautiful, cold, crisp October weather.
The baseball playoffs are starting to get interesting. I hope for more days when the Reds are part of it. My son and I were talking about the Reds' new manager on the phone last night. He's a die-hard Reds fan even though he grew up in the DC suburbs and got to maybe one Reds game a year when he was a kid, when we'd go for visits.
What a thread through the generations a ball team can be.
My father, 93, told me a story he'd never told me before last weekend about when he was 23, in 1954, he got back from the Army and for some reason took his dad and my mother's - then his fiancee -- dad to a Reds-Cubs doubleheader. He could remember it clearly. He said a Reds fan was making fun of a Cubs outfielder named Hank Sauer for being so slow-footed. About that time, Sauer hits a home run and my mother's father says, "I guess he won't have to run fast on that one." With just that information I was able to search the boxscores and find out that doubleheader was on April 25, 1954 -- about 18 months before I was born.
My dad also repeated the story of his father going to the 1919 World Series, right after getting back from France in WW1. My grandfather was an excellent ballplayer, but he said he never saw anyone hit a ball the way Shoeless Joe Jackson did in batting practice.
My son remembers going to a game in around 2010 and during BP Joey Votto tossed a ball to one of his cousins.
Of course, my youth included the Big Red Machine days. Too many memories to count. I hope while there is time my son and I get to share a few Reds glory days.
