The five-day All-Star FanFest, held at the Duke Energy Convention Center on Fifth Street in downtown Cincinnati, began the Friday before the following Tuesday night's playing of the 86th Midsummer Classic. There was a Celebrity softball game. A Futures Game for minor league all-stars. The Home Run Derby. The non-stop Block Party at The Banks. These events ran concurrently and, in some cases, continuously for almost six days. In terms of Heavy Artillery uploads, the 1,760 photos (mostly from big brother Lou) which remain after deletions provide ample ammunition for publication but not as much in the sense of isolated big impacts but rather as a blizzardly hail of blanketing crossfire. Duck and cover might be the better part of valor when you wade deep into the following multi-part series of "All-Star Summer" postings.
Thus, I have settled upon organizing the photos, more or less, by solitary events rather than as a day-by-day, hour-by-hour serial chronology. Therefore, in coming weeks the postings will focus respectively on the FanFest or the Futures Game or the Home Run Derby or the All-Star Game individually rather than, for example, include with each new posting yet more photos from the FanFest (which I attended all five days). In all likelihood, one or more events may be subdivided in several subsets.
As such, we'll begin with some sights of Cincinnati ranging from Friday July 10 through Tuesday July 14 [there's that number again!] to give you some small sense of the setting.
8am on Second Street, Saturday morning, July 11. Overcast. Nearly desolate. Heading east into downtown.
The logos, the imagery, the iconography of the 2015 All-Star Game was creative and attractive. Here (above), one of the multitude of designs is draped across the front of venerable Union Terminal. Some of you may know that the area directly in front of where Union Terminal stands today, almost precisely where you see the entertainment tent set up, was the old Union Grounds home ballpark of the undefeated 1869 Red Stockings.
The few remaining vestiges of the old Skywalk were similarly festooned with ASG regalia. This one (above) spans Fifth Street, just a few blocks east of the Convention Center.
You'll note the wet street. Cincinnati summers, as is true for most temperate latitudes, carries with it the threat for afternoon thunderstorms and nearly every day of the city's five-day event would see warm-to-hot sunny days interrupted by a brief cloudburst and, in one case, a fierce storm front race across the Queen City. Aside from a brief light shower during the Futures Game, the big events at Great American Ball Park escaped precipitation.
The art deco downtown landmark, Carew Tower, sported this banner and, at night, had projected upon its side a giant stylized newsprint image of an 1860s-era ballplayer.
The E.W. Scripps Company building wore the Mr Redlegs ballcap and handlebar 'stache. This very cool-looking decoration was wildly popular among both visitors to the city and Reds Country natives.
Ballplayers, team owners and the scions of Castellini, Lindner, Proctor and Gamble, General and Electric rolled their flashiest wheels around town. Above, a Lamborghini Gallardo is seen prowling Central Avenue, presumably as someone films his or her audition tape for Top Gear version 3.0.
The skies over Cincinnati, too, were filled with exotic machinery. [Insert ubiquitous Heavy Artillery Led Zeppelin reference here.]
Down at the ballyard, the image of bat and ball from Pete Rose's record-breaking hit - which graced the reverse side of the scoreboard since the year 2003 - found itself replaced with this ASG and Red Stocking artwork.
What celebratory day at the ballpark could be considered complete without patriotic bunting?
Over at The Jungle, the PLARF's Cincinnati franchise got into the spirit of things.
I spent more time walking the downtown streets of Cin City over those five All-Star days than I have perhaps, in toto, over the past several years. My camera lens captured a few of the still-standing ancient structures that may be found within a block or two of the Convention Center:
In 1879, according to Redleg Journal, the Reds Opening Day attendance figure was a cozy 1,250. That season the Reds were led by player-manager Cal McVey, the last hold-over from the undefeated 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first all-professional baseball team. Reds pitcher Will White set National League records that season for starts and complete games (75 for both) and innings pitched (680) which remain unbroken. And on the 13th of July, 136 years ago to the day that Reds' All-Star Todd Frazier won the 2015 Home Run Derby, for the first time in Reds franchise history the club hit more than one homer in a game (against the long-since defunct Troy Haymakers).
Following the 1880 season, the National League drafted new rules specifically targeted at punishing the Reds and in the process setting a precedent which survives to this day [see; MLB commissioner Fay Vincent strong-arming the Hall of Fame into changing its voting rules in order to exclude The Hit King from appearing on the HOF ballot in 1991]. The governing body of the N.L., in October of 1880, prohibited Sunday baseball and also, with Cincinnati's native Rhinelanders squarely in the crosshairs, enacted a prohibition of alcohol sales at ballparks. Rather than deprive its loyal German-immigrant patrons a frothy lager and having to operate a dry ballpark, Reds ownership told the bluenoses at the League offices, in not so many anachronistic words, We quit this b*itch! And so in 1881 there was no Reds baseball for the saintly burghers of Cincinnati.
The Crown Overall Manufacturing Company was an interesting discovery.
Roll the credits!
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