Baseball, June 2016

June 2016 portends to be a big month in the vaunted history of professional baseball's oldest franchise.  For fans of the mighty Redlegs, our long (National League) nightmare is over; In one week's time Peter Edward Rose will have his jersey number retired by the Reds and he'll be inducted into the team Hall of Fame.  A lion's share of the credit must be split between Reds owner Robert (he lets me call him "Bob") Castellini for keeping up the unrelenting pressure applied to the Office of the Commissioner but also to Commissioner Rob Manfred for acceding to the cause of righteous justice and common sense.

In the spirit of using Heavy Artillery to remorselessly pound one's enemy into capitulative submission - and maybe mortal oblivion, take that A. Bartlett Giamatti, Fay Vincent and Bud "Bug" [sic] Selig.

On June 5th I took in the Reds game on a day that was sunny then cloudy and rainy and then sunny again.  You know what they say about the weather in Cincinnati..... yes, correct, the same thing they say about the weather just about everywhere else.  With all the talk this season about trading our savior (circa 2008) Jay Bruce and with the Reds in a desperate bid to unload Dat Showboat BP, I took what could be my last opportunity to get some photos of the Reds three veterans - Votto, Phillips and Bruce - together in one frame:

Here, Votto mans first base, a defensive shift has Dat Dude LOB playing deep in the hole (essentially in short right field) with Bruuuuuce out standing in his field in right.  

Later in the game, the Reds loaded the bases with the same three All-Stars:

MVP on third, Dat Dude E4E4 on second and the Beaumont (TX) Bomber on first.

I tried - mostly in vain - to capture with my trusty Android Galaxy S8000 the June 10th post-game fireworks display down at the old ball yard.  A few photos turned out moderately well:

Most of my efforts were rank amateurism:

One was so bad it might qualify as modern art:

The preceding serves as prelude, of course, to this weekend's upcoming dual celebration of The Hit King's HOF induction/number retirement as well as this weekend's concurrent 40th anniversary commemoration of the Big Red Machine's 1976 World Championship team.  '76 was a magical year and the power of that number permeated Reds Country this summer in unexpected ways:

Old habits die hard and on the eve of Peter Edward's big weekend certain elements in and around baseball have continued in their campaign to marginalize Rose and erase his name from the record books.  Watching MLB Tonight on the MLB Network one evening a few weeks ago, the commentators were discussing a player whose consecutive game hit streak reached 20 games.  The on-air talent, in discussing just how difficult is a consecutive game hit streak of that length, then tried to recall the longest streaks.  Of course they cited the all-time record of 56 games held by The Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio.  Then the discussion went something like this:

"I know that guys have gotten close to DiMaggio.  Paul Molitor had 38 or 39 games, Jimmy Rollins had 38 or 39."

Uh-huh.  

That deafening roar emanating from Reds Country arose from multitudinous Reds fans shouting at their 800-inch 4D high-def televisions that Pete Rose holds the all-time National League record of 44 consecutive games with a hit.   MLB Network, don't act like you don't know that.  Speaking of Jimmy Rollins, you'll recall the controversy surrounding his streak was that it carried over into a following season, something that Major League Baseball had never before counted as official.  In the early 1990s, Reds first baseman Hal Morris ended a season on a lengthy hit streak of his own and it was vociferously asserted by MLB that Hal's streak ended with the final game of that season.  But that was before the 25-year saga of Pete Rose created so many enemies of Peter Edward in MLB and among sports writers/commentators.  

Last week, the effort to erase Pete Rose from the record books came in the guise of Ichiro Suzuki attaining 4,257 combined Japanese League and Major League hits.  Assorted voices proclaimed Ichiro as the new all-time [small caps, here] hit king.  Since his 2001 debut in the American League I have been a massive fan of Ichiro.  Still am.  I think he's great.  He's my favorite non-Red in baseball today.  We know that MLB likes to have their cake and eat it too, particularly in the case of Pete Rose;  He's banned from baseball, but he can take part in on-field activities for the All-Century Team, the All-Star Game, etc., and one doesn't have to look any further than the Dutch Leonard Affair to see examples of allowing some players guilty of wagering games to continue playing while banning Rose.  

Yet this whole Ichiro situation might be the flimsiest of efforts.

MLB recognizes Barry Bonds with his 762 home runs as the all-time home run king and not Sadaharu Oh (with his 868 Japanese League home runs) as the all-time home run king.  Pete's all-time hit record is the Major League record.  The Major Leagues consist of the American League and the National League.  That's it.  No Japanese League team plays in the A.L. or N.L.  Ichiro was awarded the A.L. Rookie of the Year Award following his 2001 season with the Seattle Mariners.  If Ichiro truly was a rookie in 2001, then how - one should ask - on Opening Day 2001 did Ichiro have 1,278 (Japanese League) hits?  Either he stood for the first time in the batters box on Opening Day with the Seattle Mariners as a rookie, and thus with zero hits, or he wasn't a rookie having obtained over twelve hundred hits and should be stripped of his 2001 ROY award.  Ichiro can't have been a rookie and simultaneously have over 1,200 hits.  

Of course, we in Reds Country know the answer that MLB wishes wasn't true.

In the end this latest episode of trying to marginalize Rose only hurts Ichiro, an innocent party to the whole disgraceful effort who gets dragged into an unnecessary and wholly fabricated controversy and whose own unique achievement becomes overlooked and underappreciated.

Roll the credits!