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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2010 > March > 05
Friday, March 5, 2010
Reds lay rotten egg in desert debut
GOODYEAR, Ariz. - As a possible new beginning it seemed more like the same sad tale.
Sure, sure - it was only a spring training exhibition game that means nothing, but it was the Cincinnati Reds playing their first game in a new venue, Goodyear Ballpark.
Didn’t they want to show some spunk and spark for their new fans in this desert town?
MAYBE THEY were disappointed that barely 4,000 fans showed up in the 10,000 seat park - but then maybe that was a good thing. Not many witnessed the debacle - except for those who watched on TV.
What the sparse crowd saw from the Reds on this day was, in two words, “Not much.”
They were defrocked by their Ohio cousins, the Cleveland Indians, 9-2. The Indians had 15 hits and three homers. The Reds had five hits and no homers. After seven innings it was 9-0 and the Reds had two hits.
“Maybe we had some jitters from playing in a new ballpark,” said manager Dusty Baker, a lot of hope dripping from his voice.
It started bad and got worse. At the end there were more people stuffed into the gift shop than seated in the stands.
MIKE LINCOLN wants to be a starter, but to be a starter you have to start fast and finish. He did neither.
The first batter he faced, Asdrubal Cabrera, hit a full-count pitch over the right field wall after Lincoln fell behind 3-and-0. It was that way for most of Lincoln’s short time on the mound - 1 1/3 innings.
He gave up four runs and seven hits and left two men on base when he departed. That isn’t the way to win the No. 5 spot in the rotation.
In fairness, Lincoln hadn’t started a game since 2001. He missed more than half of last season, the last part, with a disk problem in his neck.
The way to win it, though, is the way lefthander Matt Maloney did it. He came on in the second inning for Lincoln with one out and two on and retired the side without additional carnage. Then he pitched a 1-2-3 second inning.
But from there is got ugly, uglier and ugliest.
When the Reds finally stroked their third hit in the seventh inning, the crowd cheered facetiously. When the Reds scored their first run in the seventh, the crowd cheered facetiously.
The Reds and Indians share Goodyear Ballpark, but it was difficult to discern which team had more fans. The Reds did little to draw cheers while the Indians splattered hits all over the desert grass.
The Reds get a do-over Saturday. Same teams, same time (3:05 eastern). Only this time the Reds will be the visitors and the Indians will be the home team.
Hey, it was 75 degrees, the stadium is state-of-the-art and even smells new. On this day, well, the Reds just smelled.
It has to get better, doesn’t it?
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TweetRandom thoughts while waiting around
GOODYEAR, Ariz. - Some thoughts while sitting in the media workroom awaiting the start of today’s Cincinnati Reds-Cleveland Indians exhibition game, wondering why I woke up at 3 this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep.
Maybe it was the General Taos’s chicken and two egg rolls I ate at 9 o’clock last night.
— THE REDS have a new trainer, Paul Lessard, and while he was hired because of his medical acumen, maybe there was a little more to it, too. Lessard has also been a trainer for the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Boston Red Sox and won a World Series ring at both places.
“The weight of this entire team is on you,” catcher Corky Miller told Lessard.
“Hey, I’m a big boy. I’ve got big shoulders. I can take it,” said Lessard.
Earlier in the day Lessard showed the team a video about drug abuse. “It explained how HGH makes the head, hands and feet bigger,” said Lessard. “I told them just because I have a big head, big feet and big hands doesn’t mean I take HGH. I don’t. Only one guy laughed. I guess they haven’t learned my warped sense of humor yet.”
— THE SUBJECT of players playing golf surfaced in manager Dusty Baker’s office this morning and he pointedly expressed his opinion.
“I’m not big on guys playing golf until later if they are baseball players,” said Baker. “I’ve only seen a few that remain good hitters after playing golf. Pitchers are OK. Not hitters. The weight transfer is different and the swing is different. The good hitters who play golf usually play golf on the opposite side of the way they swing - lefthanders play golf righthanded (Ken Griffey Jr.) and righthanders play golf lefthanded. I’ve gone round and round with certain guys about that for a long time.”
— TODD FRAZIER will miss a few days with a bone bruise on his right knee, suffered in Thursday’s intrasquad game when Aroldis Chapman buried a 95-mph fastball into the side of Frazier’s knee.
“Yeah, it’s scary,” said Baker. “Just glad nothing was fractured or broken, just a bruise.”
Another injury surfaced during Thursday’s intrasquad game when outfielder Laynce Nix crashed into the wall chasing a ball hit by Miguel Cairo. Nix was originally scheduled as today’s designated hitter, but he was removed from the lineup with a bruised and scratched up left arm.
— C. TRENT ROSECRANS of Cnati.com told Baker that he played Little League Baseball in Chesapeake, Va., with former lefthanded pitcher Jimmy Anderson. Rosecrans told Baker, “His nickname was ‘Slim’ and it wasn’t ironic.”
Said Baker, “Jimmy Anderson, the pitcher who used to play with the Pirates (and Reds)? His name never was no ‘Slim.’ “
It certainly wasn’t ‘Slim’ when he played with the Reds. More likely his nickname was The Portly Portsider. One day somebody in the Reds clubhouse asked if anybody had seen pitcher Ryan Wagner and catcher Jason LaRue quickly said, “I think Jimmy Anderson ate him.”
Now that WOULD keep you up all night.
— QUESTIONS? If you have questions about baseball, please send them to halmccoy@hotmail.com. I’m looking for fresh material for “Ask Hal,” which runs in the DDN’s Sunday Sports section.
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