Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati (The view from (wow) or of (bleh) the ballpark)
To me the view, both from the ballpark and of the ballpark, matters. A lot.
The view from the upper deck in Great American Ball Park is spectacular. It is designed such that the structures with the steamboat motif in centerfield look as though they are floating on the Ohio River, and the bridge over the Ohio (it's called the Taylor Southgate Bridge, but I don't know the significance of the name) appears to be an extension of the Jumbotron in left field. I think the only view comparable is the view of San Francisco Bay from Oracle Park.
From the lower deck, you can't see the Ohio, or (from most seats) the bridge. You can see the buildings on the other side of the bridge in Kentucky, but they're not as spectacular as a city skyline, something you get with many downtown parks.
However, the view OF the ballpark matters, too. Coming off the L and seeing Wrigley Field, seeing the tiger statues of Comerica Park in Detroit from the Grand Circus area, or seeing Progressive Field rising above you in Cleveland as you round a corner (all from this trip) are all beautiful sights. If you're walking to Great American Ball Park from somewhere in downtown Cincinnati, your first view is likely to include a bunch of parking lots many lanes of Interstate-71, and probably an entrance or exit ramp or two.
So I'll try to remember the spectacular, and forget the spectacularly ugly.
The game: Washington Nationals 8, Cincinnati Reds 7 (10 innings)
For the second time in less than a week, we saw an extra inning game, which the home team lost (we seem to be a jinx -- the home team has lost the last seven games we've been to). But for me, the story was not the Manfred man, the runner who starts at second base of every inning after the 9th, or even individual heroics and failures, but the impact of instant replay of various sorts on the game.
Replay one:
With two out in the bottom of the first inning, one run in, and a runner on, Spencer Steer of the Reds was called out on strikes. But he challenged the call, and he was right - it was a ball. He ended up walking, as did the next batter, before Tyler Stephenson hit a grand slam home run. Without the ABS challenge system, the inning would have ended with four less runs. But Washington scored four runs in the next half-inning, each team scored one or two runs more, and the score stayed 6-6 going into the 10th inning.
Washington's Daylen Lee hit a two-run home run in the top of the inning, giving the Nationals an 8-6 lead. That means that a quarter of the way through the season, Lee, who has been playing every day, has hit six home runs, and we've seen half of them in the last two days.
Replay two:
Leading off the bottom of the 10th, the plate umpire called ball four, meaning the J. J. Bleday, who had had another good night at the plate, walked. Except that the catcher challenged the call, and was right - it really was a strike. A few pitches later, Bleday struck out, which meant that when the next hitter, Spencer Steer, hit it out of the park in left-center field for an apparent home run, it only tied the game, instead of winning it. But wait for ...
Replay three:
The umpire who had the call on the home run ruled that it was not a home run, because a fan had interfered with the ball while it was in the field of play. The crew chief called for a review, and the review quickly showed that the umpire's call was right. A fan in the front row had reached out and caught the ball before it got to the wall. Whether it would have hit the yellow line that signifies a home run, or fallen just short was not clear, but it was clear that it was fan interference and that the umpire had made the right call. The Reds were now only one run behind, but they couldn't score Steer from second base, and lost the game.
How do I feel about all those replays? They might have added a minute to the length of the game, but at the end, I felt like the game had been decided by the players' plays, not by missed calls.
Bark in the park:
Many major and minor league teams now have a day each year when dog owners can bring their pup to a game. Most commonly, they're called "Bark in the Park." This is the fourth one we've been to in less than three weeks. I guess that late April and early May is the time to do Bark in the Park if you're in the upper Midwest.
Pat Darcy - What happens when your childhood dream is close, but goes horribly wrong?
Every kid who wants to be a baseball player dreams of pitching or hitting at a crucial time in a World Series. But what if you get far enough to be in that situation, and it’s the opponent whose dream ends the way he wanted it to. What then?
We've been watching baseball in Cincinnati, and you can't help but think about the "Big Red Machine," the best teams the Cincinnati Reds ever had. In the 1970s, the Reds had Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, George Foster, Ken Griffey, and Pete Rose, among others. There are statues of various sizes of all of them at Great American BallPark. They were good throughout the decade, and won back-to-back World Series in 1975 and 1976.
But even great teams don’t win every game, and what is probably the single most famous baseball play of the decade came in a crucial World Series game that the Reds lost. In the 1975 World Series, the Reds were ahead of the Boston Red Sox three games to two, needing to win just one more game to win their first Series in more than 30 years. After three days of rainouts in Boston, Game 6 went into extra innings. In the bottom of the 12th inning, Boston’s Carlton Fisk hit a long drive to left field that was clearly long enough to be a home run, if it just stayed fair. One television camera caught Fisk hopping up and down, waving his arms trying to psychically push the ball fair. The ball hit the foul pole, making it a fair ball (yes, it’s a misnomer) and a home run, winning the game for Boston. Cincinnati won the next day to win the Series, but every sports fan has seen that shot of Fisk trying to impose his will on the flying ball, and that’s what people remember about that Series.
The AP photo above gives a hint of the drama. The video is far more dramatic. A 2015 Sports Illustrated article argues that that play, and the television coverage of it, changed the way baseball did business and the way that TV coverage was done.
I’m fascinated by one of the key people, who shows up in every video clip, but is hardly ever mentioned. That’s the guy in the lower right corner of the photo, Pat Darcy, the pitcher who threw the pitch that Fisk hit. What became of Darcy?
Pat Darcy went to high school in Tucson, pitched a year of junior college baseball, then signed with the Houston Astros, and slowly moved up through their organization. Before the 1974 season, he was traded to the Reds, already a perennial powerhouse. He made his MLB debut for the Reds in 1974, then in 1975, at age 25, became their number five starting pitcher after the usual round of injuries. He ended up winning 11 games, including the last nine in a row. However, the Reds only used four starting pitchers for the last couple of weeks of the season, and you don’t need any more than four starting pitchers for the postseason, given the number of days off, so he became a relief pitcher. That’s how he ended up pitching in Game 6 of the World Series. He pitched a scoreless 10th inning and a scoreless 11th, but the Reds didn’t score either, setting the stage for Fisk’s home run.
That was the last pitch of Darcy’s only full season in the majors. He got off to a slow start the next season, got sent back to the minors, and began a spiral of arm trouble and ineffectiveness, and threw his last professional pitch in 1980.
What he did after baseball is what impresses me. He went back to college and got a bachelor’s degree in business, and became a successful commercial real estate agent. He also became active in local community affairs. I particularly appreciate the fact, which I didn’t know at the time, that he was instrumental in convincing the Colorado Rockies to put their Spring Training in Tucson, a decision that ultimately affected us personally because Kerry got to do the non-sports medicine for the Rockies their last few years in Tucson.
You may have guessed by now that we have other connections with Pat Darcy. Tucson is a metropolitan area of a little over a million people, but in some ways, it’s a big small town, so we would cross paths with him from time to time.
When my younger son went to preschool, he started talking about his new friend Ryan, who turned out to be Ryan Darcy, Pat’s son. So one night among the books I’d read and bedtime stories I’d tell, I told my son about the Fisk home run. My son loved the story, and said, “Oh, you have to come in and tell our class about him.” I explained that it was not my story to tell.
Darcy was always pushing baseball in Tucson, whether it be Spring Training or AAA, so we bumped into him once or twice at events about that. The last time I talked to him, he and I were both moderating sessions with authors at the Tucson Festival of Books. He was, naturally, moderating a session with authors of baseball books. I was moderating a session with books about science. While I like a well-written book about science, I was jealous.
I barely know him personally, but I admire him, because I think Pat Darcy is one of the winners. He was a key part of a team that won the World Series (regardless of one bad pitch he threw), and in interviews, he doesn’t seem too broken up by the Fisk home run. More importantly, he had a productive life after baseball. I think it's a beautiful game (with apologies to futbol afficianados for the appropriation of that phrase), but it is really only a game.
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