Reds bring the Heat in Miami

[Box Score]

[Cincinnati.com] [The Real Mccoy]

Last night’s win said an awful lot about the character of the Reds. But before I talk about the game, I just want to talk about my state of mind as a fan right now.

It’s been really hard to maintain this blog this season. For anyone that has ever written about sports on the internet, you realize that if there is emotion involved–it’s not an easy thing all of the time. The Reds performance this year has really complicated me writing about baseball on this blog. So if anyone wonders about the future of Diamond Hoggers and the amount of writing that will be done on here; the show will go on as always and the tempo will pick up.

The Reds can’t stink forever, and I’ve been preparing to get married in September. Losing 15 pounds and planning a wedding has been some work albeit minimal. But baseball is what I love and on any random summer night it’s easy to remember why I love it.

Last night was one of those games. Hell, I even fired up the post game show on 700 WLW last night (too much Jimmy Buffett talk, not enough baseball but oh well) and watched Little Big League on Netflix as I was falling asleep. After games like last night, I’ll let it be baseball season until December!

A lot of Reds fans who my relationship has been in a stalemate with suddenly crept out of the woodwork last night as the Reds battled back on the road from a 5-2 deficit. Everything seemed to happen by design. Yonder Alonso hits a bomb to get things going a little bit, and then Jay Bruce (hitting 3rd in the lineup) hits a bomb to right field to cut the deficit to 5-4.

Nick Masset came in and promptly shit his pants as he’s so often done this season and gave up a sac fly to Emillio Bonifacio in the bottom of the 8th to seemingly end the game.

Dusty Baker makes a Dusty Baker move in the 9th inning. He allows Paul Janish to lead off, and even listening to the radio I’m wondering what the Hell a .217ish hitter is doing leading off when we need one base runner. The Reds would bail their manager out from there; as Joey Votto pinch hit and had a Joey Votto at-bat where he fouled off a few tough pitches and got the full count walk, his 93rd of the season. Brandon Phillips did the same, had a tough at bat and ended up fouling off a few pitches until he got something he could handle and singled to center.

From there you’ll see the highlights below that took the Reds home winners down in the Miami humidity.

I think the reason people are so happy is they feel in a lot of cases that the Reds have given up just because this season is over and so many of us have given up our hopes and expectations we had. While this time last summer was a magical time in our lives, we’re left adjusting at the present time and wondering how to feel. Last night the Reds reminded us that meaningless baseball on a summer night can still be great because it is baseball.

And soon enough the boys of summer will be giving way to another sport. So we best enjoy it for all we can for another few weeks here before we say goodbye for another long winter.

This has been a really weird season. I’m not sure what it is. But it’s not unlike any other baseball season I’ve lived through despite having it’s share of ‘blah’ moments. There are points when the season seems a few days long and then when you think back to the beginning parts you can’t believe that this is the same season at all.

It’s the puzzling life of being a baseball fan. We all go through it and there is no exact psychology that fits a textbook of how to do it correctly. You just exist, you take it in, you watch. You try to draw conclusions or deductions or similarities to past seasons. If we’re honest with ourselves, baseball is so unique that while many players and teams are patterned after their past, in some ways every day is statistically unique and unpredictable. And that is what keeps us hooked.

You never know when the Cincinnati Reds–who you had thought had ‘quit’–score four in the 9th to win the damn thing. God I love this game.

Top Plays:

Yonder Alonso’s 2nd home run of his career

Jay Bruce hits a Ricky Nolasco hanging breaking ball into the seats

Dave Sappelt’s double to the wall ties the game in the 9th

Alonso puts the Reds ahead with a 2-run double

Potpourri

-Due to another damn hurricane, the Reds and Marlins will play a doubleheader today.

-Ricky Nolasco passed Dontrelle Willis as the all-time strikeout leader in Marlins history last night.

-It was about a year ago that I wrote this about Jay Bruce. I don’t know if it’s ever been more true.

-It was about a year ago on a Sunday, the Reds were playing the Marlins. And they took over first place for good. We were there.