The Memorial Day that Belonged to Joey Votto and the Reds

I’ve been to what seems like hundreds of baseball games. After being at today’s Indians-Reds game, I’ll never forget the Memorial Day game-winning home run that I saw a future Hall of Famer hit with my wife and our two friends (unfortunate for them, they are Indians fans).

Take a look at the home run and the context of it so you can gain a full appreciation of how incredible it really was.

I got texts after Votto hit the home run that he was actually choked up off the knob of the bat. He hit it into the opposite field stands – something he does often but isn’t appreciated enough. He hit it off a left-handed reliever. And of course, as soon as it left the bat you knew that the hometown team was going to win the ballgame. It wasn’t a walk-off shot, but teams don’t come back from the kind of home run that Votto hit earlier today. It was the baseball equivalent of the dagger. Every Indians fan in the park knew it.

For all the talk of prospects and Trouts and Cabrera’s and Harper’s and players around baseball, the Reds have one of the best two or three in the entire game playing at their park and he’s going to be there for another decade.

It felt like about 95 degrees in the right field Sun Deck today and I thought we were going to be sitting there a while after Jason Giambi demolished this ball off the centerfield batter’s eye to tie the game 2-2.

So the pools are all open. Memorial Day happened. Summer is here. I saw the Redlegs win 4-2 today, and 5-2 on Saturday with my wife, dad and sister.

The lasting image that will stay with me from the weekend was Joey Votto in that cool camouflage uniform, leaving another opponent in his wake.