Opening Day in Cincinnati 2009

By TheNaturalMevs on April 7, 2009

A crowd of 42,177 sat through 39 degree weather and constant rain and drizzle (and sleet at times) to see a 2-1 loss by the Cincinnati Reds. Our journey began at 6:30 in the morning as we headed for downtown Cincinnati. When we arrived we hit up the Gameday Cafe and saw the live broadcast of 700 WLW and then headed over to the In Between Tavern. They beat us out of a $5 cover charge and the domestic beer prices were very high. So we hit up a darkhorse spot called Sully’s Saloon a few blocks away from the Great American Ball Park. It was a good idea and the folks at Sully’s put on a tremendous show for Opening Day.

We got into the stadium around noon and it was just a nasty day that saw the sun peek out only a few times. Neither team took batting practice. Although the attendance was listed as being pretty solid, many seats were empty and we were able to obtain pretty good seating for an Opening Day game. In the above photo you can see the Reds new HD scoreboards. The left field wall and main scoreboard are now in full high definition.

We settled into our seats in right field behind Jay Bruce and got a pretty good pitching duel for our troubles. Our roommate remarked (he is a Red Sox fan) that ‘this Bruce kid is like your fan base’s messiah’. Yeah he kind of is.

Aaron Harang threw pretty well for 5 innings, allowing only 1 run. Johann Santana was better though and as advertised. The Reds did an excellent job of working the count against Santana early in the game including a 30 pitch first inning.

Santana no-hit the Reds for the first 3 and 2/3 innings of the game. Then Jay Bruce doubled off the screen in the left center field wall, missing a home run by 5 feet.

In the top of the 5th inning Daniel Murphy homered to right field about 10 rows below where we were sitting to give the Mets a 1-0 lead. Murphy ended up driving in both Mets runs on the day. The Mets would have had another run but David Wright was thrown out at home plate by Bruce, an absolute gun from right field.

The Reds would scratch across a run on a sacrifice fly by Brandon Phillips, scoring Darnell Mcdonald (who made his MLB debut and had a rough day in center field) but that would be all the Reds would muster on this cold day.

We got to see Francisco Rodriguez throw for the first time. As he entered in the bottom of the 9th we had halfway mixed emotions. We were going to get to see Jay Bruce either do something special off the finest closer in the game today or the game was over already we figured. Bruce tapped out off a K-Rod breaking ball and the Reds went quietly in the 9th.

We really thought that a 9-1 or 10-0 start by this team could take the league by storm and we wanted the Reds to start the season with a bang. We wanted to begin the season 1-0 in the worst of ways.

Overall the Mets showed why they’re going to be tough this year. If they get a good start from their pitcher on a given night, they can run out some of the finest relievers in baseball. Green, Putz, and Rodriguez shorten a ballgame. The Reds also showed that while they might get some solid pitching this season, they might have trouble scoring runs. This is a young lineup that is still trying to find itself. Dusty Baker is really going to have to out-manage other skippers with good in game decisions for this team to have success and that isn’t something that he has really shown that he’s been able to do in the past.

The Reds made some great plays in the field. Other then the Bruce assist from right field that kept the game a one run game, Alex Gonzalez made a great diving play on a ground ball up the middle and Edwin Encarnacion made some really nice plays at third base. This might be a team that pitches and plays defense and looking at the players that make up this roster you just get the feel that this is going to be a much different team then the Reds have fielded in years past.

To end the post, here’s the seventh inning stretch from Opening Day: