But still they ride on

With every score update that gets sent to my mobile phone each night, I cringe at the fact that I was once excited enough to set up the free alert through Yahoo! Sports. It’s a painful reminder that at one point in this calendar year, I was that enthusiastic about my team and the sport in general. The train has now arrived at yet another stop on this long road of being a baseball fan. The Cincinnati Reds have won just 1 out of the past 14 games. People text message me and wanna know why I have stopped writing a lot on the Diamond Hoggers or when I’m coming back to full duty. If you’ve read Diamond Hoggers enough, you should know why.

My favorite player suffered a crushing injury, so even in the midst of a terrible season I can’t enjoy watching his development. Jerry Hairston Jr. was one of the guys I really enjoyed, and he was sent to the Yankees for peanuts. Edwin Encarnacion, Zach Stewart, and another one of my favorite young Reds Josh Roenicke were shipped out to Toronto for an aging third baseman that I fail to see the fit for, other then the often over-stated ‘leadership’ quality. And as Dusty Baker shreds another young arm (Edison Volquez), our GM Walt Jocketty shreds our farm system.

This team doesn’t hit, doesn’t hold leads, and doesn’t really do anything exceptionally well. They’re fielding a skeleton crew lineup on a nightly basis.

The Reds are in a decade of futility it seems. Make it two decades. I don’t have the answer as to what will pull them out of it, and that is probably because it isn’t any one thing. It isn’t easy to look in the box scores and see Adam Dunn having another consistent solid season. It isn’t easy to know that Josh Hamilton; despite his struggles with his health this year is going to be the face of the Texas franchise for the next decade while Edison Volquez might never be healthy enough or discover a decent enough mechanic delivery to be a starting pitcher in this league.

But just like in life, you’re always gonna have these low patches. I suppose you have to just keep grinding it out and be patient for a brighter day. And there will be brighter days in life and for this franchise. The best is yet to come or so we hope, right?