Sport

My wife and I do okay and could've afforded tickets without hurting our bank account, but even so we looked at tickets and the last row in the stadium was going for a price that I would consider exorbitant for what is essentially a preseason game against an opponent that I know nothing about. Then I looked at the weather and we decided not to attend. Pulisic isn't paid to consider why it wasn't a sellout and even if he's speaking directly to USSF, to put that on the fans, directly or indirectly, is lame. The best course of action for him to take would've been to say nothing about it.

Christian Pulisic can eat a fart. Listen, it was a**holishly hot with a great chance of thunderstorms, a weeknight, and tickets were exorbitant all for a scrimmage against dang ass Morocco. I thought about going, but that was just too many ass-aches I needed to overcome and I can tell you that post-COVID my tolerance for ass-aches has dropped significantly. I can deal with two, maybe three ass-aches at this point. Any more effort required than that and I'm staying at home and last night was like a 9 ass-ache event. No thanks. Plus I live here and I didn't even know it was happening until a week before the game so I wasn't really planning for it. If he's got an issue with the number of fans in the building he should take it up with USSF for poor planning and stupidly priced tickets, don't go on ESPN and :censored: about the fans. That's not your job, rich boy.

Reds Report! - Reds win a game at Fenway for the first time since Game 7 of the 1975 World Series. - After going 3-18 in April the Reds just posted a winning record in May. Stupid sport. The Reds passed the Nationals and Royals last night and no longer own the worst record in baseball, which is remarkable because at 3-22 they looked to have a death-grip not only on the worst record in the league, but on one of the all-time worst records in the modern era. Now they're just a normal, run-of-the-mill bad team at 17-31. I kind of miss the days when they were cosmically bad because it stuck it in Phil Castellini's fat stupid face every day. - They're now 2.5 back of the Cubs. 4 back of the Pirates. Coming in third place is my only rooting interest for the rest of the season. - Also notable: last night Joey Votto hit the top of the wall in right center and it bounced back into play for a double, two at-bats later he hit the top of the Green Monster, same thing. He was 4 inches away from two homeruns, but instead scored zero runs and ended up with two doubles. He could probably take BP all day not hit the top of the wall again. What're the chances? This has been your semi-regular Reds Report.

Votto homering in Toronto to score the winning run yesterday was a cool moment. Also the Reds are only 4 games back of the Pirates and Cubs...Not finishing in last place would be a minor miracle after that 3-22 run to start the season.

Russillo's probably tired of Bill's Aspbergian rankings of random basketball events like "Ryen, is this in your top 10 conference finals game 3 performances of the last 20 years or just top 50?" The Ringer discusses all sports like they're "The Bachelor" and that's why I stopped following any of their content years ago. The thing that broke me of The Ringer for good was when their MLB podcast, which I didn't even like because both hosts had what I call Eli Manning voice*, did a season preview episode a few years back where they were spent 5 to 10 minutes on every team and straight up forgot to cover the Reds. I know the Reds weren't a contender or even interesting that season, but I sat through 10 other teams who weren't contenders or interesting either. The funny thing is some of the people who've left The Ringer because they didn't fit that mold, and I would say Russillo doesn't fit their mold, have some of my favorite coverage going. Robert Mays' NFL podcast is one example. That's the kind of sports nerdery I'm looking for. *This is when your voice sounds like you're talking while smiling and also like you just drank a large glass of 2% milk.

I don't think anybody's putting down supporters groups as an idea, just that some people can take it too far and if the wrong leadership takes hold then an SG can become toxic and gain notoriety for the wrong reasons. I get a kick out of watching The Bailey because it looks like they're having a lot of fun. I stood in The Bailey for a game once and it was fun, but not my thing. Also I like having a chair with which to sit my bottom.

I should clarify that I didn't mean that as a dig at the minor leagues vs "major" league soccer. I meant like it's just a sports team and not even a big one, why are these weirdos being so militant about it? The last year I lived in Columbus full-time (2011) I was briefly part of a Blue Jackets supporter's group that was attempting to create an ultras style group, but for hockey. The founder(s) turned out to be more interested in being the story, being in charge than actually being part of a group designed to support our hockey team. Things got off to a bad start when they decided to call the group the "Arch City Army". I lived in Columbus for 20 years and never once heard it referred to as the Arch City. When people pushed back on it like "uhh that's a really dumb name, nobody calls our city that, and literally St. Louis is in our division" The leaders got defensive, combative, drew a line right there and were like "if you're against the name then you're not with us". The dumb name, but mostly their attitude, was a huge turnoff to a lot of people, myself included. I went to one meeting and went "yeah these neckbeards are not for me". It fizzled out and they only lasted a couple years, but it soured me on being part of something like that. I tell that story to say that I suspect the Detroit City SG is probably led by a small handful of loud bozos who're making poor decisions on behalf of everyone. It's likely they found a fun thing to do a few years ago in a league where, due to size, things were a little unregulated and they could be wild and crazy kids to their overworked hearts' contents, but now that things are more legitimate they're still trying to do whatever they want and can't and they're being big silly babies about it.

I thought this was a nice summary and take on the Detroit City supporters group https://www.thepostcincy.com/stories/the-northern-guard-doesnt-understand-what-sg-means

These nerds are so lame. Nobody should take sports this seriously. It's a minor league soccer team, ya dorks. Inventing oppression so that you can play victim is never cool.

According to Reds twitter and reddit the team ran out of beer for the $3 beer promotion in the fourth inning, lines were long, and still only 10,000 people showed up. How do you run out of beer when that few people are in the stadium? What if they have done if it was a sellout? This franchise used to be my example of great, fan friendly customer service, especially compared to the Bengals, but now they're far worse. It's amazing how far they've fallen.

The difference between those aforementioned personalities and Brady, besides personality itself, is that they're the "draw" of their show. Brady will be doing NFL games and the draw of the NFL is the NFL, not the guys in the booth. Are 375 million dollars worth of extra people going to tune in to the Fox game he does every week versus whatever replacement level analyst they could throw in the booth? Seems like they're paying him just to say "hey look at us, we have Tom Brady on our team!" I actually can imagine him being good at it, though, and I wouldn't have said that four years ago. Speaking of hall-of-famers in the booth, it brings me joy to say this because he was my all-time favorite athlete growing up, but Barry Larkin is awful as the Reds home game color analyst. It actually makes me think less of him as a player because he's got so little to add to the game. I suspect he's one of those guys who was just naturally great and didn't have to think about the game too hard, which means articulating the little minutiae of major league baseball isn't one of his skills.

Their weekend attendance is still piddly compared to where it would be if the team didn't suck :censored: and the owners didn't go out of his way to antagonize the fans on opening day. I'd probably have been to 2 or 3 games by now. Maybe I'll break the boycott in late September if I feel they've been roundly embarrassed enough and Diamond seats cost less than my monthly mortgage. The last few days have been a little better, though. Wins April 7 - May 6: 3 May 7 - May 9: 3 Dumb sport

I'm just laughing at this point because the season's over so let's go for the big 120 loss record. I feel for the players and coaches and broadcasters and employees who have to eat the :censored: sandwiches every day that the front office has prepared for them. It's not their fault they were put in this position, but I'm doing something I've never done before - I'm rooting against the Cincinnati Reds. I want this to get really ugly. I hope for the small chance that Phil and the other owners in the ownership group feel embarrassed enough to make the changes so this never happens again*. I wonder if there's a point in their little ROI cost/benefit analyses that led to the firesale where it tells them that being this bad is actually more expensive in terms of lost revenue than spending the money to compete and win would be. We can never let them forget that they chose to be this bad. I'm also curious to see how bad it would need to get before the performative optimists and bootlickers in Reds Twitter finally crack and finally admit things aren't good. Also I'm blocked by Mark Sheldon because I called him a shill last year and the idea of him having to spin this bull :censored: day after day after spinning the firesale as a good thing back in March makes me smile.

Lifetime achievement suspension. Yeah what he did was bad, but if he wasn't also a total dickhead for all the other weird, awful, annoying s*** he's done he wouldn't be getting two years. He's my second least favorite Cincinnati Red ever behind Pete Rose.

I was thinking about the Coyotes playing at ASU thing a little more. Is it possible that we're all going to be wrong? Use your imagination. Once the visual of seeing NHL games in a rink that looks like Hobart Arena wears off, what if it's actually great in the same way that seeing a great band in an intimate music venue is better than seeing that same band in an arena? Is there any way this crazy plan actually works that we aren't thinking about right now?

David Roth organized my thoughts on this better than I could https://defector.com/where-is-the-window-for-the-cincinnati-reds/ "There’s something terribly grim and pre-defeated about the extent to which the idea of a “window of contention”—that bright period, however long, that happens between the years in which a team is not trying to win—has been accepted by fans across sports as a Powerful Business Fact. To accept that is not just to accept the primacy of ownership’s prerogative and profit, although it is absolutely also that; it is very literally taking a rich man or a consortium of rich men at their word when they tell you that they want what you want. But also, and more urgently, it is a capitulation. It’s opting out of the present entirely, and so consigning a big-league season or two or three (or more) to insignificance, in favor of a heavily abstracted and ultra-contingent future that, in many cases, tends to stay stuck at the same distance. An important part of the reason Reds fans are currently refusing to accept this is that the team, which believed they were entering just such a period of contention in 2020 and 2021 and acted accordingly, decided to shut that window on principle before this season. In a mostly dreary National League Central, and with two new postseason spots to pursue, Reds ownership simply opted out of contention and into something else, turning away from one window in search of another, which either is or is not located down some dark hallway of varying length. Ownership’s reasons for this are not terribly hard to guess, although it’s unlikely that anyone with the last name Castellini will ever again be entrusted to defend them in public. But at this point in the sport, the argument barely even needs to be made. The jargon and justification is familiar, and the calculation behind it is plain in a way it once wasn’t. Fans once were happy to think and talk about how efficient, optimized team-building practices might serve their teams—Moneyball, like all good business writing, makes executive calculation seem not just smart, but fun. But the triumph of that efficiency and optimization has by now created a landscape in which these practices mostly just serve to perpetuate themselves, and everything else just exists to serve them."

This logo rules.

It's going to look like the default arena in NHL Hitz which had like four rows.

He was pretty good.

Angel Hernandez is the most famous umpire in baseball, which means he's the worst umpire in baseball. Funny enough the umpire in the Reds-Cardinals game got something in his eye and had to be attended to by the trainers. I said, "An umpire that can't see? WHAT ELSE IS NEW?????"

Those prices are probably in line with lower bowl seats throughout the league, but when you're playing in an arena that is only the lower half of a lower bowl then you can't price things the same way. It's going to be really embarrassing when they still don't fill it.

A friend of mine is a Cardinals fan and he wanted to make a bet before the season and I was like "why would I do that when the team is openly not trying?" and we both agreed half the league having no interest in actually winning has sucked all the fun out of the sport. Something needs to change. To be fair, the Reds have a major league leading 13 guys on IL, which includes what would be a lot of regulars and two starting pitchers. They'd probably be like 4-9 or a 5-8 with those guys healthy.

I'm morbidly curious to see the Reds attendance this week. They've only played one home game since Phil Castellini went out of his way to antagonize the fans (twice!) on Opening Day and that was the day game after Opening Day that's usually sparsely attended anyways. Since then the team's been out west for mostly late night games people haven't seen and lost 9 straight to go to 2-11. Phil hasn't yet had to grapple with the true consequences of his actions. If they don't win a couple of the games against St. Louis this weekend the Padres series in the middle of the week is going to look like COVID rules are back. If you're a Cardinals fan in/around Cincinnati this weekend and planning to go to the games can you do us a favor and not? I want the stadium empty.

I don't know about the Brewers, Cubs, or Nationals, but the Reds and Rays just wore their spring training tops. Those weren't their regular alternate jerseys.

One has nothing to do with the other. People (rightfully) REDACTED over the Chargers standard home and road rotations because they look dynamite and those looks are great enough to carry the two unnecessary alternates, which are mostly ignored because they're once a season alternates. The Rays do have an identity crisis, but not because of the sun ray/sting ray confusion. It's because they won't embrace their innate 1998ness. What I'd like to see them do is jazz up the jerseys. The color scheme is good and they've weathered the navy blue/light blue tsunami we got hit with around 2008 and came out the other side with the ability to own it, especially with yellow coming along for the ride. But they use a pretty blah piping and number treatment and a very Windows 95/mayonnaise jar looking wordmark. Lean into that color scheme and don't be afraid to use more than one color on the numbers. That alternate hat they've used with the OG drays logo in the current colors is a great place to start - do that, but on the jerseys.