"I've been here the 22 years the Columbus Clippers have been here and I can say that what used to be a Reds and Browns town is now an Indians town," said Ken Schnacke, general manager of the Yankees Triple-A affiliate.

"It used to be the Indians fans who were in the closet, not very vocal. Now, it's 180 degrees opposite. We don't hear much from Reds fans here."

Nor would one expect to hear much from Reds fans.

Their team is in last place, plays in an antiseptic mausoleum and their one marquee player (Barry Larkin) isn't having a great year.

The Indians have a winning ballclub, a lineup full of marquee stars and a new ballpark being filled up nightly.

So, while the lack of interest in the Reds in the battleground known as mid-Ohio isn't surprising, the Indians' ability in wooing fans from that area is interesting.

Years ago, before the Indians opened their new ballpark (1994) and were assembling an exciting team of talented young players, they devised a far-ranging marketing strategy to gain new fans. They targeted Columbus as a city they wanted to capture.

"They pinpointed that town to make an effort to win over as many people as they could," Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman said. "It's a halfway point; it's the capital. They've done a wonderful job of marketing their product in Columbus."

Columbus is now an Indians town.

"We felt that the only way for us to consistently draw over three million fans was to spread our wings (and draw fans from) Detroit Tigers in Toledo and the Pittsburgh Pirates in Youngstown and the Reds in southwest Ohio," said Bob DiBiasio, the Indians vice president of public relations.

There is no doubt the Indians are doing that -- and know exactly how many fans they are drawing from those areas. (A bar coding on each ticket can be scanned and shows where and when a ticket was purchased.) But the Indians won't divulge that information.

"Middle Ohio" is a significant battleground for the Indians and Reds.

Last year, in a sports column in the Columbus Dispatch, a writer chided the Reds for hinting that they might move the team to the south side of the Ohio River because they weren't getting their way in stadium talks.

"Before the Reds decide to teach the Hamilton County Commissioners a lesson by building a baseball stadium somewhere in northern Kentucky, they ought to consider that approximately 20 percent of their ticket sales are made in central Ohio," the columnist wrote.

In fact, the Reds haven't conceded mid-Ohio to the Tribe.

In recent years, they've cranked up their winter caravan and returned to the middle of the state. Brennaman and Reds broadcaster George Grande both see this as an important move for the club.

"The Reds have started to make a comeback there," Brennaman said. "In the past couple of years, they've made some inroads." Grande said the Reds' continued TV and radio presence in mid-Ohio means the club is positioned to make a comeback in the region once the Reds are able to give fans a reason to return to Cincinnati to watch baseball.

"The central part of the state had always been owned by the Reds, and now it's owned by the Indians," Grande said. "But it's also true that cable TV and Fox Sports Ohio are putting Reds baseball in more homes than ever before. If you give people a reason to come back, they'll do it."

However, there are disturbing revelations for the Reds in the 1996 Gallup survey. For example: Even though there is a solid core of Reds fans in mid-Ohio, they are "older" than Indians fans and therefore probably less likely to make a drive of two or three hours to see a baseball game. The poll showed that in the 18-29 age category, Indians fans outnumber Reds fans by 54 percent to 41 percent. In the 50-and-over category, the Reds are ahead 49 percent to 46 percent.

"As you would expect, there's a "buzz' among people about the Indians that isn't there with the Reds," said Mark Bohach, who co-owns WLOH-AM in Lancaster, 20 miles southeast of Columbus. WLOH dropped the Reds for the Indians before the 1995 season. "We were a little concerned that we might (be perceived by listeners) as being bandwagon jumpers," Bohach said. "But, for us, it's been all positive. We're able to say to our advertisers, "We've got a hot product,' and they know we're right. It's easy for them to get excited about it."

Shortly after the WLOH switched its affiliation to the Indians, WMNI in Columbus began carrying the Indians games, too, Bohach said.

"It has worked out well because WMNI's signal direction goes away from ours," he said. "We have the southern market and they have the northern market. In Fairfield County, we're "it.'

"WMNI's signal doesn't get down here. And now that WDLR-AM in Delware (Ohio) recently picked up the Indians games, you can go from Hocking County to the south of us all the way up to Mansfield and get the Indians. This is Tribe country now."

He said the Reds still have a solid presence in mid-Ohio thanks to the strong signal of WTVN-AM. But the stations carrying the Indians' games have "definitely" made an impact, he said.

"I really try to be objective about all this," Bohach said. "I'm 35 years old and I grew up a Reds fan. I'd listen to them all the time on WHOK, 95.5 FM. I listened to the Big Red Machine on radio. I listened on the radio when Mario Soto pitched his first game in the big leagues. I think it's still a 50-50 breakdown between Reds and Indians fans in Lancaster, but nobody's talking about the Reds." Sales of radio time at WLOH had stagnated with the Reds, he said. "Back in the '70s, the Reds were an easy sell," he said.

These days, it's hard to sell anything Reds-related in the middle of the state.

"There's no comparison between the way the Indians' stuff sells and the Reds' stuff sells," said Jason Bivens, footwear manager at Sportmart in Columbus. "It's hardly worth even carrying the Reds stuff. We carry a couple of styles of Reds hats and shirts and we don't move much. But with the Indians, we carry seven styles of hats and five styles of jerseys and we move everything. It's the same way in every store I go in."

There's no mystery to it, Bivens said. And it goes beyond the fact that the Indians are a winning club and the Reds are not.

"There's the new ballpark in Cleveland that people have been to and had a good time at and they want to be associated with the team that plays there," he said. "And the Indians are loaded with superstars: Justice and Ramirez and Alomar and Thome and Lofton and some real good pitchers. All the Reds have is Larkin."

Bivens, 22, grew up in Mansfield as an Indians fan. Not even his dad, who grew up in Mansfield as a Reds fan during the era of the Big Red Machine, could wield any influence with Jason when it came to choosing a team.

"Mansfield is only 70 miles from Cleveland," Bivens said. "But for my dad, it was a no-brainer. He was a Reds fan. Now, things are just the opposite. It's a no-brainer for a kid in Columbus when it comes to picking a major-league team. Today, it's the Indians who are in the Reds' backyard."

For example, anybody with cable TV in Columbus can get both the Reds and the Indians' games now. It used to be, the Reds had a stranglehold on the city. Stations that carried the Indians game were scoffed at.

"We used to carry the Indians' game and viewership was so low it was hard to even register a rating," said Oran Gough, operations manager at Channel 28 in Columbus. "Now, we're an affiliate of the Reds TV network. Because of that, we will always give the edge to the Reds when there's a decision to be made on which game to carry . . . But when we do carry the Indians, we get much more positive feedback. "It's not that people are negative to the Reds. People just prefer the Indians. What you get (from Reds fans) is a lot of crying about "I wish we had a team.' "

Cable TV has 68 percent penetration in the Columbus metropolitan market. The Indians are carried on Channel 53 and WUAB out of Cleveland. There's also a dual designate station out of Chillicothe -- not on cable -- that comes into parts of Columbus and carries Indians games, Gough said.

So, in effect, there are probably only "15 percent the people here who might want too get Indians baseball who can't," he said. In Bellefontaine, about 35 miles northeast of Dayton, WBLL-AM dropped the Reds for the Indians before the 1993 season, said Russ Walker, the stations operations manager.

"We still have some Reds fans here, but even they feel like there's more "heart' in the Cleveland Indians' franchise," Walker said. "I do a talk show and the name "Cincinnati Reds' doesn't even come up unless somebody's making a joke about Marge Schott."

There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to the station's decision to carry Indians game, Walker said.

But he cautions the Indians about becoming fat cats.

"The Indians didn't bring their (winter) caravan here this year," he said. "They went to the big markets like Columbus, and even to Erie, Pa. I think they're getting a little too big for their britches. There'll come a time when they aren't filling up the Jake every night. When that happens, we'll remind them of the year they stopped coming to Bellefontaine."