BY SCOTT MacGREGOR
The Cincinnati Enquirer

DENVER - Mike Remlinger finally felt good at Coors Field, but the result didn't match up.

Paul Konerko watches the flight of his three-run home run. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

For once in this ping-pong palace of a stadium, Remlinger felt he could actually get a good grip on the ball. The mile-high air, which usually makes a baseball tough to handle, had been dampened by humidity and the threat of rain, and Remlinger, with his sticky mix of resin and sweat, felt he could get just the right touch on his pitches.

But in any park, when the pitching staff gives up six runs and the offense scores only four (and not until the eighth inning), the laws of baseball say that team is going to lose.

Which is what the Reds did in game one of Thursday's day-night doubleheader in Denver, falling to the Rockies for their sixth straight loss on the heels of 10 straight wins.

"There's a guy (Rockies starter Pedro Astacio) who has a seven ERA (actually 6.30 entering the game), and he makes up look like Little Leaguers for six innings," said Reds manager Jack McKeon, holding a cigar sent to him by Rockies pitching coach Frank Funk. "We've lost the magic from our hitting again."

Mike Lansing falls over Eddie Taubensee as he tries to field a foul ball off Lansing's bat. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

Remlinger himself gave up 10 hits, but only two runs as he pitched out of three jams before being pulled after 4 2/3 innings. As he sat in front of his locker after the game, a pained look of anger and frustration scowled his face, and the fact that he had pitched better than his last start (four runs in one inning against the Padres last Friday) meant nothing because of the loss.

"If you put everything together," he said, "in this park, when the starting pitcher only gives up two runs, you think you've got a pretty good chance to win. The last time I pitched here I gave up five runs and won. I'd rather give up five and win than two and lose.

"For here, (my grip) felt better than it normally does. You look at the end result, the way I felt," he said, "it's frustrating."

But Remlinger (6-11) didn't mean that as a slap against the offense, which was held scoreless by Astacio for seven innings.

"I can't say crap about our offense," said an agitated Remlinger. "I just go out and do a job."

The last time the Reds visited Coors Field, they scored 44 runs in winning three of four games and looked like the second coming of the Big Red Machine, the mile-high version.

But that was then, and that Reds team that visited Denver in April got hot at the right time and took advantage of hitter-friendly Coors and a bad Rockies pitching staff.

This Reds team, after playing so well for three weeks, is again running colder than a Colorado mountain stream.

"We can't wait until we're in the seventh or eighth inning and we're six runs downs to get an attack going," McKeon said. "It's too hard to catch up."

The Reds got in the hole in the fourth, when Remlinger gave up his two runs on a Vinny Castilla single, a Greg Colbrunn RBI double, a wild pitch that moved Colbrunn to third and an infield single by catcher Kurt Manwaring that scored the second run.

Remlinger wasn't concerned with giving up as many singles as he did (only one of the 10 hits went for extra bases), but was frustrated that so many cheap ones, like Manwaring's, counted.

"We all saw the All-Star Game (a 13-8 American League win played at Coors)," Remlinger said. "You're going to give up hits in this park. Guys play deep. You have to pitch inside, and I did. The infield singles, the bloops, the broken bats. . . . I probably broke more bats today than I have all year."

Remlinger left in the fifth with the bases loaded, and reliever Scott Sullivan got out of the jam unscathed by inducing a double play. But the bullpen couldn't stay perfect, with Danny Graves giving up the big blow, a two-run homer to right by Rockies rookie Todd Helton to make it a 6-0 lead.

"Our bullpen usually holds them," McKeon said. "But they didn't."

The Reds, who got only one baserunner as far as second through the first seven innings (a double by Dmitri Young in the second), didn't get anything going until the eighth, when Mike Frank singled for the second time, Pokey Reese singled and Paul Konerko drove a bomb deep to center for a three-run homer to cut the lead to 6-3. Sean Casey then doubled and scored on Barry Larkin's single, but it was too little too late.

"Maybe we ought to play the second game now so we can keep stringing some hits together," McKeon said, settling in for the three-hour wait between games.

Game 2: Rockies 6, Reds 4

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