Friday, February 11, 2000
Town's gaga over Griffey
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Thursday, California could have dropped into the Pacific Ocean in one rumbling crash.
Tidal waves could have turned Florida into a sandbar the width of your driveway.
George W. Bush and John McCain could have called a press conference to announce their upcoming marriage.
And nobody in Cincinnati would have noticed.
Thursday, in the city where professional baseball was born and where there are kids who can tell you which Red wore No. 14 before Pete Rose and how many RBIs George Foster had in 1977, it was all Junior, all the time.
Thursday is usually a pretty quiet day at the Skywalk Baseball shop on Vine Street downtown. There's no Super Lotto drawing, which means no line of downtown office workers lining up at owner Helen Thomas' lottery machine for their shot at Easy Street.
But yesterday was not a typical Thursday, not in Cincinnati. Not after it became clear that Ken Griffey Jr. — the Cincinnati native and arguably (but not too arguably) the best player in the game today and maybe the best ever — was coming to his hometown to play ball, at last.
“People have been streaming in and out of here all day,” Mrs. Thomas said, sitting behind her lottery machine in a shop full of valuable memorabilia from the days of the Big Red Machine.
“It's all anyone has been talking about,” Mrs. Thomas said. “People are calling, coming in, talking about the deal. And most of them are just overjoyed. And overjoyed that the Reds didn't have to give up half the team to get him.”
But what they are talking about most, Mrs. Thomas said, is Griffey cards and Griffey autographed balls and Griffey bats. Specifically, when is she going to have some more.
“Soon,” Mrs. Thomas said. “They're on the way.
The excitement, she said, is likely to last “a very long time.”
“Nothing like this has ever happened to the Reds,” Mrs. Thomas said.
It is not that the Reds have not had great players. They have. They have seen the awesome home-run power of Frank Robinson, the base-running smarts of Joe Morgan, the fielding perfection of Vada Pinson and the star power of Johnny Bench.
They have just never seen it all wrapped up into one human being.
“He's the best,” said Wink Kramer of Edgewood, Ky., a long-time member of the Rosie Reds, the franchise's longest-lasting and most loyal fan club.
Most people who see the group, made up mostly of women, at Reds games decked out in their Reds' regalia don't realize that the “Rosie” in Rosie Reds is an acronym — it stands for “Rooters Organized to Stimulate Interest and Enthusiasm” for the Reds.
Thursday, their job got a lot easier.
Mrs. Kramer was off baby-sitting her granddaughter while her husband was at home fielding phone calls from people who had heard about the deal and wanted to join the organization.
“I saw the noon news on TV and, oh, my God, I was so excited, I almost started to cry,” Mrs. Kramer said. “What a wonderful thing for our ball club.”
Joanne Spiess of Colerain Township, president of the Rosie Reds this year, said she too is excited about the trade.
But Ms. Spiess has a soft spot for some of the Reds' younger players, like first baseman Sean Casey, and she said she is hoping the hoopla over Ken Griffey Jr. won't take away from the younger players' accomplishments.
“A young guy like Sean Casey deserves some attention, too,” Ms. Spiess said.
For her, having Ken Griffey Jr. on the club will be one of the landmarks of her 40-year love affair with the Reds — a love that started when she was in grade school in 1961 and the under-rated Redlegs club came out of nowhere to win the National League pennant, only to lose to the Yankees in the World Series.
“Then there was the big Red Machine in the 1970s and a great team in 1990 that went all the way,” Ms. Spiess said. “Now we're starting a new chapter.”
For 71-year-old Charles Nuckolls of Paddock Hills, his interest in baseball started as a child growing up in Ashland, Ky., listening to the Reds on the radio. It blossomed into full-blown love as a teenager, about the time when Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball and became his hero.
Now, he says, another generation of young people are being hooked on a “wonderful” game by a young player who wears his cap backwards in the batting cage and whips baseballs into the cheap seats.
“It's a great thing in that it has people of all ages talking about baseball again,” Mr. Nuckolls said. “I've never seen the hot stove league ablaze like it has been this off-season.”
Mr. Nuckolls said his son in New York started looking for dates when the Reds will play the Mets this summer at Shea Stadium.
“I'm going to get on a plane and go to Shea with my son,” Mr. Nuckolls said. “I've got to call him and make sure he gets those tickets.”
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