Sunday, December 10, 2000
Reds can't compete anymore
It's easy to spot Jim Bowden at baseball's winter-of-our-discontent meetings in Dallas. He's the one in the hotel lobby, selling pencils. If that doesn't work, the Reds general manager will stand at the stoplight and wash windshields. Brother, can you spare a million?
What a crock. What a shame that at the new millennium, baseball's oldest franchise is lumped, huddled and shivering, with Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and the rest of the game's tin-cup losers. There's a decent chance Cincinnati's $42 million payroll will be the lowest in the NL Central.
What's the bottom-line for hope in 2000? What is the going rate for a reason to believe? Probably, a $60 million payroll. The Reds are a few Brinks' trucks short of that.
This year, the rich-man, poor-man game baseball plays so well will catch up to the Reds. This season, being a Have Not starts to hurt on the riverfront.
Harnisch and who?
There have been rumors of big trades. But how can you make a big trade when your pockets are full of lint? What is Bowden supposed to say: I'll pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today? The Reds are leaking starting pitching and can't afford a plug. They're so eager for a decent arm, they considered trading Sean Casey for one. All Casey is (or, perhaps, was) is a cornerstone of the team that will occupy the new ballpark in 2003.
At the moment, the Reds rotation is Pete Harnisch and Undetermined. This is good only if Harnisch can pitch on eight hours rest.
USA Today's recent study of payrolls showed the difference between the top spending team and the bottom spender exploded from $6.5 million in 1988 to $97.6 million last year. As the Yankees, Braves etc. have proven, you cannot win if you do not pay.
Baseball has had five years to fix this, but it's only gotten worse. Inequity rages. Finally, it has hit home. It's not just that the Reds will go to Sarasota this year with little or no chance to win the division. They'll go every year with the same chance.
Battling for average
What you end up with, in cities with no chance, is not baseball as a passion or baseball as a chance for reflected glory — Reds win! Cincinnati proud! — but baseball as entertainment. It becomes a night out. Baseball is dinner and a movie. When your team aspires to .500, it ceases being worth your heart, unless you like heartburn.
You might still go, to cheer a favorite player or watch an opposing star or simply because you enjoy the game. But you won't be there shivering with pennant fever.
You won't be at a game in August watching the scoreboard. If Cincinnati wins tonight and St. Louis loses, and the Reds can win five of nine on the road trip...
No. When hope is derailed because it costs too much, your passion fades. Without passion, sports is dead. And baseball becomes something less to you than it once was.
It's hard to imagine saying that in this town. Next to St. Louis, Cincinnati is baseball's best place. People take the game personally here. Baseball might be a night out in L.A., or a beer-soaked day in the sun in Chicago. It's more than that here.
At least it was. If you see Bowden, buy a pencil.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at (513) 768-8454.
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DAUGHERTY: Reds can't compete anymore
