More than anything, Chris Sabo misses the running. But it's typical of the former Reds star third baseman that since playing his last game in 1996, he's never once had a dream of going from first to third or second to home.

Sabo '96

Sabo '01

        “I'm a turn-the-page kind of guy,” said the 39-year-old Sabo, who lives in the Kenwood area with his wife, Susan, and their three daughters, Annie, 6, Brooke, 5, and Olivia, 3.

        The Enquirer caught up with Sabo last Friday at Kenwood Country Club, where he was hitting some balls to get ready for this weekend's Celebrity Golf Classic at the Golf Center at Kings Island.

        His family is his full-time life now. He chauffeurs his daughters around town to their various activities — and sometimes to his, such as Thursday when he was spotted in a Latonia parking lot unpiling Annie and Brooke from the family's SUV. He and entrepreneur Gary Enzweiler, a Northern Kentucky native, were there to do an hour-long call-in cable TV show on community access about why they want to put a pro baseball team in Florence, Ky., in the independent Frontier League. City fathers are awaiting the results of a feasibility study July 24. Sabo would be the manager of the team.

        Long gone is Sabo's beat-up Ford Escort, the minor-league car he was still driving after being named National League Rookie of the Year in 1988 and bringing down the house (then known as Riverfront Stadium, now Cinergy Field) in the All-Star Game in Cincinnati when NL manager Whitey Herzog called him into pinch run.

        It was an appropriate entry, because there was nothing Sabo liked to do as much as he liked to run and slide, to take the extra base and break up double plays. In the Reds' 1990 World Championship season, he did all of that, plus he had two home runs and five RBI in the World Series sweep of the A's.

        “I don't miss the hitting, the fielding, but I still miss the running,” he said. “That was the funnest part of the game. I used to love breaking up double plays. I loved sliding, getting the smell of the sand.”

        Sometimes, he has races with his daughters.

        “I've still got a little spurt, where if I can get a jump on them, I can stay ahead for a bit,” he said. “But they're pretty fast. They always catch up and go by me.”

        Only in those races does “Sabes” look back.

        And then, it's his future he sees — those three spunky girls.

        There's one other thing Sabo misses from his playing days.

        “I'm very confrontational,” he said. “When I was a player, umpires hated me. It was just my nature to yell at them. It was nothing personal. Most of the time, I didn't even know their names. There's no confrontations in my life now. I'm not a road-rage guy. And you can't be confrontational in golf. But I can have those confrontations (with umpires) as a manager.”

        It would sell some tickets in Florence, no doubt.

        Sabo is one heck of a salesman for the Florence baseball project, because he remains one of the most popular former Reds. He refuses to do any card shows or other activities that trade on his baseball fame — unless those functions raise money for charity, as do the celebrity golf events he plays around the country. He's a scratch golfer.

        “I still get offers (to do card shows and other appearances) you wouldn't believe,” Sabo said. “A couple of days ago, I got a call from a guy who wanted me to play three rounds of golf, with three different people, for big money. All I had to do was show up. Hey, I'm not that social to begin with. People think they can slip you money and have you do what they want. That's what I hate about card shows. I haven't done a card show since my rookie season. I thought it was ridiculous.”

        And yet, this is the same guy who recenly drove to Piqua to co-host a telethon to raise money for St.Jude Hospital. (“That was good — it was for sick children. I got something out of that,” he said.)

        Same Sabes, all engines ahead full.

        It also is pure Sabo that — even though, by his own admission, he is not a social individual — he pours himself into events that are social by nature, such as charitable causes and stumping for the Frontier League team.

        People like him because he is honest, unabashed in speaking his mind. What he says often comes out funny because of the lack of pretention. It's Yogi Berra without the malaprops. Sabo's a kid from the asphalt streets of Detroit who walked the ivory halls of Ann Arbor for three years and emerged wiser but uncorrupted by cautious speech.

        For example, when he is asked about his enduring popularity as a former Reds player, he blow-torches away the sentimentality.

        “It's not because of my ballplaying,” he said. “I played hard, but that's not why people remember me. They remember me because I looked kind of strange. I wore stupid glasses and had a weird haircut. I was real stocky, the size of any ordinary guy, and maybe people liked that, too.”

        He knows who he is ... and who people want him to be.

        Which, of course, he refuses to be.

        “People like to bring up the old stuff when they meet me, which is fine, but it's not me (to rehash it),” he said. “I'm not rude. If they want my autograph, I give it to them. I mean, what's it worth? Five cents? If I gave some people some memories because of my playing, that's great. But I played for the team. I did it to win. I can't even tell you where my (World Championship) ring is from 1990, except to say it's in the house somewhere.”

        For Sabo, the Frontier League is just about perfect, because he doesn't have to fool with spring training, which he loathed. (“If you hit 20 home runs in spring training, what's it mean? Nothing,” he says. “I hated it. Same thing in golf. I need something on the line, a Nassau or something. I just can't play for the fun of it.”)

        Also good in the Frontier League is that Sabo can play whomever he wants and not have to cater to bonus babies. ... or to the people who sign them.

        “If you were coaching a Reds minor-league team and they had some prospects, (Reds general manager) Jim Bowden or somebody else would say, "You have to play this guy, no matter what.' He could hit .150, but he's in there every day, even if he doesn't hustle. Listen, I'm going to go out of my way to help these kids. But if they don't want to hustle, forget it.”

        He believes Frontier League baseball will be good for the area.

        “We'll get some kids interested in ball by going to games in Florence and they'll say, "OK, we had a great time here, now let's go see the big boys hit — Griffey and Casey and Larkin. They're even better.' That's good for baseball.”

        The Frontier League's 84-game schedule won't take Sabo away from his family for a full season, and he says he won't even mind the occasional six-hour bus trips to the farthest Frontier towns of London, Ontario, and to the outskirts of St. Louis, even though his back will stiffen up.

        “I can't play anymore, so it really doesn't matter,” he said. “I never minded the bus rides (in the minors), anyway. What I didn't like sometimes were the fields and the lighting. I played third base in some towns where I didn't have a clue (where the ball was going). Get in front of the ball? You gotta be crazy. I played it off to the side.”

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