Tuesday, February 19, 2002
DAUGHERTY: Cinergy Field
Really, what is all the fuss about?
By Paul Daugherty
The Cincinnati Enquirer
There is nostalgia and there is good riddance. There are fond memories. And there are toilets dirty since Nixon. Celebrate Cinergy Field?
Give it long enough, you can get mushy about anything. Remember 1962, baby boomers? Wasn't it cool as third-graders to hide under your desks every time you heard the air-raid siren?
This manufactured drip about CF really is desperate. The Reds are likely to be limited this year. We know this. We can handle it. We're big people. Better days are (supposedly) a year away.
But to wrap the year in some concocted love-fest for the lame-duck season of a dump like CF? To see Lethargy Field as an oldie-but-goody? Someone get me Elvis in a jumpsuit.
Memories?
Coke stuck to your pants Friday night, from a spill Monday afternoon. Walking halfway around the upper deck to find an open concession stand. Medieval bathrooms.
If only those days could last forever.
What a special place CF was. Who could forget the ushers? Just like Sgt. Carter in Gomer Pyle, USMC. “Move it, fan. Moveit, moveit, moveit.” Gonna miss those old guys.
What reminders?
It was a palace. So atmospheric. History came alive. All those championship banners, flapping in the cool breeze of a Cincinnati August. To say nothing of the Big Red Machine reminders.
Oh, that's right. There weren't any. The only good thing about the inside of CF was the memories it housed. Yet no one ever saw fit to include those memories. Not until a few years ago, when the Reds finally hung some numbers in left field, would you have known you were even in Pete Rose's place, the house of Joe Morgan, site of the Freezer Bowl. (Did the Bengals really play in Cinergy?)
For 25 years at least, you wouldn't have even known you were in Cincinnati.
For a 33rd season in 2002, the heathens in the first row of the press box will sit atop a plywood floor that threatens to collapse like a trap door.
Down the hall, in the Bengals press box, a five-foot-long vein of someone's heavy expectoration snaked down the massive window like an ivy tendril. FOR TWO YEARS.
Cinergy Field had all the atmosphere of a petri dish. In fact, when the weather turned Guatemalan and the disinfectant ran low, Cinergy Field was a petri dish.
Just a dump
Some old places wear their dirt like a badge. Boston Garden smelled like the inside of a size-16 Chuck, with a cigar butt under the laces. The Garden was allowed its grit. It was legitimately ancient and revered. CF didn't last long enough for that. It was just a dump, with memories never memorialized.
And how 'bout that garage? Watch out for that falling chunk of concrete bigger than Monaco.
Cinergy was good at getting people in and out quickly. Ingress and egress, the planners call it. That's it. We hesitate to credit the ol' boneyard for that, either, given its fortuitous location bestride a bunch of highways. The new place should have the same advantage. And hopefully, clean seats.
Cinergy Field should be feted when it's a pile on the ground. Until then, nostalgia energy might be better spent on something truly nostalgic, such as Bengals Super Bowls.
Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; e-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.Com keyword Daugherty.
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DAUGHERTY: Cinergy Field
