Sunday, April 14, 2002
Cinergy Countdown
MOMENT NO. 32, JUNE 30, 1970. OPENING NIGHT, RIVERFRONT STADIUM.
By John Erardi, jerardi@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Enquirer begins its countdown of the 32 greatest moments in the 32-year history of Riverfront Stadium/Cinergy Field. One of these moments will run every Sunday in the sports section. The final 10 will be counted down daily on the morning of the last 10 Reds home games of the final season at Riverfront/Cinergy.
It was Lee May who coined the term “minor-league (expletive-expletive)” to describe first-year Reds manager Sparky Anderson in 1970. May, who was as good-natured a person as he was a bona fide Reds slugger, used the phrase directly, and affectionately, right to Sparky's face.
Sparky, who had a great sense of humor, knew from whence he came. Sparky — who had played one full season in the big leagues and hit .218 as the Philadelphia Phillies second baseman, then managed five years in the minors — laughed at the reference.
But he sure didn't feel like a “minor-league (expletive-expletive)” when he walked into Riverfront Stadium on Opening Night, June 30, 1970. Anderson felt like he had loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly — Hills, that is, swimming pools, movie stars.
“I walked into Riverfront Stadium and said, "My gosh, it's like its the eighth wonder of the world!'” recalls Anderson, who today lives year-around in Thousand Oaks, Calif. “There was nothing like it in baseball. A big, modern stadium with all the amenities, and Astroturf all the way around. The clubhouse was big and new and sparkling. It's easy to forget now how nice that stadium was. It was the Taj Mahal.”
The Reds lost their first game at Riverfront Stadium 8-2 to the Atlanta Braves as Henry Aaron hit the first home run in the new stadium. A crowd of 51,050 mostly wide-eyed fans felt as though they'd entered the space age when they entered a stadium that looked like a flying saucer on the outside with escalators on the inside (although the escalators weren't yet working on Opening Night).
Fans also had to do without cooked-on-the-premises hot dogs (there was no electricity yet in the concession stands) and a functioning computerized scoreboard (it was full of glitches).
The fan amenities were not alone in not being quite ready for prime time. The grounds crew hadn't had time to get the requisite clay into the pitcher's mound and had to use regular dirt.
“Pat Jarvis was falling down, but it didn't keep him from beating us, and that was back when Atlanta didnėt beat us very often,” Anderson said of the Braves pitcher. “I will never forget that night. Here I was, managing that great ball club in that wonderful new stadium. And I'm thinking to myself, "Who in the heck am I?'”
On Riverfront's Opening Night, here's who in heck Sparky Anderson was. He was no “minor-league (expletive-expletive).” He was the manager of a team that would win 70 of its first 100 games, win the National League pennant and play host to the franchise's first World Series since 1961. The Reds would lose the World Series to the Baltimore Orioles in five games. But Anderson had made a name for himself — and his team — in the “Land of Aahhs.”
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Cinergy Countdown
