The Reds' Ray Washburn pitches to an unidentified Braves batter during the first game ever played at Riverfront Stadium, June 30, 1970. (File photo) | ZOOM |

        The scoreboard was full of glitches. The escalators, press box, P.A. system and concession stands were only partially completed. The clubhouse lacked carpeting and its ceiling leaked. The pitchers slipped off the mound. The crowd baked on a 95-degree evening. And the Reds lost.

        Yet it was hard to find anyone who wasn't beaming.

        Seeing lame-duck, antiquated Cinergy Field now, it's hard to recall how it so sparkled on its opening night — 32 years ago today.

        “I walked in and said, "My gosh, it's like it's the eighth wonder of the world!' ” said Sparky Anderson, who was a first-year manager in 1970. “It was the Taj Mahal.”

        The significance of the ballpark in this city's civic history is twofold: It helped Cincinnati land pro football and gave the budding Big Red Machine a bigger home to house four World Series in the 1970s.

        The Reds will celebrate the anniversary of its opening with a Turn Back the Clock promotion Monday. The Reds and Astros will wear uniforms circa 1970, Pepsi products and hot dogs will be $1 apiece, and red reserved seats can be purchased for $3.

        The tangible buzz in Cincinnati that night, though, would be hard to replicate.

        “This is magnificent,” then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn said that day, admiring Riverfront Stadium. “It strikes you as a thing of beauty.”

        The game itself? An 8-2 loss to Atlanta, an aberration in one of the Reds' finest seasons.

        “It was nice to win that game,” Braves legend Hank Aaron said this week. “Nobody beat those guys all that often.”

        Aaron was 3-for-4 that night, christening the stadium with a first-inning home run and adding two doubles.

        The Braves had a 6-0 lead after three innings and totaled 16 hits off four Reds pitchers. Not that the score mattered in anyone's memory.

        “The thing I remember is Pat Jarvis kicking dirt all over the place,” Reds broadcaster Joe Nuxhall said. “His hat was flying off.”

        The grounds crew hadn't had time to get the requisite clay into the pitcher's mound and had to use regular dirt. Jarvis, the Braves' starter, wound up falling onto his back a couple of times and often slipped off the mound.

        The first time it happened, he kicked violently at the mound, sending the dirt flying off onto the AstroTurf. The crowd booed. Jarvis sheepishly tried to kick the dirt back onto the mound.

        It was his only trouble of the night, as he pitched a complete game. Jim McGlothlin, who came in with a 10-3 mark and a seven-game winning streak, started for the Reds but allowed six runs in 2 2/3 innings.

        McGlothlin wound up 14-10, his finest season. He died five years later of leukemia at the age of 32.

        Jarvis, later a sheriff in DeKalb County, Ga., was sentenced in 1999 to 15 months in prison and fined $40,000 for his part in a jail contract kickback scheme.

        The key figures of that night didn't all meet bad fates — Aaron, of course, set baseball's home run record. His 714th homer, which tied Babe Ruth, came off Jack Billingham on Opening Day 1974 in Cincinnati.

        “I had lots of things to remember about Cincinnati, lots of them in Crosley Field,” Aaron said. “That's where I broke in (April 13, 1954), where I broke my ankle (Sept. 5, 1954) and went to Christ Hospital, and where I got my 3,000th hit (off Wayne Simpson, May 17, 1970). And then I had the first homer in Riverfront and tied the record there.

        “I have very fond memories of Cincinnati. (Riverfront) was a ballpark I enjoyed playing in. Some ballparks you don't see the ball well in, but I saw it well there. And seeing Crosley Field and then Riverfront, that was a tremendous improvement.”

        The $50 million building had everyone eager for the move, except for some superstitious Reds.

        “Everyone hates to leave Crosley, because we're doing so well here,” infielder Darrel Chaney said the day of the move. “But with a club as good as this one, we'll do well wherever we play.”

        The Reds were 52-21 (.712) at the time, nine games up on Los Angeles in the National League West and on their way to winning 102 games. That's a total topped just once (108 victories in 1975) in club history.

        Tony Perez was batting .362 and already had 27 homers and 79 RBI. He would finish with a .317 average and career highs of 40 homers and 129 RBI. Johnny Bench had 25 homers and 65 RBI and would end up leading the league with 45 homers and 148 RBI, both career highs.

        On that June 30, though, some Reds eyed the distant dimensions and then-14-foot-wall and were concerned about the difficulty of hitting home runs. Then pitcher Gary Nolan hit the first batting-practice pitch he saw over the wall, and all the Reds smiled.

        Elsewhere, mild chaos reigned. An overzealous security guard wouldn't let Kuhn in the gate until Pete Rose intervened: “Wait a minute, this is the commissioner of baseball.”

        Kuhn visited the Reds clubhouse, which was strewn with buckets to catch dripping water. “As new as it was, we even had rats running across the locker room some nights,” equipment manager Bernie Stowe said.

        The parking garage, supposedly the largest covered garage in the world, was only half-open. With no electricity in the concession stands, there were no hot dogs.

        And the crowd was hungry. With concerns about traffic, much of the crowd parked far away and walked, and downtown restaurants were packed. Many ran out of food.

        “People ask, "Where's a good place to eat,' and even the bad places are filled,” Jerry Moore, who ran a news stand at Fourth and Vine, told the Enquirer.

        But the crowd of 51,050, officially the largest ever to see a sporting event in Cincinnati, raved about the stadium's design and the AstroTurf field.

        In the second inning, Joe Vinciguerra of Bramwell, W.Va., climbed up on his seat to pick off a foul ball. He was the recipient of the first “honorary contract” the Reds awarded to fans who make notable catches in the stands.

        “I've still got the ball,” Vinciguerra said. “You want to buy it?”

        More than 30 newspapers, including the New York Times, San Francisco News and San Francisco Sun, were on hand to chronicle the first game. Two weeks later, the stadium would host the All-Star Game.

        Now it's considered old and drab, and by year's end it will be a memory.

        Yet in the mind's eye, some still see it with Rose-colored glasses. Listen to Rose's quote from that opening game:

        “I used to think that San Diego stadium was the prettiest I'd seen. But this . . . this is something else. I have to tap myself to make sure I'm in Cincinnati. This is out of sight.”

        There were great concerns about traffic. The city's engineering department had spent years planning and developing roads and walkways in the vicinity of the stadium.

        “They were all scared off,” said Don Wehmeyer, supervising stadium engineer for the city. “They all parked uptown and walked.”

        The Washington Senators were still around.

        “All my baseball memories are here, and since we've done so well here, it'd kind of tough to leave,” Rose said of Crosley. “But hell, we'd just as soon put 50,000 people through the gate as the 30,000 we get here.”

        On June 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced U.S. support troops to the South Vietnamese armed forced had withdrawn from Cambodia. A hike in bus fares in Cincinnati was announced, to 40 cents cash or 35 cents in tokens.

        The next day, Detroit pitcher Denny McLain was to end his three-month exile from baseball for what commissioner Bowie Kuhn said was an association with gamblers in 1967. And A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the first full-length animated film about the “Peanuts” gang, opened in theaters.

Reds 4, Cards 2 Reds box, runs Reds Q&A Boone to ask for more innings from starters Graves, Dunn have best shot at All-Star Game Reds chatter Top pick handled with care Anniversary of Riverfront opener rekindles memories Cinergy Moment No. 21. - June 16, 1978 Choosing All-Stars is no simple task Colon joins the Expos Corey's seizure still a mystery Interleague roundup Notes from Saturday's games Durham 4, Louisville 3 John Fay's MLB power rankings

Bengals Q&A
Giants' Pochman has big shoes to fill
Rams release Summit, Miami product Cohen
Biles' life jumps back on track
Indiana track faces fine for failing to disclose all
Nonsuch Bay wins Mother Goose Stakes
Deveroes rosters, schedule
Summer League site could change
3rd: Turkey 3, South Korea 2
America faces slow road ahead despite soccer success
Channel 9 will show Cup final live
Schroeder with high hopes for Germans - real high
World Cup trophy is as filled with history as tournament itself
Becker doesn't expect Sampras to return to Wimbledon
Court 2, Wimbledon's 'Graveyard of Champions'
V.Williams loses a set
Biela put Le Mans-winning Audi on pole at Mid-Ohio
Biffle wins Busch pole
GROESCHEN: Ky. Speedway won't let Winston dream die
Hard-luck Nadeau can't seem to catch a break
Heroic ex-marine became Roush's guardian angel
Hnatiuk still leads in Memphis
Kettering course gets 2005 Senior Open
Tiger comfortable shooting birdies - and commercials
Armstrong eyes fourth straight Tour de France title
Klitschko retains WBO belt
On-deck batter collapses and dies at youth ballgame
Three seconds from gold
Coming up this week
Enquirer Page Two power rankings
Hook, line & sinker
GROESCHEN: Big crowd gets bigger

• Return to Reds front page...