By Bill Koch
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The game was a bust, but the pre-game ceremony that opened Great American Ball Park on Monday is something Reds shortstop and captain Barry Larkin will always remember.

Larkin, who has played his entire 17-year big-league career in Cincinnati, was the first Red to bat in the new park and would love to have been the first to get a hit.

But he'll settle for having the honor of catching the ceremonial first pitch from former President George Bush.

Larkin didn't expect that.

It's not often that shortstops catch ceremonial first pitches. But when manager Bob Boone asked him to get out on the field, he was quick to oblige.

"It was just kind of, 'Hey, we don't have a catcher. Lark, go get him,' " Larkin said.

So Larkin grabbed a catcher's mitt, stationed himself behind home plate and waited for the delivery from the former president, one captain to another. Bush was captain of the 1947 Yale baseball team as a first baseman.

"He threw me a two-seamer," Larkin said, "a little runner. He threw it down and away, a good two-strike pitch. It was cool."

After Larkin made the catch, he walked toward the mound to shake Bush's hand and present him with the ball.

"He said, 'Are you all right? Did I hurt you?' " Larkin said.

That ceremonial first pitch will be the enduring memory Larkin takes from the Reds' first game in their new ballpark. Their 10-1 shellacking at the hands of the Pirates will prevent him from toting away many other fond memories.

"It's disappointing," Larkin said. "One game or not, it's Opening Day and we got beat up out there. It's no fun."

For the Reds, Monday marked the beginning of an era, but for Larkin, it very well could have marked the start of his final season as a Red.

Larkin, 38, is in the final year of a three-year contract, but he said he didn't give that a thought as he trotted out toward the first-base line when the Reds' starting lineup was announced.

He was too busy enjoying the moment.

"It's Opening Day," Larkin said. "You're excited, optimistic, happy to be out there, happy to be a part of it, all those things.

"I appreciate them all. I don't put any more value on one or the other. It's a sentimental thing. Just because it's getting toward the end, that doesn't make it any more sentimental."

Larkin flied to right against Pirates right-hander Kris Benson in his first at-bat, walked in the third inning, grounded to short in the fifth and hit into a double play in the seventh.

It fell to Ken Griffey Jr., who doubled down the right-field line in the bottom of the first inning, to record the first hit in the new park.

Griffey's hit was the first of only four for the Reds. If this is supposed to be a hitters' park, someone forgot to tell the Reds.

"It looked like a Pirate hitting park, that's for sure," Larkin said. "The ball did carry well. Reggie Sanders' home run I didn't think was a homer at first, but it got well out."

In the end, it was a day for pomp and circumstance, a day the new park lived up to its advance billing, even if the Reds didn't.

"We need to turn the page and just go on," Larkin said.

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E-mail bkoch@enquirer.com