The Reds won the Emmy for best drama two nights in a row. Aaron Boone and Barry Larkin hit walkoff home runs Monday and Tuesday, and it was like seeing a solar eclipse on consecutive afternoons. If Cincinnati had done it again Wednesday, we'd all be calling off work today and running to the gambling boat.

In the home dressing room, the good karma flowed like beer at a church festival. Larkin couldn't remember ever hitting a walkoff homer. He's only been around 18 years. "Amazing. Awesome," Larkin said. Why you play the game.

Larkin compared this team to the 96-win, out-of-nowhere Reds of 1999. "Heart and hustle. Grit. That's the similarity," he said. Win a few like this, then win a few more, pretty soon you start believing. "We're starting to feel we can win no matter the situation," Sean Casey said. "That's how it was in '99."

Reality check

Which is fine. Dreamers can hitch a ride. The rest of us might suggest this: The Reds are winning because the starting pitching has been good enough to keep the bats relevant. Karma isn't much good when you're down five runs three innings into it. At that point, prayer is a better option.

There is no Pete Harnisch here now, no Denny Neagle, and barely a few Steve Parrises. Going into Wednesday night's game, the Reds didn't have a starting pitcher with more than one win or an ERA under 4.15.

If the Reds really had wanted to be players in the NL Central, they'd have traded for Bartolo Colon and kept Elmer Dessens. If management had made that $9 million-plus investment in its fans' hopes, 1999 would have been in much clearer focus. And Great American Ball Park would have had the honeymoon it deserved.

Colon was available last summer, perhaps for Adam Dunn. Dessens was dealt last winter. Colon won 20 last year and has averaged 13 wins a year for the previous six years; Dessens kept the Reds in almost every game he started.

With an ace like Colon and a gamer like Dessens, you could live with Ryan Dempster and hope Paul Wilson and Danny Graves fulfilled potential. You wouldn't be fishing for arms in Triple-A a month into the year. Colon and Dessens would have allowed the Reds a chance against St. Louis, Chicago and Houston.

Where are the pitchers?

When you're facing Kerry Wood one day and Mark Prior the next, or Woody Williams and Matt Morris, or Roy Oswalt and Wade Miller, it'd be nice to answer with something greater than Undecided and To Be Announced.

"I think we have more quality arms on this team" than in '99, Larkin said. Maybe. But quality arms on pitchers who haven't won much are nothing but corked bottles of champagne.

This isn't 1999. These Reds strike out too much. They handle the baseball like it's a paternity suit. But Larkin and Casey were right: It's a sandy group that plays hard all the time. It deserves the chance better pitching would give it. Money is the reason Colon and Dessens aren't here. That's a shame, especially in a year for which, not long ago, the Reds claimed to be building.

"A confidence builder," Larkin called Tuesday's fairy tale win, and it was. Too bad confidence can't give you six good innings every night.

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com