Carl Lindner has sent 450,000 vouchers to students and teachers in the Tristate, each good for two View Level seats to any game this year except the three against Cleveland, July 2-4. They're $11 seats in the upper deck. If all were redeemed, that's $9.9 million worth of tickets. What?

Just guessing, but probably no one has ever done this, anywhere, in any sport. Not to this extent. This isn't papering the house. It's covering it in semi-gloss, several hundred coats deep.

You can question the motivation if you like. Fans booed Lindner on Opening Day, a despicable (yet entirely explicable) show of short memory. No business is more what-have-you-done-for-me-lately than sports. Until the Reds' recent successes, lots of fanly abuse toward Uncle Carl found my e-mail inbox at the Enquirer.

Lindner won't speak publicly of such things. Given his endless philanthropy - rivaled only by his sensitivity to public perception - you have to feel Lindner was wounded by it. Family members have wondered why Lindner keeps his approximately 40 percent share of the Reds, given the public nature of his position.

Lindner was not prepared for the attention and criticism that come with being the majority owner of the most revered sports team in town. It's interesting how such a small part of what Lindner oversees can be such a big part of who the public thinks he is.

So maybe Lindner's big giveaway is a means of restoring public adoration for Mr. Cincinnati. So what?

Nine hundred thousand tickets.

Lindner has given away Reds tickets before, lots of them, to nurses, cops, firemen and city school kids. Last year, he sent out 275,000 vouchers. That was nothing like this.

I asked Lindner on Friday if anyone ever gave him a ticket to Redland Field, when he was a kid. "No, sir," he said. "When I was 17, I was working for $15 a week" driving a milk truck. At night, Lindner took high school classes at West Night High, in what is now the Hughes Center. He never finished. "I dropped out to work," he said.

This business of encouraging children to succeed in school matters to him. "While I wasn't fortunate enough to go to college, you should know that I 'study' every day of my life," Lindner wrote in a note sent with each voucher. "I love to learn and would encourage you to increase your knowledge in every way."

Some of us would love Lindner to spend all that good will on a couple starting pitchers. He might learn the value of seven strong innings every day in September. He could "study" that.

But really, what's more important? You can do something nice for a child. You can send him or her to a ballgame. You can write a letter that might change a few lives for the permanent good. Or you can throw $5 million at a millionaire who already lives in a house big enough for its own zip code.

Not to mention that Lindner can't toss millions in player money around like it's Bingo Night at the fire hall. Technically, it's not just his money. His ownership partners might not be thrilled.

We assume the Reds don't add payroll because Lindner doesn't want to. Maybe we shouldn't.

Regardless, the philanthropy is his own affair, underwritten with his own money.

"My whole thing is, (baseball) is a family sport, let's encourage it," Lindner said.

It took several staffers and an equal number of part-timers six weeks to stuff 450,000 envelopes, working seven days a week. It's taking just as long to sift through the gratefulness that has ensued.

Thank-you notes arrive in bulk at Lindner's Fourth Street office, in plastic U.S. Mail containers the size of a recycling bin. Parents write to thank Lindner for the note encouraging their children to learn. Kids write to thank him for the tickets. All the mail is read; the most poignant thank-yous get a personal response from Lindner.

Who knows how many vouchers will be redeemed, or how many kids' lives will be bent to the good. When you send out 450,000 vouchers, one or two have to have a profound effect. More profound, probably, than acquiring a mercenary right-hander for a couple months.

Though we wouldn't mind that, either.

---

E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com

Return to Reds front page...