I hear a heart beat

I was prepared to write a Reds Eulogy today, saying goodbye to the 2006 season. The West Coast calamity, followed by a series loss to the Giants, had killed my interest. I detached myself emotionally from the team – I vowed to no longer let a Reds loss affect my disposition. My Reds bracelet was coming off, I would not watch them on TV and would no longer go down to the ball yard unless I had a free ticket.

It’s not so much that the Reds went on a 3-13 skid following an August 22 victory over the Astros. It was HOW the Reds were losing. Runners stranded in scoring position. Poor base running. Lousy fielding. And, of course, the bullpen. Krivsky has been relentless in bringing in new arms to bolster the pitching staff. He has dealt young starters and said goodbye to prospects to strengthen the one weakness he knew would kill the Reds down the stretch. His efforts have been in vain. Guardado had to have Tommy John surgery. Majewski is a disaster. Bray has been inconsistent. Cromier has been consistently bad. He purchased every cleaning solution in the store to get out a nasty stain and was only able to make it a different color of terrible.

But damnit, these boys are still ALIVE! The Reds face the NL Wild Card leading Padres in a 3-game series starting tomorrow – a sweep and they are a ½ game out of the playoffs. The Reds are right there. And they don’t even need a 10-game winning streak. A 13-6 record in the final 19 games gets them in the playoffs. That’s not unreasonable.

So I am putting the Reds bracelet back on for one more series. I am re-opening the doors to my heart. Go ahead Reds, cut it out again. Anything you can do at this point will heal fast because I have the medicine. Football.