Doc: Opening Day joys unique to Cincinnati
Opening Day is the day baseball keeps its Little Boy promise. It's the one day when being unreasonably optimistic and hopelessly naïve isn't just accepted; it's preferred. We sit in the sun and let a little spring wind give loft to all that might be.
After this no-account winter, there is no better excuse to throw open a window and feel good. "Hope springs eternal,'' Reds CEO Bob Castellini said Sunday. Then, as if I didn't believe him, he said it again. Hope springs eternal.
"New season, new weather,'' Castellini said. "People are more cheerful.''
Opening Day doesn't resonate like this in warmer places. It can't. It doesn't come with the heart leap elsewhere, the way it does here. Boston, maybe, but hearts are by nature harder in Boston. They'll turn on their Red Sox soon enough, if they don't win early and often.
Smaller cities identify more closely with their teams. The teams are a bigger stitch in the local fabric than in larger places. Don't like the Cubs? Try the White Sox. We don't have that alternative.
The St. Louis Cardinals are here Monday, and that is good, because more than any other place, St. Louis knows how we feel, on this day of all days. The Reds aren't just a collection of highly paid people, randomly landed at Great American Ball Park. Not to us.
To us, they are us. The players we admire most embody the traits we like to think we carry like genes: Hard work, humility. Dirty shirts. Pete Rose, Chris Sabo, Barry Larkin, Joey Votto. They're not just ballplayers; they're our guys.
It used to be this way, literally. When the Little Boy promise lasted for days, weeks, seasons and decades. When players didn't make lots of money, when they lived in town. When you saw them in the neighborhood.
There once was a place here called Deer Creek Commons. It was a patch of downtown green with basketball courts, tennis courts and five ballfields. Jim Tarbell recalled that the Commons stretched from where the Baldwin Building is now, all the way to Broadway. Deer Creek Commons was a reason Tarbell used the name "Broadway Commons'' to describe the area he wanted the Reds new park to be.
It's where, in 1933, a guy named George "Shorty'' Normile founded Knothole baseball.
Oldtimers recall playing on those fields as kids in the 1950s, and encountering Reds players. Gus Bell, Ted Kluszewski and Roy McMillan sometimes showed up, to help them with their fundamentals.
Tarbell grew up in Hyde Park, a few blocks from the square. It was a prime area for Reds players. "Jim Greengrass -- you gotta love him just for the name -- lived across the street. Roy McMillan and Johnny Temple lived right behind Hap's Irish Pub,'' Tarbell said. "Ted Kluszewski lived in Pleasant Ridge. He hung out with Jack Evans, who lived five doors down from me.''
Bob Castellini recalled that Gus Bell lived on Arcadia Place in Hyde Park, before moving out to Kenwood.
The point is, the players weren't just in the city. They were of it. I fell hard for the Brooklyn Dodgers, even as their heyday occurred before I was born, when I read that Duke Snider lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and car-pooled to home games with his neighbors, Pee Wee Reese and Carl Erskine.
Those days are fossilized and stored in the same museum with doubleheaders and dollar hot dogs. Homer Bailey won't be asking to borrow your lawn mower anytime soon.
I don't go to the bar on the corner toting an empty bucket to be filled with Hudy, either. When I want to play softball, I'm not headed to Deer Creek Commons, or LeBlond Fields on Eastern Avenue. Jay Bruce doesn't live down the street.
We've lost all that, and with it, a little of what made baseball so charming. But kids still will skip school on Monday. The 95th Findlay Market Parade will roll, guested by Mat Latos and Aroldis Chapman. Barry Larkin and Davey Concepcion will throw out first pitches and honor some past.
The game will start shortly after 4, and right then, we'll get back that eternal feeling that, no matter what else happens, the Reds will be on the radio, and we can retreat to the back yard or the front porch and suspend reality for a few hours.
Hardball begins Wednesday night, when reality toes the rubber and the 25 people who work on the grass are absorbed in their jobs. But that's Wednesday. On Monday, the Reds are the community, and the community stands tall. There is no other day around here quite like it. That has never changed.