Doc's TML: The other AJ debuts tonight
I wish every day were Monday. At least as it pertains to This Space. It's the one day of the week lately that I'm not struggling for profundity (look it up, engineers). Right? Right?
For the first time in a lifetime, The Morning Man is actually interested in watching Fake Football For Real Money tonight. The other AJ makes his pro debut in Tampa. Because trying to extract from M. Lewis anything resembling actual information is becoming CIA-impossible, we don't know when McCarron will play. No later than the start of the 2nd half, probably.
(Boring is good if you're M. Lewis. Marv loves boring. All football coaches do. No major injuries, no burning issues, no controversial position battles. A few players who speak their minds, thank goodness. But never divisively. Great for The Men. Hard for the heathen media. When the biggest talker in training camp is how the other AJ will do, you know player heads are where they ought to be.)
We can't expect pretty. If he's like most first-timers, McCarron will run around a lot, after he sees his first option is covered. But I love this guy's confidence. There were reasons a two-time quasi-am champion QB wasn't taken until Round 5. A lack of leadership and charisma weren't among them.
I will pay big attention. It's not a stretch to say it will be among the most telling shows of AJM's nascent career, college included. The Bengals want him to be good. They want him to be advanced enough to push Dalton, who hasn't been pushed since Day 1.
That won't happen tonight. But it will be interesting to see how he runs a huddle, how he reacts to a bad play, how crisp his throws are. He's a bright, tough kid. There's a lot going on beneath that veneer of Southern charm and politeness. I want to see some of it starting tonight.
Now, then. . .
MUDVILLE, EVERY AUG. 24 . . .Monday is the 26th anniversary of the day Pete Rose lost his heart. He traded it on the cheap, for the thrill of winning a couple thousand dollars a night. All that work, all that passion, creating all that legend, sold on the black market for a couple grand a night.
He stood behind a bank of microphones in the old Crosley Room at Riverfront Stadium. The same place he gathered nightly with media as his quest for The Big Knock reached its inevitability.
"This is a sad day,'' Pete said then.
I was a sophomore sports columnist that day, having arrived here in January '88. Nothing I'd ever done professionally prepared me for the summer of '89 or for its crest on Aug. 24.
Since then, we've debated Pete's place in the game, loved him when he came into town and watched him age to the point where his knees shout and walking one flight of stairs leaves him winded. We've seen him lying and defiant, arrogant and unrepentant. We've seen him remorseful. Now, we see him resigned. At least that's what I see.
He's not getting reinstated . He may or may not have stated his case yet to Manfred. Other than speaking his mind, it won't make any difference. The interestingly timed ESPN report that said he bet on the Reds as a player was yet another crater along Pete's redemption road. (We won't dignify Dowd's radio remarks re Rose's supposed dalliances with minors. Lawsuit, please.)
Pete miscalculated every step of the way, and now it's too late to do anything about it. I like Pete. He has been good to me. He deserves to be in the HOF, whether he's back in baseball or not.
Baseball's crimes against itself – led by its flaming, smoking hypocrisy when it comes to gambling, followed by its see-no-evil approach to PEDs when PEDs helped revive the game – are every bit as odious as Pete's misdeeds.
He has been banned from the game for 27 seasons. Murderers spend less time in jail.
THE TENNIS WAS STELLAR. RINSE AND REPEAT. . . The Western & Southern Open is in the risky business of topping itself every summer, and every summer it does just that. It set attendance records again this year.
It wasn't that long ago that this tournament was just another stop on tennis' World Bank Vault Tour. My first experience with it, in 1988, finalist Stefan Edberg paused midway through the second set, to ask the chair umpire how many sets they were playing. That's how much it meant to him.
Now, the best players see this event as a big skin on the wall, in addition to being the perfect tuneup for the US Open beginning next week. You had only notice the passion displayed by Sunday's champs to see that. Winning here is big for them.
R. Federer is just a delight, on and off the court. Pleasant, engaging, candid. Serena is equally pleasant, but regally distant. The tennis each played Sunday was stupendous.
The only downer : Williams beat Simona Halep in a stadium court that was barely half full. Can someone explain how the best women's player in the world – and arguably the best ever – could play to such an obviously sparse crowd?
Regardless, kudos again to all those who make this event work. In three decades of covering sports, I've experienced only one venue more efficient than this one, and it's snuggled amid the pines and azaleas of north Georgia.
YOUR BASEBALL TEAM is miserable. We knew it would be, after the dealing was done. But this miserable? Yesterday, The Club was shut out by a kid who was ticketed for Triple A, but stuck around because the planned starting pitcher got hurt. If BPrice is to save his job, he best get his team playing with a bit more salt.
I heard a radio talker on Friday speak about how "fun'' it is to watch certain Reds players, most notably Chappy and newbie John Lamb. I don't understand that.
Chapman might be entertaining. Ditto the Reds rookie pitcher, who has made all of two starts. Fun?
No. Winning is "fun''. September pennant-ball is fun. Watching a last-place team play out the string is not fun. No matter who's doing the entertaining.
Trust me: I'm a Pirates fan. I had 21 years of fun, watching them be the worst team in baseball and among the worst in all of sports. What a fun time.
And, just wondering: When does The Club feel it finally has the prospective middle-reliever market cornered? "We see (fill in the blank) in the bullpen'' has been a popular utterance in the last three-plus weeks.
Big deals? Big deal.
You might rave over the Suarez-for-Simon swap, and right now, it looks decent. But Simon does have 11 wins, which is four more than any current Reds starter owns, and only two fewer Ws than the entire Reds rotation combined.
While everyone is having fun and praising all the trades , let's recall that since Opening Day 2014, the Reds are 127-157. That's 30 games under .500, and sinking. Which is less than desirable and certainly not fun. If you enjoy watching kids frolic, follow the Freedom or become a camp counselor. But don't dismiss what has happened here the last two seasons.
Now, we can all be entertained speculating on how good all these crystal-ball guys could be. Might be. May be. Or not.
I feel better now.
THE WEEKEND THAT WAS featured the always great get-together with Cigar John and Mistic Darryl. John lives in Jersey but grew up here and has walked at the right hand of Rocky Patel. Darryl intro'd me to Punch Rare Corojos and sings with the Mistics, who harmonize like angels borrowed from the sky. Not much beats good friends and good cigars.
I AM STILL SEEKING A QUALITY REPLACEMENT for the departed BKors, who wrote 200 words every Thursday about downtown doings, and thus increased This Space's Cool Quotient by about a million percent.
If you are a hipster, Millennial, party boy (or girl) or just want to write about what's happening in the proverbial urban core, drop me a line and a quasi-resume at montreatman@aol.com. It pays nothing but my gratitude. And maybe, a sheen on your real resume. BKors said the gig here helped him land the job he just got in Indy. Lemme hear ya, dudes and dudesses.
MEANTIME, I TOLD YOU I WAS COOL. I've received copious grief across the years, for hanging on to my all-white sneakers. Just last week, Mrs. Famer made sport of me with an Instagram photo showing me teeing off at Terrace Park CC in my shiny whites.
Well.
It's not enough that Ice-T showed up on Jimmy Fallon sporting all-whites. On Saturday at the tennis, I spent a few minutes with Cincy's own N. Lachey. He's gonna Hemingway a TML on Sept. 11, two days before the Bengals opener. Guess what he was sporting on his feet, cool people?
Uh, Doc. Can we stop with the name-dropping?
Yeah, but the point is: All-whites are hip now. And so am I.
TUNE O' THE DAY . I decided to dedicate this week to four of the worst songs I've ever heard. In order of aural terrorism, bad to horrifying:
1.Billy Don't Be a Hero.
2.The Night Chicago Died.
3.Honey.
4.MacArthur Park.
With HM to Seasons In The Sun and Muskrat Love, Captain and Tennille version.
Mac Park still sets the standard, nearly 40 years after it was unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Awful lyrics, sung by an actor (Richard Harris) whose quasi-sincerity makes this crap even mo' lamer than it would have been.
I mean, sample this, if you dare:
I don't think that I can take it
Cuz it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no.
Oh, no indeed. Take that cake in the rain and stick it up your larynx.
Anyway, gimme some of your favorite terrible tunes. We'll commiserate as one.
For now, don't be a hero. Or ever listen to this song, under penalty of death.