Doc: Final thoughts on Reds

The best thing about sports seasons around here is that they change. We can slide almost seamlessly from Reds to Bengals and, if needed, from Bengals to college basketball, then back to Reds. Woe be the fans who live in one-horse sports towns.

Take today, for instance. If you've had it up to here with The Club, well, The Men looked swell Saturday night. UC kicks off in shiny, old Nippert on Saturday. And it isn't as if the Bengals and Bearcats are supposed to be woeful.

Hardball season, we hardly knew ye.

Some final thoughts on the Reds, before we slide. I wrote in the TM this morning some thoughts on how they might better themselves. Some of it involved chemistry, which I believe in solidly but am tired of arguing about. Most was personnel stuff. The Cliff's Notes:

1.Find Billy Hamilton a hitting guru. OGs will recall Charlie Lau. How 'bout Lou Piniella? I'd love Ichiro to stop by – who practices the art of Slapball better? – but I think he'll still be playing.

How about P.E. Rose?

I don't know the rules pertaining to the Reds hiring Pete as an independent contractor. Maybe MLB won't allow that. Isn't it worth an ask?

Fangraphs says Hamilton hits the ball on the ground only 2 pct. more often than he hits it in the air. That's ridiculous. Think of the possibilities if he made that 22 pct more, or even 12 pct.

2. Acquire at least one and preferably two veteran starting pitchers, capable of 175 innings, 10 wins and lots of mentoring of the young pitchers. This is difficult, I know. Who doesn't want one of those guys? But the Reds have sufficient bait to fish that ocean. Meantime, could they hire B. Arroyo just to sit on the bench?

3. Trade, if feasible, in descending order of preference: Chappy, Bruce, DDBP, Votto, Frazier. Dealing Phillips and Votto wouldn't be easy. Dealing Votto would be almost impossible. Brandon is a 10-and-5 guy, so he can derail any deal, but maybe he'd like to finish his career with a contender. Maybe Toronto would like Joey Rakes, if the Reds were willing to pay some of the salary. Or, as Madonna once said on SNL, "Maybe monkeys will fly outta my butt.''

4. If you're going to fire BPrice – and if the ship keeps hitting icebergs, that's highly likely – don't replace him with Barry Larkin. He has no experience. Only Mike Matheny has overcome no experience lately, and he was already heavily immersed in the Looie Way, or whatever you'd like to call it.

Larkin would have a team requiring all kinds of attention. You wonder if Barry understands how hard managing truly is, especially with a poor team. Hiring the highly popular, HOF, hometown guy would be crack for the masses, but not the smart play for the long haul.

NOW, THE GOOD STUFF. . .The Bengals atoned for Tampa, as you guessed they might, with an easy W over the Smokin' Jay Cutlers. We booed last week, so here are a few cheers:

LOOK ATCHA, OTHER AJ!. . . McCarron, the Other AJ, was highly good Saturday night. He made an NFL throw for that TD to M. Jones, deep over the middle, over one guy and underneath another guy. He appeared calm, for a man making his second NF of L appearance. He looked presidential, in the football sense.

At the very least, perhaps he will make a very good insurance policy. At best, McCarron develops enough to provide some competition.

I loved what he said this AM to the paper's football guru, Paul Dehner Jr., about that TD throw:

(McCarron) wanted his passion for the game to leave a lasting mark on his new teammates.

"Words really can't describe it," McCarron said. "Every time I threw a touchdown at Alabama that's what I did. I just play with a lot of excitement. Brett Favre is my favorite quarterback of all time and after every touchdown he threw that is what he did. He would pick guys up, was having fun. That's the way the game is supposed to be and that's the way that I've always played it. I just want the guys to feel the passion I bring and excitement I bring to them and hopefully they can feed off of it."

M. JONES will help this offense immensely, if he can stay whole. Two serious deep threats, and what, at least three other guys who can catch the crossing routes? An embarrassment of riches.

(That'd be AJ The First, Jones, Eifert, Burkhead and Sanu, if you're scoring at home. And we haven't even mentioned Gio.)

ON THE OTHER HAND, AND THERE'S ALWAYS ANOTHER HAND. . . Why the need to run Dalton on the read option and again at the goal line?

EXISTENTIALISM, PART 2 (OR: What Everyone Wants From a Sports Blog)…

We are doing a mass toss-a-thon in what we call "the old basement'', i.e. the one third of that downstairs space devoted to what might be called, euphemistically, "storage.'' It's like this grand archaeological dig.

It's also interesting what we keep, and what we don't.

Thinning the used-book herd is standard procedure. As is tossing the boxes that are full of kids school papers. I'm a sentimental, melancholic dope. But I do not feel any pangs now, deep-sixing 3rd-grade book reports. I kept the very cool silk-ish jacket I brought my son from the '88 Olympics in Seoul, when he was 2. His name is stitched in script, right beside the Olympic logo.

Kept that.

Didn't keep:

The beer-making machine.

The armbands from about 15 US Opens.

The afghan knitted for me by a girlfriend, circa 1980.

Why'd you still have that, Doc?

And. . . Every printed copy of every story/column etc. I'd ever written from, my God, 1979 all the way up to about 2000.

I had boxes upon boxes of old newspaper columns, Xerox-es of old newspaper columns. Back in prehistory, newspaper hacks not only cut out their columns from the printed paper with scissors, but actually pasted the columns into scrapbooks, for handy referencing and loving admiration.

I know. Hard to believe.

"My whole life,'' I muttered.

I even tossed a boxful of writing awards, state and national. I kept only the two national first places I got a few years ago.

What else I kept:

A few boxes filled with Strat-o-Matic baseball cards, from several seasons in the 70s and 80s. SOM football from five years ago.

The tabletop hockey game.

The electric football game. Yes, that one.

Two unopened Wheaties boxes with Jr. Griffey on them, accompanied by a short essay written by me, to commemorate his return home, to play for the Reds.

The covers of the Washington Post sports sections, on the days after the Pirates won the World Series in '71 and '79.

The front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the day after the Redskins won the Super Bowl in the Metrodome in the early 90s. When Thurman Thomas misplaced his helmet. Remember?

All my media badges from the Masters. Twenty-one and. . . counting?

Sports Illustrated Golf, a board game based on the layout at Augusta National.

A Michael Garman sculpture of a homeless guy at Christmas.

My varsity wrestling letters from the legendary Winston Churchill HS, Potomac, MD go you mighty Bulldogs.

And so on. I am a nostalgic foof, but I hate clutter more than I love nostalgia, so the toss-a-matic was easy.

And if anybody needs a kids desk, come on by.

QUESTION, MOBSTERS. . . When you declutter, what always stays, and always will? What is of extreme significance to you, and quite possibly to no one else?

Details, please.

THANK GOODNESS THE PIRATES ARE STOUT, because MRWS (My Redskins Who Suck) truly do. Why Jay Gruden willingly chose to work for that twerp Dan Snyder is a great mystery. There would have been other jobs. In DC, they're still debating what role, if any, RG3 will play. Griffin had a spectacular rookie season, but as an insider told ESPN, "That guy doesn't exist anymore." Two reasons: knee injury, ankle injury.

Mike Shanahan, long departed genius coach, ruined Griffin, by choosing to leave him in a playoff game v. Seattle, after the game was obviously lost. The Seahawks teed off on his knee. So long, promising career.

Have fun, Jay, with Kirk Cousins and Colt McCoy.

I FEAR MY BUCCOS are built for The Big 1-6-2, not the lightning round of the WC game. They are deep and talented across the board, but in a quick-draw showdown, it's likely the Pirates best starting pitcher (Gerrit Cole) wouldn't be quite as awesome as, take your pick, Arrieta, Bumgarner, Kershaw or Greinke. That's why MLB needs to re-seed its postseason clubs, top to bottom, based on overall record. Same with the NF of L.

It's not right that the Dodgers have a better chance of advancing, just because they have the mega-bucks to buy two great starters. They're not as good as Pittsburgh, by a fair amount. But Greinke in a win-or-die game?

A REASON JOE MADDON WINS. . . The Cubs flew home from LA last night, in their pajamas. ESPN.com:

"It works both ways," Maddon said Sunday afternoon. "If you win it's even better, and if you've lost it's kind of like, 'let's put this behind us and move on.' I see it as a win-win-win. It's about keeping the group together. It's about having fun as a group."

There is no better People Guy than Maddon, no one better at team building.

TODAY'S MUST READ. . . SI.com's oral history of the days before and after Hurricane Katrina wounded New Orleans, as recalled by players, staff and Superdome officials. Rips your heart away.

TUNE O' THE DAY. . . A nice little tune from the Wallflowers, even if Jacob D. sounds like Bruce and the riff seems swiped from Sweet Jane.