Why Even When I Hate Baseball, I Love Baseball

The first time I gave a second thought to Scooter Gennett, I was on a long drive somewhere listening to Bob Uecker do a Brewers game.  Being a Reds fan means being used to a multi-person booth, so listening to Uecker, who mostly works alone, is both entertaining and claustrophobic...but I digress.  Gennett came up to bat and I remember wondering how a major league ballplayer could be named Scooter and thinking this is the kind of player that winds up on the Brewers...serviceable enough, but this is why the Brewers are so far from the main stage of baseball.  I was dismissive of Scooter, but mostly as a symptom of a larger dismissal of the team for whom he was plying his trade.

To be fair, my team, the Cincinnati Reds, has in recent years had more in common with the Milwaukee Brewers than with any team that truly matters in baseball.  It has not always been so.  I grew up in Xenia, Ohio, about an hour north, more or less, of Cincinnati.  I was eleven when the Big Red Machine won the 1975 World Series, fielding the greatest team in the history of the sport.  Again, I was eleven, so I thought my team was always going to be this good.  Not so much.  We repeated in 1976, but things slowly fell apart and it would be 1990 before we would win another World Series.  

My fate was sealed in those Big Red Machine years.  I was young and impressionable and Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall took advantage of these characteristics, relaying the exploits of the mighty Reds through my Panasonic transistor radio, assuring that of the many sports I would love, I would love baseball best and of the many teams in those many sports to whom I would pledge my loyalty at the top of the heap would be a red cap with a white C front and center.

1990, as I said, was a magical year.  My wife and I graduated from seminary, got jobs in St. Charles, Missouri and the Cincinnati Reds swept the Oakland A's in the fall classic.  We moved to St. Charles in July of 1990.  On May 1 of that glorious year, in the early days of that wire-to-wire first place season, one Scooter Gennett was born in, of all places, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Fast forward to spring training 2017.  The Reds have not sniffed a World Series since 1990.  The past couple of seasons have been particularly vexing, yet I was optimistic.  I was wary of our starting pitching (I was right), but I liked our position players (I was right) - I believed we would be competitive, at the very least we'd be better than last year.  One bit of unhappiness - we'd unloaded long-time second baseman Brandon Phillips to make room for youngster Jose Peraza.  I didn't love it, but I also understood - it was a graceful way to allow Phillips to play elsewhere and we needed to see what we had in Peraza.  

Then just a few days before the season started we picked up...Scooter Gennett.  I was not happy.  This was not a knock on Scooter.  It was frustration with our front office.  You go all the way through spring training and not only do we not have a starting rotation ready to start the season we also now appear to be hedging on Peraza by picking up a guy who started at second base in Milwaukee last year.  So I wanted to not like Gennett.

That lasted for about two games.  Gennett is every good cliche.  He's a gamer.  He's a scrapper.  He'll play wherever you put him.  He doesn't take an at bat off.  He's a team-first guy.  Scooter came to play every day and was getting starts all over the diamond and excelling as a pinch hitter.  I really liked the guy.  And I liked this team.  Not just because they were my Reds, but because they liked each other and they played hard and they were winning about half the time.  Winning half the time may not seem like a high bar, but it was mid-May and we were still playing meaningful baseball games. What?

I was feeling a strong connection to this team and somehow this new guy, Scooter, seemed to exemplify much of what was winsome about this group.  I got on MLB.com and ordered up a Gennett t-shirt jersey.  It was my way of investing not just in the Reds, but in this incarnation of the Reds.  Around that time we lost seven games in a row and went from three games over .500 to four games under .500.  Which was hard.  But the guys didn't give up.  They kept battling.  Got it back to .500.  Then dipped back under again.  It's a tall order to win with regularity when you are only sending out a legitimate starter every one and a half out of five times one of them takes the mound.  

One of the games in a multi-game losing streak was a loss to the Toronto Blue Jays by roughly 172 runs.  It was soul crushing.  When your offense gives you 5 or 8 or 6 runs - that's enough runs to win. Unless your opponent is scoring 8 or 10 or 172 runs.  Sooner or later it happens each season (except for 1990 in the last thirty-five or so years) - I come to the realization that I hate baseball.  I hate because I care, but make not mistake, I hate.  For about a day.  Or two.

And then baseball gives me something.  Usually a little something.  A win.  A quality start by an unlikely pitcher.  Billy Hamilton makes a ridiculous catch.  Joey Votto fouls off 8 pitches with a 3-2 count and lines a double off the wall to drive in a run.  Something like that.  Baseball reminds me of its greatness and why I love it.

But baseball has kind of outdone itself tonight.  The Cardinals are in town.  Ever since they put us in the same division with the Cardinals it feels like we've not gotten along with them very well.  Or played very well against them.  So it is always nice to beat them.  It's really, really nice to beat them 13-1.  

And it's supremely nice when a big part of why we beat them 13-1 is scrappy, over-achiever Scooter Gennett.  He started in left field in lace of Adam Duvall, the Louisville Slugger.  And Scooter went all Louisville Slugger on Cardinal pitching.  Scooter hit not one, not two, not three, but four, that's right, four home runs tonight.  Here is a list of all the Cincinnati Reds who have ever hit four home runs in one game:

Scooter Gennett

End of list.

Here is a list of all the players in the history of major league baseball who have hit four home runs, had five total hits and driven in ten runs in one game:

Scooter Gennett

End of list.

We may yet lose lots of baseball games.  We still have a woeful lack of starting pitching.  But we have offense up and down the lineup.  We have a very nice bullpen.  And we might be able to pull together a rotation.  But even if we lose a lot of ball games, there will be tonight.  June 6, 2017.  When Cincinnati born Scooter Gennett hit four home runs and we beat the Cardinals 13-1.  And I am reminded of the one thing I do not need to be reminded of - no matter how much I may hate baseball at any particular moment, I will always, always, always love baseball, specifically as it is played by my Cincinnati Reds.