This week---yesterday, to be specific, was Opening Day of the major league baseball season. For several years now, Jessica has been telling me how big a deal is Opening Day in her hometown of Cincinnati. The franchise there, the Reds, is the oldest in major league baseball and for over a century, Cincinnati was given the honor of being the first game played, and always at home. They have suspended that first part in recent years, but still the Reds are always allowed a home game, as they were this year.
Moreover there is a parade--a huge one--through downtown, with many groups of marchers in costumes and marching bands from around the area. We watched it yesterday morning, streaming it from the major league baseball app, on which Jessica has an account that will allow her to watch all the Reds games this season. It was great fun to have it playing in the morning. Then in the afternoon they played the game and the Reds, in their brilliant white and red home uniforms, won handily, satisfying the hometown crowd. It has been lean far for the Cincinnati fans in recent years, but last year, about six weeks into the season, they were sparked by young talent and went on to win over a dozen in a row, I think, and missed the playoffs only at the last minute. This year expectation are much higher.
The lead-up to yesterday prompted me to dedicate by podcast show this week to baseball (link to show), specifically to the history of the Reds focussing on the part I remember best, which is the "Big Red Machine" dynasty of the mid 1970s, and in particular the spectacular unmatched 1975 World Series between the Reds and the Boston Red Sox. I talked in my show about the idea of baseball as representing the America of the past, before the mid 1960s, but that in 1975, it was still in perfect equilibrium, between the past and the future.
It was the first World Series I watched, I told my audience. I wanted the Red Sox to win because they were the underdogs. Now I am much happier that the greatest World Series ever was won by Cincinnati. The idea that any team from Boston could be an "underdog" to a team from Cincinnati seems ridiculous to me. Cincinnati is a small market, a city in middle America that is part of the flyover country.
That Big Red Machine was the last of its kind in that the players were working class athletes. Some had to take jobs in the off season. It was before the era of sky-high superstar salaries, when Americans knew that the well-known players were rich. Back then the players were much closer to the lives of ordinary Americans. This was especially true of the star of the Reds, Pete Rose, perhaps the greatest baseball player of all time. He was a hometown kid from Cincinnati who wound up playing for his hometown team, and winning a World Series for them (and was named most valuable player).
Thanks to Jessica I know he was from the West Side of Cincinnati, which is the less-desirable working-class part of town, as opposed to the wealthier East Side.
I was delighted to share all this with my audience and talk about the era of the past that baseball represented, and that I was lucky to meet some kids in fifth grade who drew me into an interest in baseball, and baseball card trading, just in time to see the 1975 World Series, and burn into my memory that moment of equilibrium in America.
It was a fun show.
Of course it is also Holy Week in the western churches. As I write this it is Good Friday. Sunday is Easter, the ultimate "opening day."
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