By Hal McCoy
UNSOLICITED OBSERVATIONS from The Day Air Ballpark press box, getting my first live and in color baseball and what’s the first thing I witnessed? A walk, a base on balls, a free passs. . .just getting those cliches polished up.
—WHAT PROSPECTS: Is it embarrassing when a team of prospects beats the big league club in an exhibition game?
That’s what happened Tuesday night in Day Air Ballpark, home to the high class A Dayton Dragons.
A team called Reds Prospects beat the Real Reds, 7-5. Fortunately, the game is a mere exhibition and most of the Real Reds played only three or four innings.
And the Prospects scored two runs in the top of ninth to break a 5-5 tie and most of the Real Reds in the game were players fans never heard of.
So are Will Benson, Noelvi Marte, Rece Hinds and Spencer Steer really prospects? All three were on the Cincinnati Reds 26-man roster last season, confirmed big leaguers.
But they there were Tuesday night playing for the Reds Propects. Prospects? By now they are suspects.
And Prospects pitchers Aaron Wilkerson didn’t read the memo. The standing-room only crowd came to see Elly De La Cruz…Tuesday was supposed to be Cruzday. He received the loudest and longerst ovation during the pre-game lineup introductions.
But Wilkerson struck him out. No problem. De La Cruz provided the fans with singles his next two times up and drove in a run.
He batted lefthanded his first two times up, then he batted righthanded his third time. He hit a grounder to deep third and sped to first like a Japanese bullet train — an infield single, an RBI, and the rest of the damp chilly night off.
With a 17 miles an hour wind howling out to right, homers were plentiful.
Benson, demoted a few days ago to the minors, crunched a two-run home that narrowly missed a moving BMW on East First Street. The ball bounced off the six-story red brick building on the other side of the street.
Jake Fraley and Matt McLain homered for the Reds.
—MISTER SHUTOUT: From Mark Whicker’s excellent book on Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale, ‘Up And In.’
Just after the 1968 season began, Drysdale purchased a boxer puppy for his daughter, Kelly, and she named it ‘Shutout.’
What an omen.
Later that season Drysdale pitched six straight shutouts and set an MLB record with 58 2/3 straight scoreless innings.
During the streak, he faced and beat three Hall-of-Fame pitchers — Ferguson Jenkins, Bob Gibson and Jim Bunning.
It was also the year that Bob Gibson pitched to a 1.12 earned run average and the next year they lowered the mound.
During the streak, Drysdale also beat San Francisco’s Mike McCormick, who had won the National League Cy Young the previous season.
McCormick threw five no-hitters in high school and American Legion and in one high school game he struck out 26 of 27 batters.
Drysale’s streak ended when Philadelphia’s Howie Bedell hit a sacrifice fly, his first and only MLB RBI. Bedell later was the farm director for the Cincinnati Reds in 1990 and 1991.
He quit the Reds when owner Marge Schott began running off the team’s scouts and said, “Why do we need scouts? All they do is sit and watch ball games.”
—SOCCER IT TO ME: Back in the 1960s, soccer was the subject of jokes in our newspaper office, as in, “I got a quote from a soccer player. It was, ‘Kicka da ball, Fritz.’”
How times change. There is a huge success story in Cincinnati, the FC Cincinnati soccer team in Major League Soccer (MLS).
It was a pipe dream when somebody came up with the idea of a pro soccer team in Cincinnati. To start, the club had one employee, Dan McNally from England.
“We had no office. For three months, I sat in a coffee shop all day with a laptop,” said McNally. “A female employee finally asked me, ‘What are you doing in here all day, every day, with a laptop, buying one cup of coffee?’”
McNally told her he was helping form a professional soccer team and the woman snickered and said, “Soccer will never fly in Cincinnati.”
Well, it got off the ground in 2016, with its first game scheduled at Nippert Stadium on the University of Cincinnati campus.
“We hoped for 5,000 fans and 15,000 showed up,” said McNally. “The next game we had 17,000 and the third game we had 20,000.”
A success story? You bet your penalty kick.
They built a $400 million stadium in downtown Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine section. They have 20,000 season ticket holders with a waiting list and draw 25,000 a game.
They brought Crystal Palace from the English Premier League and Lionel Messi, the world’s most famous soccer player, into Cincinnati for an exhibition game. They lost, 2-1, on penalty kicks, but it drew a full house and grossed $1 million.
“We sold more of our merchandise than the NFL’s Miami Dolphins last year,” said McNally.
And five years after leaving the Bike & Bean coffee shop for his own office, McNally stopped by and, “There was FC Cincinnati stuff all over the walls. The same women was there and she recognized me and started crying and said, ‘I said soccer would never make it and it did and we in here are all season ticket holders.’”
—MOO-MOO MOULAYE: It has already been pointed out in this corner that three University of Dayton transfers played this year on NCAA tournament teams – Koby Brea (Kentucky), Kobe Elvis (Oklahome) and Mustafa Amzil (New Mexico).
Well, remember Moulaye Sissoko from Mali? His playing time at UD a couple of seasons ago was measured more in seconds than minutes.
The 6-foot-9 forward transferred to the University of North Texas and the Mean Green is in the quarterfinals of the NIT.
Sissoko has started all 34 games, averaging 25 minutes, 7.7 points and 6.4 rebounds.
—TRIVIA TIME: Who was working behind the plate for five MLB no-hitters during his career?
No, it wasn’t a catcher.
It was umpire Harry Wendelstedt, the home plate arbiter for five no-hitters. His first was a no-hitter pitched by Cincinnati’s George Culver.
He also was behind the plate for no-hitters thrown by Gaylord Perry, Bob Gibson, Bob Forsch and Kent Mercker.
During his 33-year career, Wendelstedt also was the home plate umpire for 39 1-0 games.
***From unpaid and underappreciated contributor Jeff Singleton:
Only two players with the last name Moyer have ever appeared in MLB. And both were pitchers, but unrelated.
Ed Moyer died on November 18, 1962 and on that same day, November 18, 1962, Jamie Moyer was born.
—ANOTHER UECKER-ISM: From catcher/broadcaster/comedian Bob Uecker on his only Opening Day start: “Our regular catcher, Tim McCarver, got hurt in spring training and I started. I ran into a wall and had to go to the hospital, the best thing that could have happened to me because the more I played the closer I came to going back to the minors. I batted one time in that game and drew a bases-loaded walk, one of the biggest days of my life.”
—PLAYLIST NUMBER 156: As singer and uptown guy Billy Joel put it: “Music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity.”
—You Were On My Mind (We Five), What The World Needs Now (Jackie DeShannon), Tell Her No (Zombies), Shotgun (Jimmie Walker), 1-2-3 (Len Barry), Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car (Billy Ocean), Bye-Bye Baby, Baby Good-Bye (Four Seasons).
—Kiss On My List (Hall & Oates), Haven’t Got Time For The Pain (Carly Simon), Fool If You Think It’s Over (Chris Rea), Time Passages (Al Stewart), Memories (Elvis Presley), The Way Of Love (Cher), Go Where You Wanna Go (Fifth Dimension).