Cincinnati’s Sports Teams: One of Them is Good This Year!
(Hint: it’s not the Reds.)
Well, readers, after another disappointing season of Reds baseball, we here at MM are licking our wounds after watching the reviled Yankees win yet another series by doing two things:
- watching our treasured VHS copy of highlights from the 1976 world series in which the Reds hand New York a resounding defeat in an embarrassing 4 game series sweep (narrated by Joe Garagiola!) over and over
- turning to a different sport altogether in order to get that “my team is a winner” type of feeling: NFL football, and the Cincinnati Bengals! Hey, they’re actually pretty good this year!
I should explain that I’ve always felt it imperative to root for teams geographically. That is, you should be regionally compelled to be a fan of whomever is closest to your hometown. Otherwise you tend to look like a fair weather schmuck (I’m looking at you, native Louisvillians walking around town in Red Sox jerseys and Green Bay cheesehats! Shameful!). In a country with a dizzying array of choice, I think it is sometimes refreshing to have to play a hand that fate has dealt you—I think that in the case of being a sports fan, that should be one of those non-choices. When I get fed up with watching them flounder yet again, I say to myself in a Darth Vader baritone: “You must support the Reds…it is your DESSS-TINYYY!”
I can remember growing up and driving to Cincy for Reds games and wondering who that dumb-ass in the Kansas City hat sitting in the next aisle thought he was; I’d think to myself “the Royals aren’t even in the National League, moron!” And we all know that some teams more than others tend to attract these types. I generally divide them into two categories: the annoying egotists who love only winners, and the dopey masochists who only support (sometimes ironically) the hapless losers. There are many reasons for falling into either category, but I think it’s shameful and more than a little disingenuous no matter what your excuse. For instance: I don’t care if your daughter moved to Denver, or if your son is going to law school in Chicago: these things should not effect your sports allegiances! Steroids alone are not destroying professional sports, the loyal ambiguity of the hometown base is muddying the waters as well.
Anyway, so I was reading about the Bengals’ most recent win against last year’s Super Bowl winners, the Steelers, in the paper this morning, and Pittsburgh safety Ryan Clark was quoted saying that Cincy is “clearly the best team in the division.” (!) After a disappointing baseball season, that is a pretty exciting thing to hear for me. And don’t forget that the Bengal’s have a player that legally changed his name to reflect (I assume) his love for his own jersey number—that’s pretty fun! I’ll always be a baseball fan first, but branching out a bit looks like it may help my sports-related inferiority complex—this year, at least.
(Go Ochocinco!)
