At winnin’ time(s) Monday, David Bell made Nick Castellanos as useful as a hood ornament. He blew that one, but overall, Bell’s performance has helped the Reds more often than not in this turbulent summer.
I like the manager a lot. I think he’s classy and I think some of the team’s never-say-uncle attitude owes to his outwardly chill personality. He has let the players play without stress, he has never assessed blame, he has been upbeat to an occasionally ridiculous extent.
Managers who get the most from their players are generally managers who trust their players the most. With Castellanos in the clubhouse, Bell doesn’t have to be a forceful presence. He can work on setting a tone, which is the most important thing any manager does.
The players have played to expectations. If the Reds had a bullpen, they’d be exceeding expectations. They don’t.
You score 11 runs, you should win. You should not go weeks with a bullpen like the one Bell has dealt with, any more than you should bring vodka to a bourbon tasting. In just the past two games, Bell has left his starting pitcher in a few hitters too long, possibly because he trusts a starter having an off game more than he trusts anyone he could bring in to take the starter’s place.
Every manager’s perceived IQ is tied to the competence of his bullpen. Joe Torre is not Joe Torre without Mariano Rivera. Why do you think Dusty Baker resisted every thought of moving Aroldis Chapman to the starting rotation, even when the Reds picked up Jonathan Broxton at the 2012 trade deadline? Broxton was Kansas City’s closer at the time.
Chappy was Baker’s security blanket and the manager’s best chance at having a long and prosperous stay in Cincinnati.
The Nasty Boys were so good in ’90, every game was six innings. Opponents knew if they didn’t jump on the Reds starter early and the Reds took a lead, it was lights out. That had a powerful psychological effect.
And yet here’s Bell, squeezing out wins with a bullpen that would scare Stephen King. Maybe the revisionist take on the Reds skipper will be to give him credit for keeping this team competitive as long as he has.
Now, then. . .
THE NL’S ONLY GOOD TEAMS PLAY ON THE PACIFIC OCEAN. The Mets are a 1st-place team? Haha. They don’t defend, their bullpen showed its flammability last night, they don’t hit enough to overcome the loss of DeGrom. The Brewers have a little of the It Factor to them. It’s one Woodruff/Burnes arm ache from disappearing.
San Diego, SF and the Dodgers would make short work of either of those teams in October.
AS FOR CINCINNATI’S “DELICACY’’? Mets broadcaster Gary Cohen ripped our chili last night. That didn’t help our longstanding and permanent inferiority complex when it comes to how we are viewed outside the great state of Ohio. (Within the great state, we shrug off our critics. The Republic of Cincinnati is the Republic of Cincinnati, and you are not. Deal with it.)
So. . .
(1) Who cares what a Noo Yawk guy thinks about chili? And. . .
(2) Cohen might not be right. But he’s not wrong, either.
It’s an acquired taste. Having lived in Texas, I can tell you I’d pick that chili over our goop eight days out of seven. Our chili isn’t even chili to Texans, who make their red with chuck roast, chile paste and their imaginations. It’s fabulous. Almost as good as their brisket.
Chocolate and cinnamon in chili? Spaghetti and cheese?
Oh, no, my friend.
Howevuh. . .
If you acquire the taste, it’s an easy, cheap dinner that tastes pretty good. Any dad who spent any time making dinner for the family loves the ease of Skyline or Gold Star. And I’ve never known a kid who didn’t like it. My 35-year-old son (who lives in Brooklyn) takes cans of it back with him when he visits.
Having lived in New York, I can tell you here is about a million times better than there. My experience with NY was, it was one large, continuous, ongoing pain in the a--. Life can be hard enough without having to deal with the daily inconveniences of the city that doesn’t sleep, but really needs to.
Traffic, outrageous housing costs, stupid-high real estate taxes. Spend a month living on Long Island, then tell me how great New York is. Next time you’re in the airport for an extended layover, try this:
Park yourself at a gate where the airplane arriving next is coming in from LaGuardia. Notice the expressions on the people’s faces as they emerge from the jetway.
Then, find a gate where a plane full of folks from, say, Denver, Miami or San Diego are arriving. Notice their expressions.
Case closed.
PETE, THE GIFT (OF GAB) THAT KEEPS ON GIVING. . . A fair portion of folks living here now weren’t alive 32 years ago, when Baseball banned the Hit King. Another fair portion weren’t living here, weren’t baseball fans or knew anything about the guy. And yet. . .
"I don’t think Marge was a racist of any kind," Rose said. "You can’t be like that and go to church every day. She went to church every day. I don’t understand why they’ve taken her name off anything. If you’re a bad person, why would you leave the Cincinnati Zoo (millions of) dollars? I bet they didn't give the money back, did they?"
That was our guy Peter Edward to Enquirer columnist Jason Williams a few days back.
Let me say this about that:
Racists attend church, if only to ask forgiveness.
Bad people give away money, if only to paper their badness. I’m not saying Marge was a bad person, only that throwing money at causes didn’t make her a good one.
I covered Ms. Schott for a decade at least. She tried to ban me from Riverfront. When that didn’t work, she tried to ban me from the press dining room. When former Reds pitcher Tim Belcher got wind of that, he sent pizzas to the press box, for me, Hal McCoy and a couple other media heathens. Hal had T-shirts made up: BARRED BY MARGE.
Was she a racist?
I’m not qualified to say she was. Barry Larkin never said she was. Eric Davis had a good relationship with her, mostly. Dave Parker did not. You wouldn’t either, probably, if someone referred to you as a “million-dollar N-word.’’
NL president Bill White had less than no use for her.
Marge’s biggest problem was, she was a full-blown anachronism. Living alone in that Indian Hill manse, awash in inherited money, she felt no need to do anything she didn’t feel like doing or behave in any way she didn’t feel like behaving. In Marge World, there was nothing especially wrong with referring to Black people as N-words. And there was nobody to tell her to cut it out.
She had a fondness for cheap vodka – Kamchatka, to be exact – that brought out her less attractive side.
Mostly, Marge stopped evolving around 1950. Does that make her racist?
Her words, for certain. Her essence? It’s one thing not to know any better. It’s another to flaunt it.
I wouldn’t damn Marge for who she was. But I’d keep my distance. There is room for both money and class in every life.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Jackson Browne is touring with James Taylor this summer. He’s coming to, I believe, Riverbend. I’ve seen him a few times, but he has priced out Johnny Thinwallet. Still, he’s top 3 in tunesmiths for me.
He made, IMO, four great albums: For Everyman, Late For The Sky, The Pretender and I’m Alive. The latter emerged from the sadness he felt after breaking up with actress Darryl Hannah. One tune on that album – Sky Blue and Black – is arguably the best he’s ever written, and that’s saying something.
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