Today is the opening day of the 2024 Campaign of the Cincinnati Reds Baseball Club. With our young talented club, I am thrilled by the prospects of this exciting new season. Due to the recognition of the very first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati team gets to open every season at our home Great American Ballpark. We are also the only remaining major league club with an Opening Day Parade through town in celebration.

For Throwback Thursday, I am revisiting the baseball home of my youth. About 70 miles northeast of Cincinnati along US-50 is the little town of Bainbridge, Ohio – one of several small towns I grew up in and where I first played little league baseball. Many years later I revisited the field.

Yes sir, there I am at the outfield fence, someplace my at-bat swings never ever reached. I was stunned on revisiting it how much the field had shrunk over the years. As I recall it, that outfield fence was miles and miles from home plate and yet it was just a few adult steps away on my visit.

But let me be honest. I was terrible at baseball. Love to watch it. Couldn’t perform it worth anything. I still vividly remember my first successfully hit ball (which took a half a season to get to). I stood at the plate marveling at the other little kids chasing after that little white globe. Finally I was awakened by my coach, as well as my mother, yelling “Run, Walter, run!!!!” I had clean forgotten all about that part as I had always to that point struck out each time at bat. I did make it safely to first base, but just barely. That was the pinnacle of my baseball career as I recall. A single.

So don’t anticipate any great achievements by me on the ballfields. I am better in the stands or listening to the radio, cheering my Reds forward. Which is exactly what I will be doing for the next 162 games as we claim our rightful place in the post season. Go Reds!