Cincinnati Reds

As promised here are some pictures from the game Saturday night. The Reds were playing the Chicago Cubs and as can be expected there were almost as many Cubs fans at the game as Reds. Chicago is only about 4 hours away.


I hadn't been to a Reds game in a long time. The last game was probably at Riverfront Stadium which has since been torn down and replaced with two new stadiums. One for the Reds and one for the Bengals. I have no doubt that the Reds' new home will go down as one of the great American ballparks in the major leagues. No really, it will.


It was going to end up being a sold out crowd, but since we got to the park about an hour before the game we had no problem getting seats, even if they were nosebleed. I guess the Reds had been playing on the road for a couple weeks and this was their first series home from that trip. The park has a pretty smart pricing system. The seats we got are normally $10 but when they know they are going to be a near sell-out the price goes up to $25 or something like that. Not good for us but someone has to pay for those salaries.

One unexpected bonus. We learned that the game had been declared "70's Night." How could you tell? First, because they kept announcing it, but second, because the guy who played Greg Brady was throwing out the first pitch and he kept showing up on the Jumbotron. That's OK I supposed. It would have been better if they rolled back the price of beer and hot dogs to the 70's. Now there's a hokey marketing gimmick I want to be part of! $6.25 for a 16 oz beer and $4.75 for a smoked sausage. I learned that baseball games can get pretty expensive for a guy my size.

Another unexpected bonus...free Cincinnati Reds Slinkies for the first 20,000 fans who came to the park. Score! Here you can see them getting handed out just inside the gate.



Slinkies in hand we walked about the stadium for a little while. There were some really nice views from the upper level. The suspension bridge you can see in the last photo was the prototype bridge that the architects and engineers built before building the Brooklyn Bridge.






The game was a total blast even though the Reds got pretty well crushed by the Cubs. That's ok boys, you'll get 'em tomorrow.