Field of Dreams and History

Field of Dreams and History

Baseball– James Earl Jones soliloquy from Field of Dreams

I was a “track” guy.  I played baseball until I was thirteen, but when I was twelve, I read the Jesse Owens story and went to a flat spot in the back yard and dug holes for my starting marks.  I didn’t know then, that there were devices called “blocks” that you used to start, but I knew I could be fast.  My commitment was cemented by meeting Jesse Owens himself when I was fifteen; about ten minutes of two “220 guys” talking shop.  I ran; Junior High, Junior Olympic, High School and College, then onto a forty year coaching career and now officiating.  I was a “track” guy.

But I went to a Cincinnati Reds games this weekend, the first one since – well, I was working for Jimmy Carter in his first Presidential campaign, and the infield was Perez, Morgan, Concepcion and Rose:  the “Big Red Machine.”  We’d sit in the high, high seats in Riverfront Stadium, drink ‘3.2’ Beer, smoke cheap cigars and watch the “Machine” take the National League apart on their way to a second World Series Championship.

Riverfront was the massive 60,000 seat stadium then, home to the Reds in summer and the Bengals in the fall. It replaced Crosley Field (I always loved Crosley, I think because Dad worked for Crosley Broadcasting), where baseball was played from 1912 to 1970, and put sports front and center in downtown. Riverfront marked Cincinnati’s commitment to keeping major league sports, and the city re-upped their allegiance in the late nineties by building two new stadiums near the same site, Paul Brown Stadium for the Bengals, and the Great American Ballpark for the Reds.

Great American is a mix of the best of Crosley, Riverfront, and Cincinnati.  The concessions are lined with Cincinnati favorites: Graeters and Skyline, Frischs, and Khans.  Sitting behind the left field wall it seems you aren’t that far from home plate; there aren’t many “nose bleed” seats among the 42,000 available.  And when you sit in the sun and watch the game, you feel the history, the story, of the Reds, Cincinnati, baseball and America.

The Reds were in the “1912” throwback uniforms, but they really didn’t look out of place in 2019.  The game was about trying to beat the Dodgers (they didn’t) but it was also about making little kids become part of “the game.”  Before the first pitch, kids from Celina, a small town in Ohio, were put in all nine positions on the field.  When the Reds starting lineup were introduced, the players went to their positions besides the kids, and autographed their hats.  One kid wanted a hug; he got it right there at second base.

It’s about kids, it’s about a game that has been played since 1869, it’s about the pride of a mid-sized city and a common thread through America.   When I sit in the outfield at Great American, I think about walking with my Dad in the early 1960’s at Crosley.  I recall long trips in the car, marveling how we could listen to the Reds on 700 WLW radio even though we were hundreds of miles away from home, waiting for announcer Joe Nuxhall to sign off, saying he’s “…rounding third and headed for home.”  

I’m a track guy, but baseball is about American history:  the grand years of the 1920’s, and the sole entertainment of the Great Depression.  It’s story includes the influence of Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color barrier in the majors in 1947, and the place where today “old white men” (like me) listen to rap, hip hop, and Latin music, as each player has his own “theme song” coming up to bat.

I’m a track guy, and there’s nothing that get me as fired up as a tight 4×400 Relay in the hot sun at the state high school track meet.  But even this devoted track fan has to admit, there’s a whole world of history and America, out there in left field, section 104  two rows up from the wall, at the Great American Ballpark.