Maybe not surprisingly, the earliest Reds moment I can distinctly remember watching, and can still play back in my memory today, occurred on October 20th, 1990 in the foul territory just next to first base. Todd Benzinger, not even the Reds regular first basemen (maybe he came in for defensive purposes) caught a harmless pop foul to complete a 4 game sweep of the mighty Oakland A's. I still have the Wheaties box with that Reds team on it. A "Wire to Wire" tshirt still inhabits my tshirt drawer. And just as many other lifelong baseball fans can point to a moment when their love of the game first began, I was hooked.
I could make the claim that my first academic memory came when I competed in the district math bees during my elementary years. Top 5 finishes in 1st and 2nd grade set the stage. You know those blurbs you sometimes see in magazines where they ask some professional athlete when they knew they could be something special? Well for me it wasn't athletics, but rather mathematics, and that moment occurred when I took home the gold in 3rd grade. Of course the very next year I tumbled out of the top 20, which made me worry I'd peaked early.
As with most things, I was a bit late to the Moneyball party. But when I finally got around to reading the book, I was into it. Since then I've developed and even deeper interest in the game, and guys like Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski (and many others) keep my interest piqued by writing (and talking, and talking about others' writing) about how the game is constantly evolving, and how the way we view it is ever changing.
So, I'll stop rambling on with lame backstory and say that I love baseball, probably more than ever before. And for someone who is also a numbers nerd, the "statistical revolution" of the last decade has been a lot of fun. Rob Neyer has his own blog on ESPN and this spring they have started a "blog network", with the ultimate goal to have an associated blog for every major league team. When I first heard about this endeavor I was excited since I had been unable to really find much of a Reds blog. Well as it turns out, I don't really think there is one, and certainly not one that has any sort of sabermetric focus (whatever that means exactly).
I'm not saying that my link will be on ESPN any time soon, but hey, why not take a negative (no Reds blog) and make it a positive (limited competition for beginner Reds bloggers). So that's what I've decided to do. You can see that I've taken two cracks at it already, and certainly there's a lot to learn. For instance, I went into that Brandon Phillips post ready to argue with anyone who thought Phillips should bat any higher than 5th in the lineup. After looking at some numbers though, I realized that the Reds really don't have any good top of the lineup guys. The post ended relatively soon after that.
The cool thing about blogging though, is that you can essentially do whatever you want (not to mention edit and proofread as little as you want). And what I want to do is this - take my thoughts and inquiries as a Reds fan (many of which are numbers driven) and put them in writing. And maybe, someday, those thoughts might catch the attention of a Rob Neyer, or someone else in the blogosphere. Hey, he's already read one of my posts! And actually, at this point, I think he's one of four people to read anything on here.
So to those who are actually taking in these words, enjoy!
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