Trivia question: Can you name the 11 Cincinnati Reds who have hit home runs in an MLB All-Star Game? (Answer at the end, don’t peek!)

There’s been a lot of baseball on my mind in recent weeks,beginning with the 50-year reunion of the Big Red Machine that was held at GABP in late June. If you didn’t know already, I am quite a nostalgic person, longing for the good old days, and if you are a long-time Reds fan there were no better good old days than the Reds in the 1970’s. Division championships, National League championships and World Series appearances all seemed to be the expected norm. In the 70’s. the World Series was an expectation each season, today’s Reds only seem to set their sights on sneaking into a wild card playoff spot.

Trips to Riverfront Stadium were a special experience as were those backyard Wiffle Ball games where we pretended to be our Cincinnati heroes. Do you remember ever yelling “I’m the Reds!”

Our trip to the reunion was on the Saturday and like many others we stood in line to get photos taken with some of the players from the 1975 and 1976 teams, all of whom I must say were super friendly and thankful for so many fans to be there. I had met many of those players before on our family annual spring training trips in the 70’s, when things were much more relaxed and players were much more accessible. The sad part about the reunion, though, is seeing that your heroes grow old right along with you. Honestly, there were some players at the reunion who I would not have recognized if they hadn’t had their names on the back of their jerseys. Of course, they wouldn’t have recognized the little kid who made his family eat dinner at the same Tampa restaurant every night because that’s where the players ate.

Memories are special times locked away deep in our minds, some can be pulled out and some are doomed to be forgotten. It’s quite odd which memories show up and which ones go away, but they are treasures we all have with us. The older you get, the more you understand that. With so many of us, including those of you who loyally read these sports pages, our memories involve sports. I wish I could remember the 1-0 shutout that I pitched in Knothole baseball (over the arch rival other Ripley team). I remember the score and the place but can’t recall one pitch that I threw that day many years ago. My wife was impressed that I could remember exactly where I was when I watched Hank Aaron hit #715 in Atlanta as they honored “Hammerin’ Hank” at the All-Star Game. Getting old kind of stinks but those sports memories will always take me back to a simpler time in life.

Did you watch the MLB All-Star Game? I bet that night didn’t end the way you thought it would. It was actually a fun game to watch, which is not always been the case in recent years, especially if you are a National League fan. Reds fams got to see Elly de la Cruz and Andrew Abbott in the game, which again made me drift back to the 70’s when the Reds dominated All-Star rosters and in a lot of cases, the games themselves. I didn’t realize that this Swing-Off deal had been put in place and I was bit skeptical but I actually kind of enjoyed it, only disappointed that Pete Alonso didn’t get the chance to win it for the National League. The whole scenario was reminiscent of penalty kicks in soccer and when I saw the list of players who were going to swing it off, I was a bit perplexed. Where were Judge, Ohtani, the “Big Dumper”? Only to find out later they had already left the park, a rule that needs to be changed. As it was, it was a unique way to end an exhibition but definitely not for the regular season.

I didn’t particularly care for the ABS ball and strike reviews. To me, a ball that is 99.9% not in the strike zone is not necessarily a strike, but by rule it only has to clip the zone and a number of the reviews did just that. I think that system will soon be part of the major leagues so I guess I’ll get used to it. The pitch clock was a great idea, maybe this will be too.

The final part of my recent baseball trilogy happened last weekend in New York when the Mets retired the number of my son’s all-time favorite baseball player, David Wright. I won’t tell the whole story f how that came to be but suffice to say that David Wright was the hero of this household for his entire career, a career that would have easily been a Hall of Fame one if the injuries hadn’t derailed it. I was able to scrounge up the funds to take my boy on two trips, one to Mets’ spring training where he did get to meet #5 and then another in September of 2018 to see Captain America’s final major league game. I can still recall the text I got from Jordan when the date of that that final game was announced, it simply said something like “We’re going Dad”. Couldn’t say no. He wasn’t able to be in New York on Saturday though his sister, who lives in Brooklyn, was there in his place. We watched the ceremony from the comfort of our living room recliners and yes, I may have gotten just a little bit teary-eyed. Some things just mean more than others, especially when it involves your kids. I don’t have to tell you that.

Trivia answer: Gus Bell, Ted Kluszewski, Frank Robinson, Tony Perez, Johnny Bench, George Foster, Joe Morgan, Ken Griffey, Dave Concepcion, Joey Votto, Scooter Gennett