The Hope of a City

It’s been a rough couple decades to be a Cincinnati sports fan.

Ever since the Reds won the World Series in 1990, championship banners haven’t exactly been a main export of the Queen City. Cincy fans have been subjected to some very bad professional sports teams and even more painfully mediocre ones. These teams have put fans through year after hopeful year of disappointing torment.

And we sat through every game.

All 214 Bengals losses from 1991 through 2011, and each of the Reds’ 1,704 defeats in that span.

Even worse, Cincinnati’s only two professional franchises (I shudder to think what we’d do with an NBA team) managed to win a total of three playoff games in those 42 combined seasons. And all of those victories were in one divisional series the Reds played in ’95. The Bengals assembled three trips of their own to the postseason, all after 2000; all resulted in convincing losses.

We’ve endured all of it.

Sure, we said we were done countless times. I can’t even tell you how often I swore off my allegiance to Cincinnati sports after an inexplicably bad defensive effort by the Bengals or a three-homerun losing effort by the Reds. But just like everyone else, the next day I took the paper bag off my head and somehow truly believed the next game, the next week; the next season would be different.

But year after year, we were met with the same results. The 7-9s; the 78-84s. And those were the good years. Those were the years when we were at least teased and taunted with that dangerous hope of changing winds. Other years, the dark ones, were the 3-13 or 66-93 efforts. The years when we heard of owners who cared more about money than winning and locker room atmospheres that can only be described as poisonous.

Cincinnati’s athletic woes didn’t even end at the professional level. The University of Cincinnati’s hoops team is better remembered for a brawl than its recent basketball success. And the Bearcat’s football team is going through its third painful breakup in less than a decade with a third coach who saw the program as a stepping stone instead of a legitimate contender.

Hope was the only thing that got us through these teams and those times. Hope made us keep watching. Hope told us better days were ahead.

Days, maybe, like this Saturday.

The Cincinnati Bengals are in the postseason for the third time in four years, marking the first back-to-back playoff seasons this franchise has seen in three decades. This year hasn’t always been pretty, but it was highlighted by a 13-10 late-season victory at rival Pittsburgh that knocked the Steelers out of the playoffs and clinched a Bengals berth. Even an ugly win like that is sweeter than anything Cincinnati fans have tasted in a long time.

But now it’s time to take that all-important next step. The reach from mediocre to something more, whatever that is. Sure, it’s nice to move past the .500 seasons of old, but how much difference does it really make if all the farther we get to see is a couple regular season wins and a painful playoff loss?

If that’s the only thing I have to look forward to this week, I’d almost rather not even bother.

Cincinnati fans are tough. We’ve made it through the abyss of athletics with precious little to show for it. But we still have the teams. Unlike the fans from some other professional sports settings, we’ve kept our teams when they were better for a punch line than a sports venue. The Bengals are no exception. Once the laughingstock of the league with more arrests and failed draft picks on a yearly basis than wins, the orange and black have a chance to change the direction of a sports town that’s been going south far too long.

While the first Bengals playoff victory in my lifetime wouldn’t erase the past by a long shot, it would go a long way to starting a new chapter in Cincinnati sports history. I don’t know how many postseason wins it will take for the Reds, Bengals and Bearcats to make the last 20 years of frustration worth it, but I do know it has to start this Saturday versus the Texans.

The Short End of the Long Ball

Baseball season is in full swing. And apparently so is the season for bad puns as leads. One of my nightly rituals is sitting alone in my dorm's lobby and watching all the highlights from that day's MLB action (that sounded a lot less pathetic in my head). I've seen many patterns develop over the summer. While things haven't gotten to the point where I can predict the show or the events on it, there are moments where I just lean back and wonder how many times I've seen the exact same thing.

Like in the nightly Top Ten plays on ESPN, I can always count on at least two highlights of an impressive (yet rarely jaw-dropping) fielding play from a third baseman who makes a strong throw to first to get the batter out just in time. Another staple of the Top Ten is a pity reference to the WNBA. That's usually a poorly-seeded average play that is just an example of one player's exciting night, consisting of a game-high 11 points and 5 rebounds. Wow.

But my favorite part of the show is whenever they replay a walk-off win. It could be a single, double, or even a balk-off win. But the storybook classic, of course, is the game-ending home run.

I've seen a fair amount of these walk-offs this season, and after the first dozen or so they all started to seem the same. Until I began looking at it from a different perspective.

Most people watch the batter as he smoothly finishes his swing and drops his bat on the ground before slowly trotting towards first base. Some watch the outfield stands as most fans go crazy while the lucky ones go after the winning ball.

Me? I watch the catcher.

Think about it. How terrible must it feel to have a pitch stolen from your glove and ripped into deep center field. And all you can do is sit there. A background to a picture of history.

And what about the fielder whose head the ball is soaring over? What can he do but jog towards the wall and look up? Completely helpless.

I'm not sure which would be worse, knowing there's absolutely nothing you can do to save your team, or knowing that no matter what you do, it won't be enough? Both have to be nauseating feelings of despair. Feelings that can only be overcome by playing another game the next day; getting a chance of redemption.

You know what? Even worse than both of those feelings combined has to be pitcher who gave up that walk-off homer. Because he knows it was his fault, and he has to live with that feeling until he gets his next chance. That is, if that chance ever comes.