Cincinnati Reds

If you had been in Al Lopez Field in Tampa, Fla., in the 1980s, watching a Cincinnati Reds spring training game, you probably wouldn't have noticed the tall, thin old man sitting in the seats behind home plate, a scorecard in his hand.

Just another old snowbird from up north, you might well have thought.

Imagine yourself as a loyal Cincinnati Reds fan on the evening of May 24, 1935.

You were one of the 20,422 who had paid a top dollar of $1.75 for a seat in Crosley Field at the corner of Findlay and Western avenues in the West End.

Update 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 23: WCET-TV and Dayton's ThinkTV managers have announced Action Auction pick-up schedules for Cincinnati and Dayton bidders.

Top of the ninth inning. Bases loaded. Reds up 5-3. Game on the line.

So why did WKRC-TV cut away from the Opening Day game to air CBS coverage of the NCAA tournament? Talk about March madness.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Cincinnati Reds and the 100th anniversary of the Findlay Market Opening Day parade, making both events particularly special for Cincinnati's unofficial holiday this March 28.

Whether or not you plan to attend, knowing what roads will be closed due to the parade and where parking will be restricted for the game will ensure your day is a home run. 

Like moths to a flame.

Sometimes, as I sit in my mezzanine seats at Great American Ball Park, I hear fans sitting nearby – casual fans, folks who do not, like some of us, live and breathe Reds baseball all year long – talking about the circular plaques on the façade behind home plate, just below the press box and broadcast booths.

After a long Ohio winter, today is the first day of spring and, just a week from now, the first day of baseball season.

Seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, a 29-year-old utility player from Indiana named Chuck Harmon became the first African-American to play for the Cincinnati Reds.

When you have been a reporter as long as I have, you have been assigned to countless boring stories in hundreds of dreary places, where, try as you might, it is a herculean task to come up with a tale that anyone but the chronically bored would read.

With two significant baseball anniversaries in Cincinnati this year, Findlay Market Parade organizers say there has been a huge demand to be part of the Opening Day parade and those selected are going all out.

Get an audio tour of the renovated Reds Hall of Fame and Museum on WVXU's Around Cincinnati at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 10.

Rick Walls, Hall of Fame executive director, reveals details about the first major upgrade for the Reds' celebration of the 150th anniversary of the 1869 Red Stockings, baseball's first all professional team.  

Will White looked like a mild-mannered bank teller, but he was, in fact, the fiercest, nastiest and most durable pitcher the fledgling Cincinnati Reds had in the 1870s and 1880s.

Chances are, if you are a Cincinnatian, you have stood on the very ground where the 1869 Red Stockings – the first openly professional baseball club – played its home games.

And you probably didn't even know it.