Williams: Cincinnati is a baseball town, you've been told. So why are the Reds begging fans to come to the ballpark amid final-week playoff push?
Cincinnati is a baseball town, they say. I'm 50 and have heard that my whole life.
And yet the Reds were begging people to show up to the ballpark with the club entering the final home series of the season on Tuesday controlling its own destiny in the playoff race. The Reds dropped ticket prices to $8 for the Pittsburgh series. They are also bribing fans with $3 beers and $2 hot dogs and plastering "Pack GABP" on highway billboards and social media feeds.
The Reds still couldn't draw 30,000 fans for the first game of the series at Great American Ball Park, despite the low costs, warm weather and starting the week tied with the New York Mets for a National League wildcard spot.
Does that sound like a baseball town to you? It's a harsh reminder that those days, and that point of great pride for this grand city, are long gone – lost amid 30 years without winning a playoff series and rarely even making the postseason since sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995.
“It’s an exciting time to be a Cincinnati Reds fan,” Reds catcher Jose Trevino told reporters before Tuesday’s game. “And I think you should definitely come out. If you don’t have a ticket, go online, I think they’re going for like $8. Just come out and cheer the guys on.”
I then asked Trevino – who played in the World Series with the New York Yankees last year – if it was weird that he even had to say that given the Reds’ playoff drought and Cincinnati’s long-time reputation as a baseball town.
“Yeah, it is,” Trevino said. “Just being in the position that we’re in, you feel like maybe they would’ve came three games ago. But we’ll see what happens. Call it a challenge. Call it something. Just come out and watch the boys.”
The recent crowd sizes have been on other players' minds, too.
Last week, Opening Day starter Hunter Greene said he wished more people had come out to Great American Ball Park on a night in which he masterfully tossed a complete game and the Reds beat the Chicago Cubs in a good ol’ good one, 1-0. The Reds drew 18,532, and that was with Cubs fans' typical strong showing in Cincinnati.
The Reds then went for the sweep of the Cubs and a chance to tie the Mets this past Sunday, and Cincinnati still couldn't crack 30,000 fans in its 43,500-seat ballpark for a weekend game with so much at stake.
Baseball town, eh? Sadly, we're closer to being like Pittsburgh than we are St. Louis.
Cincinnati used to be a year-round baseball town. It typically looks and feels like a baseball town only one day a year now, Opening Day, when there's a parade and a party that, oh by the way, happens to also feature a baseball game. It's a tired story talking about Reds attendance, season after season.
This "is it still a baseball town" narrative has been beaten up pretty good ever since the mid-1990s. Why do you think the Reds celebrate the Big Red Machine so often? It's been their way of trying to manufacture the narrative that Cincinnati is still a baseball town beyond one day a year.
Let's bury a debate that comes up less often these days by asking this: Would they have to beg fans to come to the ballpark amid a playoff race in the final week of the season in St. Louis, New York, Boston and San Francisco?
Now then, the better question is this: Can Cincinnati become a baseball town again?
"Getting to the playoffs and fighting for a deep run will reignite this city’s persona that it had in the past," Reds pitcher Nick Martinez, who went to the playoffs with San Diego in 2022, told me. "We have a good chance to make something special happen."
If this column has sounded like an indictment on fans, it's most certainly not. The people who've run the Cincinnati Reds franchise in the 21st century are responsible for this no longer being a baseball town.
The Reds have gone to the playoffs after a full season just three times since 1995. Their most recent postseason berth after a full season was 2013. Few probably even remember that. Back then, only two wildcard teams made the postseason from each league and they faced each other in one-game playoff to advance. The Reds lost on the road against the Pirates, 6-2.
No one under 40 years old remembers playoff-winning baseball in Cincinnati. That's two generations of Greater Cincinnatians and those who live in so-called "Reds Country" who don't know winning baseball.
We've told them Cincinnati is a baseball town. The Reds organization hasn't showed them, though. Why should younger fans believe it, if they're even fans at all? Between hearing story after story about Pete Rose and Johnny Bench and Marty Brennaman and the Big Red Machine, fans have been told "just wait." For three friggin' decades.
Any surprise the Reds are practically giving away tickets and concessions this week?
Long-suffering Cincinnati sports fans will undoubetly be excited if the Reds make the playoffs. But making it as a wildcard team doesn't gurantee a home playoff game. The Reds will have to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in a three-game series at Dodger Stadium and advance to the division series in order to get a home playoff game.
That should make this final regular-season home series seem bigger to fans.
So it'll take a lot more than a playoff berth to restore Cincinnati's reputation as a baseball town. A World Series title followed by seasons of sustained success may do it.
Following up a playoff season by getting a big bopper this winter could help toward winning over a new generation of fans and bringing those over-40 skeptics back to the ballpark.
It's on the Reds front office and ownership to determine whether Cincinnati will become a bona fide baseball town again.
But if the Reds miss the playoffs and then sit on their hands again this offseason, well, get ready for more $8 ticket deals in September.
Contact columnist Jason Williams at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Reds selling cheap tickets, beer bucks baseball town narrative
Category: General Sports
