Plenty of choices to fill out Reds’ rotation
Robert Stephenson. The final makeup may not be determined by who pitches the best the rest of spring training but by who can stay out of the training room.
Oakland owner Charles O. Finley was strapped for cash and began trading his stars for lesser players and money. At the winter meetings in Hawaii in 1977, Finley traded Blue to the Reds for minor league first baseman Dave Revering and $1 million. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, constantly in battle with Finley, deemed the trade too unbalanced and said no, calling it “not in the best interests of baseball.”The Reds were so confident Blue would pitch for them that his picture, wearing a Reds cap, and his biography are on page 23 of the 1978 Reds media guide (a collector’s item), right between Jack Billingham and Bill Bonham. But he never threw a pitch for them. season and still has it. He can hit but not throw. He was a DH the first three weeks of the spring and didn’t play in the field. He turned down a chance to play for Colombia in the World Baseball Classic because of the shoulder. It has to be a concern because the Reds see him playing second base soon with Jose Peraza moving to shortstop. Yes, Zack Cozart can keep his bags packed.
I have a schedule for the Dayton Indians. Do you have any info/ stories? — JEFF, Beavercreek.
Hy Shumsky, a Dayton businessman who died in 2011, helped form a Dayton minor league team in 1946. It was a Class D team called the Dayton Ducks in the Ohio State League. Shumsky started his business, Shumsky Enterprises, by selling trinkets out of his car trunk at old Hudson Field (West Third Street near Soldiers Home). In 1948 Bill Veeck bought the Cleveland Indians and made Dayton a Class A affiliate and changed the Ducks nickname to Indians in the Central League. The Indians existed until 1951 when the team folded, and Dayton was without minor league baseball until the Dragons arrived in 2000. I’m guessing the Ducks-Indians never had 1,188 consecutive sellouts.
Would you rather have two or three catchers on the roster? — MARK, Kettering.
That’s an interesting one in that Reds manager Bryan Price said the team will keep only two catchers, preferring an extra arm in the bullpen. Will Devin Mesoraco be healthy enough? For sure the Reds will keep Tucker Barnhart. And they have Rule 5 catcher Stuart Turner, whom they have to keep all year on the 25-man roster or offer back to Minnesota, from whence he came, for $25,000. Maybe they’ll keep Barnhart and Stuart and start Mesoraco on the DL until he is game-ready.
Why isn’t the World Baseball Classic played in the fall? Is football in America the primary reason or a fear of its overshadowing the World Series? — DENNY, Huber Heights.
Although a lot of us think of the U.S. as the world, it isn’t. It is a world tournament and the U.S. has no say when it is played. Unfortunately it is played during spring training, which means a lot of U.S. players won’t leave their teams to play in it, watering down our team a bit. And nothing can take away from the World Series. As far as fan appeal, the WBC in the U.S. ranks somewhere around Celebrity Bowling.