Cinergy Field
Cincinatti, OH
Pitsburgh Pirates @ Cincinatti Reds
July 5, 2001
The Road Trip
Lumpy and Mike drove to Cleveland from the east coast on Wednesday, the day before the game. Dauber flew out from the bay area and we all met at Pyle's house, about 20 minutes south of Cleveland. Pyle was a friend of ours from college originally from the Cleveland area who moved back after school. On this year's trip we added Cooter, another friend from school who was living in Columbus. We all met at Pyle's place and took a trip into Cleveland to enjoy the fireworks show from the Flats. We got a decent night's sleep and everyone except Pyle headed down to Cincinatti early in the morning. We were very fortunate this year in that Cooter's parents volunteered their Chevy Blazer to be the roadtrip vehicle for the 2001 trip. Thanks a bunch! We had no problem getting in to Cincinatti and parked in a garage right across the street from Cinergy Field.
Getting Tickets
We noticed as we were looking for parking that there were a handful of scalpers along the street. This was a day game (2nd year in a row the Thurs game was a day game) and wasn't that strong a sell so we figured we'd try our luck with the scalpers. Rule #1 of scalping: If the game is not sold out, under no circumstances, ever pay face value for tickets. So we started with one guy who threw all of the textbook bogus scalper lines at us including:
"You're not going to find anyone else who has seats this good."
"These seats aren't next to each other but they're in the same section. You'll have no problem moving around so you can all sit together."
"Nobody is going to give up tickets for less than face value."
We were getting nowhere fast with this guy. We remembered seeing a few ladies down the street with a "selling tickets" sign. We went down to them and they had 4 seats about 3 rows off the field down the left field line. We liked the seats but it's improtant to remember Rule #1 of scalping. The tickets were about $25 face and we were looking to get them for $60 for 4. The ladies made it clear they wanted $80 but they seemed like they really wanted to get rid of the tickets. We fussed a little bit and then invoked Rule #2 of ticket scalping: if the scalper is still attempting to haggle and will not come down to your price, just start walking away and you are almost guaranteed to immediately get the tickets for exactly what you offered. This is the biggest weapon that you have, only use when bargaining is progressing no further, and you're ready to move on to another scalper if needed. We got great seats for an unbeatable price. Time to head to the park!
The Stadium
First
of all, this is Riverfront Stadium and was much more interesting as a
donut stadium with Astroturf everywhere except the cutouts around the
bases. On the other hand, Riverfront was the first to paint metric distances
on the outfield walls, what is that all about? Where else in the U.S.
do we see this? I guess they were actually convinced that by 1980, all
of the traffic signs would be in metric units. And another thing, what
is Cinergy and what do they have to do with Cincinatti ? Well, after checking
cinergy.com, they are a ultility. They supply gas and electric for the
Cincinatti area. Now this corporate stadium sponsor stuff is getting a
bit ridiculous! "Wrigley" Field is kinda cool because they are
local and have been there and awful long time, it keeps the neighborhood
feel to the stadium. "Coors" Field is even acceptable since
Coors is in Colorado and is pretty famous for being the beer from out
west. It is even understandable to have a "Pepsi" Arena because
it's great advertisement and maybe fans will drink Pepsi instead of Coke
to support their team. But what is with utilities sponsoring stadiums
like Cinergy and PacBell? Do the fans actually have a real choice of their
electricity supplier? Well, enough with beating on the name of Cinergy
Field...it's a moot point because they're building a new park adjacent
to Cinergy. It will be called Great American Ball Park which is cool because
even though it is named after an insurance company, it sounds like a generic
ballpark name. Way to go!
The stadium falls into the same category as County Stadium, old stadium, cookie cutter, nothing fancy but nothing terrible. It would have been cool if it was still the donut, we could pretend we were at the Coliseum and cheer for the gladiators to come onto the field. One thing notable about Cinergy is that we agreed that they had the best scoreboard trivia so far. We should have written down the questions, one of them was about Pittsburgh Pirates all-time sluggers and Willie Stargell and Dave Parker were part of the answer. Another negative about Cinergy (and this will become an important motif throughout our journey), they do not sell postcards at the stadium! We walked down the street to a CVS and got a fist full of postcards for $1.00. It's still cool to be able to get them at the stadium gift shop. I guess this whole internet thing might really take off and people won't be sending postcards anymore. ;)
Pros: Great view of Lexington, KY, good scoreboard trivia, stadium will be demolished soon and that stupid name will be gone, ushers show you to your seat and wipe them down for you
Cons: Cincinatti is a dumpy town, plain style stadium, we have to live with "Cinergy Field" until 2003
The Game
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L-R: Dauber, Mike, Cooter
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It was again a Thursday day game on our first stop of the 2001 trip. It was a hot sunny day and we knew we would bake; fortunately Dauber brought some Coppertone Water Babies suntan lotion. This stuff is designed so you can camp out right underneath that big hole in ozone layer and not worry about being burned. It saved us all a lot of pain except Cooter, he still roasted. One cool thing that happened in this game was there was a backhoe working just over the left center wall. Aaron Boon hit a bomb to left field which fell close to the backhoe. The operator moved close to the wall, lifted the shovel end and positioned it above the wall and tilted it up and down to make it look like a hand waving "Bye - Bye!" That was pretty cool. The Reds won decisively in front of their home crowd in an otherwise somewhat lackluster game. We had a great seats and had a good time at our 2001 trip opener.
No, the ACTUAL game...
This game would serve as a pitchers duel until Damaso Marte would get lumped up in the 7th. Aaron Boone hit 2 homers in this game which put him on the map in our eyes as he would finish out with a somewhat impressive .294 with 14 HR while older bro Brett just tore it up in the American League. Jason Kendall had a decent game in an otherwise pathetic season for him. We were hoping for some action from Jr. and Dimitri Young but that would not be the case. This is the second time we saw Jr. in a lackluster performance. It's such a shame to see him like this after he was arguably the best in the game just a few short years ago.
Thrill Factor:
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| MLB SCOREBOARD: Box Score |
| ScoreCast | Recap | Box Score | Game Log | How They Scored | Today's Scoreboard |
| Cincinnati
Reds 7 Pittsburgh Pirates 1 |
Posted: Thursday July 05, 2001 07:30 PM
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | r | h | e | ||
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 8 | 1 | |
| Cincinnati Reds | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | X | 7 | 7 | 0 |
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a - flied to right for D Williams in the 7th
BATTING: 2B - Ar Ramirez (24, Jo Acevedo); K Young (18, Jo Acevedo). RBI - Kendall (30). Runners left in scoring position, 2 out - Ar Ramirez 2, Vander Wal 1, Ao Nunez 1. GIDP - K Young. Team LOB - 6.
BASERUNNING: SB - B Giles (6, 2nd base off Jo Acevedo/Stinnett).
FIELDING: E - Kendall (10, throw). DP: 1 (D Williams-Ao Nunez).
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a - singled for Sullivan in the 7th
BATTING: 2B - Stinnett (8, D Williams). HR - A Boone 2 (8, 5th inning off D Williams 0 on, 0 out, 7th inning off D Marte 1 on, 1 out); B Clark (4, 7th inning off Olivares 2 on, 2 out). SF - Griffey Jr. RBI - Griffey Jr (12), A Boone 3 (30), B Clark 3 (11). 2-out RBI - B Clark 3. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out - B Clark 1. Team LOB - 1.
BASERUNNING: SB - W Guerrero (1, 2nd base off D Williams/Kendall). CS - Ochoa (8, 2nd base by D Williams).
FIELDING: DP: 1 (Reese-W Guerrero-D Young).
| PITTSBURGH | ip | h | r | er | bb | so | hr | era |
| D Williams (L, 1-1) | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3.58 |
| D Marte | 0.2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 4.05 |
| Olivares | 1.1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7.04 |
| CINCINNATI | ip | h | r | er | bb | so | hr | era |
| Jo Acevedo (W, 2-1) | 6 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 5.14 |
| Sullivan (H, 11) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3.35 |
| Graves | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3.89 |
Pitches-strikes: Jo Acevedo
95-64; Sullivan 11-10; Graves 22-17; D Williams 77-46; D Marte 22-13;
Olivares 32-18.
Ground balls-fly balls: Jo Acevedo 7-9; Sullivan 1-1; Graves 1-4;
D Williams 3-11; D Marte 1-1; Olivares 4-0.
Batters faced: Jo Acevedo 25; Sullivan 3; Graves 6; D Williams
21; D Marte 5; Olivares 6.
UMPIRES: HP--Randy Marsh. 1B--Hunter Wendelstedt. 2B--Jim Wolf. 3B--Angel Hernandez. T--2:47. Att--24,128. Weather: 82 degrees, sunny. Wind: 12 mph, out to left.
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