Anyone in the Columbus area?  I just heard Dontrelle Willis will be making a rehab start with the Toledo Mud Hens when they play the Clippers this Saturday night.  It's a 7:05 p.m. start.  If you go, I'd advise going early--I went last year when Schilling pitched and traffic was crazy.  Could've just been Red Sox Nation, but you never know.

Some of the funniest stuff I've read lately.  Great sendup of typical commenters on blogs (of course none of us falls into that category), and truly fabulous fake jerseys in the entry about the 9-0 game.  I'd totally buy that Volquez jersey.

http://chris-sabos-goggles.com/

Here's one sentence that applies to us hapless Reds fans:

Studies over the last decade showed that while the run-of-the-mill spectator may abandon a team once it starts losing, more committed fans ride the same emotional roller coaster as the athletes.

Here's a link:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05EFDC143FF932A2575BC0A9669C8B63&scp=6&sq=fan+psychology&st=nyt

I've worn these for the past two games, and the Reds have scored 20 runs.  Come to think of it, they won when I wore them to a Spring Training game, too.

When I went to see Billy Joel play at Nationwide Arena tonight, I didn't imagine there would be a Reds connection.  Oh, but there was!!  He played an obscure song, "Zanzibar," from his 1978 album 52nd Street, and in its original lyrics these lines appear:

Rose he knows he's such a credit to the game/but the Yankees grab the headlines every time

In tonight's version, he made a change to this:

Rose he knows he'll never make the Hall of Fame/but the Yankees grab the headlines every time

Just thought it was a sign of the extent to which the Reds are permeating every aspect of my life :)  Also, when he announced the song and I (and possibly 10 other people in the whole place) cheered, I felt like I was that one person in Letterman's audience going "wooo!" when he mentions some town like Possum Junction, Arkansas ("Oh, someone from Possum Junction here tonight?").

You may or may not be a Billy Joel fan, but the guy puts on a great show.  It's the third time I've seen him--also went once in the 80s & once in the 90s.  This time I looked around and thought, "wow, he's attracting an older crowd," immediately followed by, "oh, crap, I *am* the older crowd."  The security staff seemed very relaxed, probably thinking, "These people all have children and mortgages--they're not gonna cause any trouble tonight!" 

Billy broke into "Hang on Sloopy" in the middle of another song, and the Columbus crowd went nuts.  Superb all-around performer, very funny on stage--from cracking jokes about his baldness ("it's not about having less hair, it's about getting more head") to letting one of his roadies sing a song for the hell of it (it happened to be AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" and it was hilarious).  He also played my favorite song, which, sadly, is not one of our Lot D Favorite Video choices.

Excellent concert.  And the Reds' win wasn't bad, either.