www.daytondailynews.com/s... Hal McCoy's Report

errors by Ross
a retun to the NL central cellar

but, amidst all funk there were a couple of feeble flickers for hope:
Jr. put a charge into one Dunn & Encarnacion hat two-out hits - in the same inning
ok, Jr.s ball was caught just over the wall and the two-out hits came in the ninth, but these are signs there is still life left in the team (and i said FEEBLE and FLICKER - not big bright strong signs).
i guess, though (and how pathetic is this?), the best thing to come out of last night's "Titanic Struggle" is that it WASN'T Belisle's fault. It was his loss, but not his fault.

How important is one game in a 162 game season?

Imagine if the Reds had managed to win one of the games in Pittsburgh, or one of the games in Houston.  Instead of getting swept in those hothouses of high-quality baseball, imagine if the good guys had managed just one win.

The team would have 22 wins, instead of 21.  And, conversely, 22 losses instead of 23.  Twenty-two wins and twenty-two losses.  That's .500 ball, and for the Reds - that's a whole new ballgame.

Dusty said some time ago that anything can happen once the team returned to even (couldn't find the actual dangblasted quote - please forgive me paraphrasing from my rather weak memory).  Now that's not shocking or prophetic, after all anything can happen if a team is playing at a .600 clip, or @ .367.

But, for this team it's a big deal.  It's the mindset.  Put another way, it's all mental.  I'm begining to think Dusty is the master of mental.  It's pretty hard to go .500 on a seven game roadtrip, so let's hope for 4-3.  That's big, but would still leave the team below .500.

If the good guys went into the series all even a 4-3 trip would put them at .510, that's winning baseball and that's huge.

 

Five wins in a row against first place teams!

 

Do you believe in miracles?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTev5pSuYLk

 

As reported earlier in this space (and lifted from real reporter Mark Sheldon) is this great quote from Dusty, "...the beauty of the game is that any day at any minute, if you keep working, things will come together for no apparent reason. A break here, a broken bat hit there, and bam. That's how it usually starts -- something small."

Whatever that small thing was, it looms large now. Three wins in a row against a first place team is very very nice to see.

As Marty said last night, it NEVER should have come to a rookie in his second big-league AB to win the game.

But it did, and it seems to this casual (ok, at times hyper) observer that someting has changed. Somehow, it seems like the Reds think they WILL win, not that maybe they can win, that Karma cares that the team conquer the competition.

It seems that the bad funk switch has been flipped, Dunn had a homer, Jr. had a BIG two-bagger, even Patterson's error (and Votto's error that wasn't) turned into an out at 3rd, and a blown save turned into a dramtic debut.

Yippee!

http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/cincinnatireds/entries/2008/05/10/it_is_bruce_bailey_time.html

my sentiments, exactly.  alsoan enlightening travelogue on the state of air travel/US Airways.