JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

One of the things I like to do on this blog is bring you examples of really good newspaper writing.

Such an opportunity presented itself this morning, when I read a column in the Louisville Courier-Journal about the Cincinnati Reds opening-day game Friday in Cincinnati.

Tim Sullivan, CJ sports columnist, had to turn this story out in a hurry because it was a night game. The column didn’t make the print edition of today’s paper (just as the Royals’ game didn’t get make today’s KC Star), but it was posted online at 10:54 p.m. Also, Sullivan didn’t write long — the column is slightly more than 600 words — he just wrote well.

Tim Sullivan

Sullivan has been in journalism more than 35 years. He joined the CJ in 2012, the same year he was fired at the San Diego Union-Tribune apparently because management didn’t think he was positive enough when writing about the local sports teams.

The U-T’s stupid loss was the Courier-Journal’s gain. And Louisville is fortunate to still have his services: In 2017 he survived emergency surgery for a dissected aorta, a life-threatening condition.

This column will be of more than passing interest to some of you for two reasons: former Royals’ star Mike Moustakas now plays for the Reds, and, like the Royals, the Reds have seen 30 years pass since the team won the World Series. (Led by manager Lou Piniella, a former Royals’ player, the Reds beat the Oakland A’s in the 1990 World Series.)

Sullivan’s column ran under the headline, “New-look Cincinnati Reds give absent fans something worth seeing.”

Here’s the column:

**

CINCINNATI – The eternal verities remain intact. Three strikes and you’re out. Three outs to an inning. Spectators or not, the seventh inning stretch survives.

Professional baseball resumed in the place of its birth Friday evening, and while it was weird, it was weirdly comforting. Though the Reds piped in artificial crowd noise during their 7-1 Opening Day romp over the Detroit Tigers, the familiar sounds of a bat striking ball, of a pitch popping leather, of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,” felt something like sanctuary after months of COVID-19 shutdown.

Despite the demands of social distancing, the game felt more intimate, more accessible and less of a platform for unrelenting advertising. It was so quiet at times that a press box observer could hear the dirt disrupted as players slid into second base.

It was bliss.

Pity so few people were admitted to Great American Ball Park for the muted festivities, for the virtual first pitch of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and the actual slugging of Joey Votto and Mike Moustakas. Pity that so few long-suffering Reds fans may be allowed to bear witness to the new-look lineup and enhanced starting rotation that makes the home team appear capable of playing meaningful games in September.

Sure, that distinction is diminished by a season delayed 17 weeks by a global pandemic. True, Opening Day starter Sonny Gray lacks the October resume of a Justin Verlander or a Stephen Strasburg. Yet in a city that last celebrated a World Series title 30 years ago, the opportunity to be optimistic is something to be savored.

A bedsheet banner above center field was as true after Friday’s game as before it:

“July 24, 2020

Cincinnati Reds

Undefeated”

“A lot of great things happened tonight,” Reds manager David Bell said.

There was not much in the way of drama, but it was a fine night for debuts. Free agent addition Nick Castellanos drove home the Reds’ first run by getting hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the first inning. Japanese import Shogo Akiyama delivered his first major-league hit in his first at-bat as a pinch hitter. Moustakas, another off-season acquisition, had three hits, drove in four runs, and closed the scoring with a seventh-inning shot into the right-field stands.

“It was definitely strange,” Moustakas said of competing in the absence of an audience. “What was cool was the grounds crew came out and they were cheering (after the home run). It was definitely a little bit different than we’re used to. But at the end of the day,  we’re playing major-league baseball and it’s awesome.”

After all of the tone-deaf bickering over the financial terms of baseball’s back-to-work agreement, after several stars had chosen to opt-out of the shortened season rather than assume additional health risks, here was the game stripped of manufactured glitz and extraneous sound.

And it was enough. Maybe some of us have missed baseball so much that a lopsided game played in front of empty seats gets credit it doesn’t deserve. Maybe we’re so starved for entertainment that the mundane feels magical.

And maybe baseball has returned just in time to keep us from climbing the walls.

“It’s one of those days we’ve been looking forward to for a while, as an organization and as a team,” Gray said. “Personally, as a player and as a competitor, we missed the fans. We very much so missed the fans. That is for sure. However, we are completely invested as a team in each other. We’ve got a good thing going here in Cincinnati and I think everyone got a little bit of a show of that tonight.”

Happily, there’s more to come.