By Jim Bailey
For The Herald Bulletin
ANDERSON, Ind. —
Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park is four years old now. I can’t believe it took us this long to make it to a Reds game there, particularly with a daughter living in the burbs.
So we vowed to pay a visit to Great American this summer. And Sarah and Eddie had been wanting to work in a nearby getaway as well. Rachel and Rob agreed, so the eight of us ordered seats for a Friday night game last month.
Along with Sarah, Eddie and LeeAnn, we worked in a visit to the Newport Aquarium the day before, and all of us went to the zoo the following Saturday and one of the nearby flea markets in Monroe, Ohio, before our return Sunday. Needless to say, we were all pretty tired.
Great American Ball Park is close to where old Riverfront Stadium was and not far from Paul Brown Stadium where the Bengals play. Unlike the cookie-cutter Riverfront, it’s built for baseball with all the atmosphere of the retro ballparks in vogue nowadays.
Parking is the big negative. A parking garage is in the works, but now either you park in a downtown garage or where we parked in a lot across from Paul Brown Stadium. The tab was $10 a car, and we had about a 10-minute hike to Great American.
There are plenty of concessions, and like all ballparks, they are pricey. But we opted for a somewhat secluded eatery down the right field line where the hot dogs, popcorn, drinks and such were all $1. And we still had money to shell out $5 a pop to the roving vendors for a pop or ice cream later.
We’d been hoping we’d get a chance to see the Reds’ rookie phenom Mike Leake pitch, but no luck, it was erratic Aaron Harang instead. But Harang survived a couple of difficult innings and rode the Reds’ prolific hitting to a 10-3 victory over the cross-state rival Cleveland Indians.
The crowd thinned out as the Reds’ lead mounted, but most of us stayed to the end. That’s because it was fireworks night. And we weren’t disappointed. The 30-minute pyrotechnical display was reminiscent of awesome fireworks shows we’d seen on the Ohio River on past Labor Day weekends. And later we found out the same people put it on. Figures.
Cincinnati traffic patterns are atrocious at rush hour, so leaving the game wasn’t much fun. It took about 45 minutes to get onto I-75 going north, although traffic moved once we actually were on the interstate heading for Monroe.
On the way home that Sunday we got a glimpse of the remains of the large statue of Jesus (it’s been derisively called “Touchdown Jesus”) that recently was struck by lightning and burned at a church along the highway near Monroe. Nothing left but the framework. I understand the church plans to rebuild it, this time with something fireproof.
Jim Bailey’s column appears on Wednesday. He can be reached by e-mail at jameshenrybailey@earthlink.net.
