Die hard Reds fan from Germany here. How i became a Reds fan is a bit of a longer story though.
In 1990, the year of my graduation, a lot of friends of mine from my school and me plus a lot of other people from a rival school (we were all friends though) used to meet every sunday in a park, did some picnic and barbecue stuff, drank 1-2 cases of beer (yep we didnīt need to wait till we are 21 in order to gulp down a bottle of beer
) and had a fun time. On some sunday a couple of dudes brought some baseball gloves with them. And thats were it all started. We started to play bal. Tbh it was more or less the variation of what we thought baseball would be like. We had no idea. Baseball is still unfortunately not know very well over here. Anyway. Around 10 guys including me got completely hooked to the sport of baseball, met every sunday to play. On one day i stepped into a hole on the grass, completely tilted my right ankle, tearing almost every tendon. Since i couldnīt do anything else plus recently having graduated and was thinking about to what university to go, i basically could stay up all night. I had nothing to do anyway. Due to our park sessions i got completely hooked up to the sport of baseball.
And then there it was. On TV. At 2:00 am in the morning. World Series. The highly favored Oakland Aīs against the underdog Cincinnati Reds. And what else do i have to say? I completely fell in love with the way the guys in red played there hearts out and swept their American League opponent. Never will forget the way Rijo pitched, how the "Nasty Boys" relieved and especially how a dude named Chris Sabo played. (Still my favourite all-time Red). That was just awesome. And from that moment on i knew to what MLB team my heart belongs to. Forever!
Btw. The dudes from the park that got hooked to baseball and me founded a real baseball club a year later. That club had its 20th birthday 2 years ago, is playing in the highest German league (plus a couple of other teams in lower and junior/kids leagues) and coincidentally happens to be one of the clubs our very own Donald Lutz played for.