What inspired your RedsZone username? / What does your username mean?

[RFS62]

Reds Fan Since '62

I jumped on the bandwagon after the '61 pennant.

Wish I had come up with a more clever nickname like Spitball or Corkedbat or Crash Davis, but nooooooo.

[RedRoser]

What RFS62 really means, but wouldn't tell you, is that he became a Reds' fan AFTER HE RETIRED IN 1962.
Wanna switch to BornARedin02, rfs???

---RedRoser

[RedRoser]

My initials are RR; I am the planet's biggest Pete Rose fan, having idolized him when I was playing baseball as a youngster in the 60's; I felt that my username needed 'Red' in it somewhere; and wallah. . .RedRoser emerged, though you'll sometimes see me shorten it to just 'Roser when posting. Seems unAmerican to do so though, kinda like cutting Christmas down to
X-Mas.

---RedRoser

[Blimpie]

Great topic, WilyMo!!!

I met some of my closest friends in life when I lived in an apartment complex around fifteen years ago. In one of the neighboring apartments to mine, those guys had a roommate who worked at Blimpie Sub & Salad Shop. Everybody would be kicking it at one of the apartments when he would come home from work completely disgusted with his life...in his little visor and Blimpie apron. Like this:



Much to Johnny's disdain, he was greeted by everyone as "Johnny Blimpie"....even long after after he quit his gig. He hated the nickname, but he was powerless to change it.

Then, for some unexplained reason, all of us began addressing each other with the surname 'Blimpie.' Matt Blimpie, Ed Blimpie, Mark Blimpie, Jim Blimpie, Dean Blimpie, Hank Blimpie, Steve Blimpie...you get the point. I don't resent the nickname..I wear it like a badge.

[Redsland]

Mine combines the name of my team with my own last name.

Coincidentally, the moniker also describes where I live.

[Danny Serafini]

Danny Serafini was the cheesiest Red I could think of when I signed up, harkening back to that glorious fall of 2003 when the team was signing anyone with a pulse to replace the injured and those who had departed through the fire sale. There were plenty of choices too, check out this group, 57 players in all:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CIN/2003.shtml

I thought about Jim Chamblee or Mark Budzinski, but Serafini's complaints after the Reds didn't resign him ("I could've won 15 games for them") sealed it for me.

[DropDocK]

Big fan of Doc Hollywood and his work with the Reds.

[BoydsOfSummer]

My last name is Boyd. I love baseball. Bam! Perfect screenie.

[macro]

Over the past few years, since marriage and children came along, I don't have the time to delve into the minute details of being a Reds fan like I once did, so I pretty much just watch as much of each game as I can, read the box scores, and follow the discussion here at RedsZone. In other words, I take a "macro" view of the Reds rather than a "micro" view.

This also means that my interest in the team is from a perspective of its overall history, rather than just the here-and-now.

Yes, I know it's cheesy.

[Coffeybro]

I'll let everyone here guess.

[Roy Tucker]

My absolute favorite books as a kid were the John R. Tunis baseball books. Central to those books were Roy Tucker/the Kid from Tompkinsville books.

I always admired Roy in a schoolboy way but when I went back and read the books when I was older, I found they were darn fine books and well-written. Written in a 1940's/gee whiz style, they can be a bit corny. But they had quite a few central truths that I didn't realize when I was a kid reading them. But I think I absorbed a few of them. And actually, when Old Red Guard was around RZ, his writings reminded me a whole lot of Tunis. Do yourself a favor and go to Amazon and pick up a few. They are a great read.

I found this essay on Roy and baseball on the Internet a ways back. The web site has gone out of existence, but I saved a copy of it.

------------------------

Baseball Wisdom

Bill Wiser

My love for the game combined following the greats of the day (Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle) with reading the books of sportswriter John R. Tunis. Tunis, who died in 1975, had the remarkable gift of meshing all the excitement and drama of the game with fundamental issues of racial discrimination, anti-Semitism, teamwork and character.

In the first of three extracts from the book, The Kid from Tomkinsville,¹ Brooklyn Dodgers rookie Roy Tucker is sitting in the dark of his hotel room, despondent and discouraged. Team manager Dave Leonard has entered the room. Though it isn’t welcome at first, Roy gradually understands Dave’s message.

Here he was, sitting in the dark, feeling sorry for himself and thinking about Grandma and the farm, when all the time he ought to be forgetting what had happened and getting ready for another day. Now he began to have an appreciation of the game, of what it was all about, of how players made themselves stars despite physical handicaps, some weakness in the field or at bat, despite drawbacks of various sorts….

“Listen, boy, I’ve been through all this the same as you. Sure I’ve been through it; I remember when I broke in there was never anyone to tell me these things, though. No one ever told me my faults. I sat alone in a hotel room in the dark one night and saw myself with Utica on my shirt, the same as you. I had plenty of stumbles and tumbles.

Only I kep’ on a-plugging. I didn’t quit, see; I didn’t stop fighting. Look here, has a kid got it; that’s all I wanna know. No scout can crack open a kid’s head and find out, has he got guts. If he could, baseball would be a cinch. Every team would be the Yanks. So buck up, son. Forget this afternoon. Tomorrow’s another day; get out there and play ball.

“Oh, yeah, I thought I was hot stuff, but they soon showed me I didn’t have an idea what it was all about. Just when I got convinced I was a flop and waiting for that pink slip in the mail box, this old fella took me aside in the lobby of the hotel one night. Old George Conners, I never forgot. So I pass it along to you and don’t you forget it either. ‘Courage,’ says this old-timer, ‘courage is all life. Courage is all baseball. And baseball is all life; that’s why it gets under your skin.’”

At another critical juncture, Dave is at it again. This time Roy had actually packed his bags.

“They got under your skin today, the fans out there, didn’t they? You can’t take it, hey? Trouble with you is, you’re use to being Mr. Big. Had some luck, you did; lotta luck considering you had just a pretty fair country assortment. But you aren’t used to the tough side. You were gonna whang that pineapple out of the park in the ninth, and what happened? You struck out. Then you go to pieces… Can’t take it…

He pointed round the room at the suitcases, at the piles of clothes, at the half-opened drawers. “Cut and run this way; why, you can’t take it. ‘Course it was okay when things were going well, when you were a flash and a star and in every headline and the boys were giving you interviews and write-ups, all this Kid-from-Tomkinsville stuff, it was fine back in June pitching shut-out ball. We were all fresh in June, yes, and good, too. Not now. You can’t take it. There’s a saying down my way, Roy; maybe you heard it. I come from a great fishing country, and this is how they put it down there: Only the game fish swim upstream. Remember that, Roy, when you get back home… Well” – he rose – “too bad you can’t take it.”

Now he was really mad. Now he was fighting mad. He was mad at old Dave for the first time. “Can’t I? Says who?”

“I do. Otherwise you’d stay right here and help out a losing ball club.”

The kid stayed. When an injury ended his pitching career, that did not stop him from becoming a hitter – and a darn good one at that. But then he hit a slump.

When he got there he found a worried Dave, and for the first time he noticed new lines over the manager’s forehead. The strain was telling on him like everyone else. “Roy, sit down, boy. I’m sorry about the slump; you’ve been choking up, but it won’t last forever.”

“I can’t figure it out, Dave. I’ve changed my stance and it didn’t do a bit of good. Tried everything, been out swinging every morning…”

“Maybe you tried too much. Let me tell you what I think your trouble is. You haven’t been playing for Brooklyn the last month.”

“Not playing for Brooklyn?”

“Nope. You were playing for Roy Tucker… I’ll explain what I mean. Those sixteen – seventeen – how many was it – those home runs you made were about the worst thing that ever happened to you. Point is, when you began to close in on old Masterson you saw yourself in a flash leading this-here League in homers. The Kid from Tomkinsville. Another Joe DiMag, hey? Thought you were anyhow. You got homers on the brain….

“You didn’t even know it, didn’t realize it maybe, but it’s true. You forgot that you were playing for Brooklyn and stared playing for Tucker. You became – now what was it the sportswriters called you… oh, yes, ‘Bad News Tucker!’ I saw you that afternoon last month at home when the cameramen all gathered round the plate as you came over with your sixteenth home run, and I saw those kids chasing you for your autograph after the game. Why, the answer’s easy. You just forgot the team, Roy. That’s why I had to bench you.”

“Oh, I know, I’ve had it happen to me, more than once. The pitcher you always thought you owned can make a monkey of you. Stop thinking about it; don’t let it get under your skin. Next, remember that in this-here game they pay off not on homers, not even on your batting average either, but on one thing: your ability to bat in runs. Baseball’s a team game and don’t ever forget it.

“Here’s something practical. About your hitting, I mean. Trouble is you’ve tightened up, and every time you step in there you’re as tight as a steel rod. Lemme give you a tip. When you walk to the plate start whistling. What? Oh, anything at all… whistle ‘Yankee Doodle’ and it will loosen you up. Then wade in and smack the first good one. Try it and see. Now, boy, go downstairs and have a couple of beers, and then get on up to bed and forget it. Good night.”
Life is a continuum of victory and defeat, of success and failure. When we are too high up to see our teammates or too low down to even care if they exist, we need someone to go head-to-head with us and open our eyes.

I hope there is a Dave Leonard in your life; I’ve needed plenty in mine, and I’ve not always made it easy for them. But that’s life. And life is all baseball. And baseball’s a team sport. Don’t ever forget it.

¹ Originally published in 1940 and reprinted in 1987 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. An author’s note reads: “All the characters in this book were drawn from real life.”

[Puffy]

I like the cheeba.

[LincolnparkRed]

Mine is the neighborhood in Chicago that I live in plus Red, I didn't imagine anyone else would have this name but hopefully one day there will be LakeviewRed & GoldCoastred and maybe even BoystownRed.

[gonelong]

My absolute favorite books as a kid were the John R. Tunis baseball books. Central to those books were Roy Tucker/the Kid from Tompkinsville books.

Sounds a bit like the Chip Hilton series minus a bit of the cheese (though still pretty thick).

I might have to check these out.

GL

[Red Leader]

I like the cheeba.

Sonny: Man this Yoohoo is good, you know what else is good, smoking dope. I ain't gonna rat you out. You know, puffing the cheeba, go by the see saw smoke a j. You know what I'm talking about?
Jared: I have a belly button.
Sonny: You have a belly button, well we all have belly buttons. You know what? We all love Yoohoo, especially Yoohoo with a little rum.
Jared: What's rum?
Sonny: You don't know what Rum is?
Jared: Rumplestilskin?
Sonny: Rumplestilskin's a good man. So are you guys. Hey, stay clean, stay focused, stay strong. Frankenstein, have fun with your friends.