The End Game

September 2, 2008 – the Reds, the first professional baseball team (1869), were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates, around just about as long as the Reds – seeing who would end up in last place. Hot, humid night, thunderstorms all around, lightning in the distance - you expected Robert Redford to step up and hit a homerun into the lights, like in the movie.  A local insurance company bought the naming rights to the stadium, so it's the Great American Ballpark, after all. It was the dead center of America - and when it was over there was the walk across the iron bridge over the dark Ohio River, with the mist rising from the darks waters, to where we parked - a half-mile away in Newport, Kentucky.