Adam's Last Day?

I hope not.

I remember the green uniforms. I remember the Dunnandkearns show, the feeling that the Reds had the second coming of the Big Red Machine working its way through the minors, the excitement when the giant slugger was called up to the Big Leagues. I remember sitting at Fifth Third Field along the meandering Miami on the lawn in rightfield, the only place that was easy to get tickets. I remember being behind the Dragons dugout pre-game but feeling too embarrassed to ask for an autograph among all of the kids standing there. I was in college then - you didn't do that sort of thing in college. (You do it when you're 30 though!)

It seems like eons ago. It seems like eons ago that we lost half of the Dunnandkearns show, too. It's been a rough seven years, and the big guy has gotten too much of the blame. And now, during the last game before the trade deadline, I am watching what could be Adam's last game.

Baseball is a tough love affair. It is a spiritual game, more than any other sport, and it can bring pain and heartache as any human relationship can. It grows a kind of hero, a guy who can fill us with hopes and joy but who can also come to represent everything that goes wrong. Today's game and those Dunn ABs were more than just a meaningless contest between a team that will play baseball in October and a team that (barring a divine miracle) will not. No, today's game and that slugger who has spent his entire professional career in the Reds organization means something more. Today, when Adam Dunn went to back to the dugout after his 7th inning at bat, represented all of modern Selig baseball.

Why is that? Well, in the eighties, a guy who played with one team his entire career (or for most of it, like Ryne Sandberg, for example), was a dying breed, but it has been killed off under the Selig reign. While I do not solely blame Selig on the murder, for free agency and Scott Boras have much to do with it, the fact that the gap between large market and small market teams has grown into a chasm under Selig is undeniable. Who can afford to keep a player around forever aside from the Bankees and the anti-Bankees, among a select few other teams?

Adam Dunn makes a lot of money, and to the Cincinnati Reds Baseball Club, a storied franchise with more World Series Championships than everyone but the Bankees and the Deadbirds*, when salaries get to a certain point, it's goodbye to you sir, you'll look good in pinstripes.

We have some incredibly knowledgeable Reds fans around the blogosphere who took the time to talk to a Cincy Enquirer reporter to make a case for keeping Dunn. If you haven't read the article, read it. It requires some knowledge of stats rather than just relying on your impression left by Dunn's strikeouts. As much as I like to tease statheads about their calculators (as a result of their tendency to look down at those of us who appreciate the game without the excessive numbers), these guys made good use of the numbers to make the case. So if my waxing nostalgia doesn't make a difference in the Dunn hatred, perhaps their science can.

I know I'm somewhat blinded by my childhood impressions of players and by lifelong Red Barry Larkin, that players did indeed switch teams more often than I'd like to admit, but you always knew what cap a player would be wearing to the HOF. Why does it matter? you ask. Well, a lot of us kind of development attachments to certain players - it kind of comes with being a fan. Why was Barry Larkin the favorite of so many Reds fans? Yeah, he was a good player, but more importantly, he WAS Cincinnati baseball through the nineties, and though a minority of people wanted to see him go away, most Reds fans are very happy he never wore another cap.

I'd like to keep Dunner around through his productive years, and we all know he'd love to stay more than anything. So, Adam, if this truly was your last day, thanks for the thrills and good luck to you sir, but you'll look weird in pinstripes.

PLEASE WAYNE OR BOB OR WHOEVER'S MAKING THESE DECISIONS, DON'T TRADE DUNN.

*And technically Boston, who has won six, but we all know they won five of them when most people were still riding in horse carriages.