ESRUC EHT ESREVER

I woke up this morning.

I was kind of surprised, given that I felt the end of the world was coming after last night's loss to the Hated Dodgers. Everything started off so well with the 4-0 lead and all, and then one of Dusty's Doers did the team in by throwing away the third out of the inning. That also threw Goodroyo away. Badroyo came in and proceeded to give up the lead two innings later.

I have hated West Coast trips for 29 out of my 31 years of life. (The two years I didn't hate was when I lived in California and could go see the Reds play or at least watch them on television at a reasonable hour.) The Reds seem to have hated those trips since California baseball became a reality. When Janish made the throwing error in the bottom of the ninth after replacing Dusty's Doer, I knew the curse of the West Coast was working its black magic.

Actually, though, this loss can be pinned on Toothpick, who failed to put in a strikeout pitcher - Cordero - in a strikeout situation. That was after starting Freel, Patterson, and Hairston in the same lineup. And then he goes and takes OUT Patterson instead of Griffey in the ninth when we need the best defense on the field. I could manage Major League Baseball better than that.

Games like these make you remember the Reds-Dodgers rivalry that used to exist before Interleague play cut our seasonal meetings to a mere six (though we do get them an extra two times this year because of the imbalanced schedule.) It's easy for me to hate them when they have Jeff Kent on the team, a player I loathe more than any player in baseball not named Poopholes, thanks to watching and rooting for the Giants day in and day out for a couple of years. But that team rivalry has all but disappeared. Imagine being the fan of another team during the seventies, when the Reds or Dodgers won the division every year of the decade except one. It's easy, I know. We only have to look to the Red Sox and Yankees to see what it's like.

We needed that game - it was the winnable one, the one with a pitcher who'd been throwing well. Now we have to turn to the Undependable One and Johnny Be Good Sometimes But Still So Young and Inexperienced to win this series. I know Cueto can do it, but Belisle? He has a long way to go to win me back. I just hope tonight's game isn't over in the first inning.