Prior to this year, I hadn’t seen the Reds play in person since sometime before they moved into Great American Ballpark. That changed when Sherry and I went to see them for Fleece Blanket day in April when we got to see Johnny Cueto pitch. For that game, we sat in the outfield just to the foul side of the left field foul pole. Last night, on a whim, Sherry and I decided to attend today’s day game, so we went online and I got tickets in section 424 (seat map can be found here), the lower part (6 rows) of the upper deck directly behind home plate. It was raining all the way down to Cincinnati. When we got in the stadium we went to the Home Plate Grill for lunch and to wait out part of what ended up being a 1:45 minute rain delay. The game was scheduled to begin at 1:15PM, first pitch was 3:00PM. The batting order was
- Jerry Hairston, Jr – SS
- Jay Bruce – CF
- Ken Griffey, Jr – RF
- Brandon Phillips – 2B
- Adam Dunn – LF
- Jeff Keppinger – 3B
- Joey Votto – 1B
- Paul Bako – C
- Bronson Arroyo – P
In the bottom of the first with one out, Bruce doubled, then Griffey followed with HR #604 which gave him 5,001 total bases for his career (the 18th player in major league history to achieve that). The picture below is Griffey touching the plate, Bruce is waiting for him, Phillips and Dunn are by the on-deck circle. In the outfield, you can see the smoke coming from the stacks and they have just changed the 603 to 604.
Arroyo went 6 innings, Weathers, Burton, and Cordero each threw an inning and the final was Reds 3, Nationals 0. By the way, I think Arroyo was robbed when they ruled his triple was an error by the left fielder. It sprinkled a few times during the game and it was overcast the entire time, but it didn’t start really raining again until just after the game ended. By the time we got home, we had some blue sky here (though ceilings were probably below 2000′ the entire time until we got to Pickerington).