13 Short Blogs About The Cincinnati Reds

The origin story of the Reds goes like this: In 1869, just after local boy and war hero Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as president, the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the very first entirely professional baseball team. They were later a charter member of the National League, essentially creating baseball as we know it today. That tradition was respected for decades; in fact, for many years, there was a tradition that baseball’s Opening Day would feature only one game, and it would be hosted by the Cincinnati Reds, in honor of their status as the “first franchise.” But the powers that be in Major League Baseball no longer care about tradition, they just care about money, and have opening days in Japan or whatever that don’t even include the Reds. Cincinnati still makes Opening Day an unofficial city holiday, complete with parade, but it’s just not the same. Cincinnati gets no respect. The above story is what I was raised to believe, and what everyone around me believed, and I imagine that most people in Cincinnati believe it today. But almost none of it is true. The fully professional Cincinnati Red Stockings have no connection with the modern franchise. They dissolved after a couple seasons, and the team name resurfaced in Boston with a franchise that today is known as the Atlanta Braves. The Cincinnati Red Stockings who were a charter member of the National League was a different team, too, and they got kicked out of the league a few years later for serving beer at their games. It was the third iteration of the Red Stockings that became today’s Cincinnati Reds. Also, there was never a tradition that the Reds would have Opening Day to themselves. It’s not even clear how that myth got started. Cincinnati gets roughly the amount of respect that it deserves, given that the team hasn’t contended for over 30 years. And the Grant administration didn’t turn out so great either.

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