You Don't Have to be a Sox Fan to Hate the Reds

The Reds are a despicable team. Really any fan from any National League city other than Cincinnati can tell you that. After all, if you pile up 108 victories in a season you simply have to offend a lot of fans around the senior circuit.

But particular grips with the Reds have nothing to do with mundane arguments over their lack of right-handed power-hitting. It doesn't bother me that Joe Morgan should and will become "The Sporting News" MVP, even though Greg Luzinski may be more deserving. I don't care if the Reds' management has a habit of ruining young pitchers' arms--even if they take time out to reincarnate them a la Gary Nolan.

Nah - my disgust with the Riverfront boys goes beyond any sort of baseball rationality. For instance, I always hated those Cincinnati fans--every one of them. I mean, really, year after year since Gilette introduced that fan All Star game balloting system I have dutifully cast my 10,000 votes per season for Larry Bowa, the Phillies' incredibly sure-handed and now bat-strong shortstop.

And yet every week I'd check out those All Star ballot results in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and hovering a good 200,000 votes over Bowa was always Dave Concepcion, a .269 hitter with an iron glove. I guess those Reds fans really know how to make their ballots count.

And with good reason. Nobody has been more of a military-industrialist than Pete Rose. In fact, Rose is good enough reason to hate any ball club. My particular dislike of the man ran so deep that when he finally dropped 16 points under .300 in 1974 I considered it a banner year for baseball.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not jealous of his incredibly high hit production, even if most of them came off the Phills' pitching. I'm not speaking from the perspective of catcher Ray Fosse, who still walks around dazed from the day that "I came to play" Rose came into home and Fosse in locomotion style during an otherwise friendly 1971 All Star game.

No -- what always bothered me was that lousy haircut of his. One gander would be reason enough. Sure, they tried to convince us that he was growing it long. Those hair grease commercials would cut from one slide to another to show us how he supposedly let it grow from a half-inch and then down to the top of his ears. But I never saw it that long at the park.

And so what if the Joe Garagiola-Curt Gowdy sports network could pan its cameras so as to make his locks bounce as he slid into third. To me his shorn head will always be the symbol of baseball's bad side. Hell, I'm not asking for a Ted Simmons or even an Oscar "High Hat" Gamble -- but Pete, cut us some slack. Let it grow.

Anyway, Rose not withstanding, in true can't-beat-them-join-'em fashion, I pick the National League to win four straight.