The Big Dead Machine
They blew up Riverfront Stadium yesterday. Watching the plumage rise from the explosion on television, I felt an inevitable pang over the assortment of memories I’d gathered at the Cincinnati ballpark. Riverfront was one of those soulless, multipurpose (mostly football and baseball), doughnut-shaped stadiums built in the 60s and 70s, a group that also included Three Rivers in Pittsburgh, Veterans in Philly, and Busch in St. Louis. It featured artificial turf everywhere on the field except for squares of dirt around each of the bases. In terms of aesthetics and tradition, it was a horrible place. But, unless you count AHL hockey at the old Cincinnati Gardens, it was the only place to watch professional sports during my stay in Cincinnati from 1976-85.
My favorite memory of Riverfront stemmed from a feature profile of Reds shortstop Davey Concepcion that I wrote for Cincinnati Magazine in the early 80s. Concepcion was one of less-heralded cogs in the fabled Big Red Machine, which sported Hall of Famers like Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, plus high-profile guys such as Pete Rose, Ken Griffey Sr., and manager Sparky Anderson. Concepcion, a great, underrated fielder who pioneered the one-hop throw to first from the hole in deep short, knowing the ball picked up speed on the bounce off Astroturf, was flattered to be finally getting some ink on the backside of his career, and afforded me generous access. We went out to eat a few times, and he showed me his home, talking freely about how hard it was coming from Venezuela, not knowing any English and befriended only by Perez. “I eat eggs, every day, three meals a day, for months. That’s all I know how to order, all that I recognize [on the restaurant menus],” he said.
More to the point, Davey (nobody ever called him David) scored me a gold-standard stadium pass that enabled me to stray from the press box down into the photographers’ enclaves on either side of the two dugouts. I’d go to the area beside the Reds’ dugout to hear the players’ informal chatter when the team was at bat, then cross over between innings to the first-base, visitor’s side when the Reds took the field. I told myself that this gave me a better angle on Concepcion’s defense, but the fact was I got a thrill from walking on a major league field a dozen times or more during the course of a game, and even started wisecracking with the home plate umpire in the midst of my little sojourns.
For this and other reasons, I found Concepcion to be an enormously likeable character. Venezuela is infamous for its passionate baseball fans, who have been known to riot and throw things on to the field when things aren’t going well. At the time, Concepcion was second only to Hall of Fame shortstop Looie (never Luis) Aparicio in Venezuelan baseball lore and he quietly resented not being better regarded in America. Highly excitable, religious (he crossed himself before every at-bat) and superstitious (during slumps, he showered in his uniform to wash away evil spirits) all at the same time, he regarded my story as the beginning of his march toward proper recognition.
One night about midway through my reporting for the profile, Concepcion had the best offensive game of his 18-year career. Crossing the plate after his second home run, he sought eye contact with me on the way back to the dugout. Next time up, he hit his third dinger. After being mobbed by his teammates outside the dugout, he galloped over to the photographers’ area with a huge grin on his face and gave me a high five. Alluding to our meeting earlier that day, he gushed, “We’re going to eat breakfast together before every game!” Which, of course, never happened.
As someone who grew up watching the pathetic Red Sox, catching the final seasons of the Big Red Machine was a particular treat for me. Certainly they were a ferocious offensive ballclub. I was around for Rose’s 44-game hitting streak and the hardest-hit ball I’ve ever witnessed came off the black bat of Reds’ outfielder George Foster (who ranks up there with Don Mossi as the ugliest player I’ve ever seen) during his monster, 52-homer year in 1977. I swear to god the ball took less than a second to reach the left-field bleachers, and was still rising when it left the field. The Reds’ pitching was always underrated during those vintage years, however, in part because few appreciated how Sparky Anderson was revolutionizing the game by creating bullpen roles for his pitchers,. using Clay Carroll and the rubber-armed Pedro Borbon as set-up guys for closer Rawley Eastwick.
Most of all, defensive prowess is what made the Reds a joy to watch. If you believe the baseball adage that the key to defense is up the middle, then the Big Red Machine was the best defensive team in the history of the game. Nobody handled bunts as deftly as Bench, a catcher I also once saw make a peg from his knees that picked off a runner at second base. Concepcion and Morgan comprised what was then the game’s best double-play combination. And in center field, there was the incomparable Cesar Geronimo, who made the greatest throw I ever witnessed one night when he chased a hit into the right-center field gap and launched a rope to third base on a fly to nail an opponent trying for a triple.
All of these things occurred at Riverfront Stadium. There’s no convenient or logical place to put this, so I guess I’ll close with my most searing, personally intimate memory related to the old ballpark. In June of 1977, about six months after we’d moved in together, my girlfriend’s suspicion that she was pregnant was confirmed by a visit to the doctor. Scared shitless and three days shy of my 24th birthday, I told her I would abide by any decision she made, be it marriage, abortion, or anything in-between. After the doctor’s appointment, we went to a Reds’ game, where we had great seats right behind home plate. Cincinnati’s pitcher that day was Fred Norman, a 5-foot, 8-inch journeyman who always gave it everything he had out on the mound.
Probably as a means of escaping or transferring my dreadful preoccupation, I decided early in the game that my fate would be linked to the quality of Norman’s outing. For the next three hours, I watched him grunt and groan and battle his way through a gutsy, two-hit, eight-walk, 153-pitch shutout of the Astros. Never have I been more in-tune or gratified by a player’s performance. I left the park elated and all the more determined to do whatever was asked of me.
My girlfriend got an abortion, and demanded I follow through on an out-of-town engagement on the day it occurred. Although we ultimately stayed together for more than five years, she knew we weren’t ready for the responsibility of parenthood, either individually or collectively.
Today is my 18th wedding anniversary. I’m blessed to be in one of those magical marriages that deserves to be cherished and warrants envy by those less fortunate. Our relationship is rounded out by our glorious 15-year old son. But the abortion, and that terrifying day in the now-bygone ballpark, will never be forgotten.
5:22:58 PM 
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