So who believes in Reds Week? The Reds, you fools. The Cincinnati Freaking Reds. And all the rest of you cynical apostates do too. If you didn't know it before, you damned well know it now.
And not just for historical, electoral, or tonsorial reasons, either. We're talking the here and now, because Defector is in constant communion with the gods of sport, and we get results. Proof? Proof, you ask? Try this: The Cincinnati Reds, our adopted baseball team until closing time tomorrow, did something that simply doesn't happen, ever. The only reason that it happened is because they felt our devotion and the power of our unified medullae oblongatae and rose to the moment. And also because the San Francisco Giants' bullpen blows half-chewed food all down its shirtfront on a regular basis, but that's not the way we're going to frame it. We know a good story when we make one up.
Anyway, here's what the Reds did Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco. They built a seemingly insurmountable 3-9 deficit over eight full innings, in a game so riveting that the announced attendance of 24,130—itself one of the lowest at a Giants home game in this century, COVID conditions excepted—headed toward the street, the buses, the ferry boats, and the waiting fleet of embittered Lyft drivers before the ninth began, confident that they at least saw these utterly abject Giants earn their first three-game series sweep of the season ... until this happened.
- Hector Rodriguez 'Coved a 1-0 cutter from Spencer Bivens, who had just been called up from the minors, into the waiting kayaks behind the right field promenade, making it 9-4.
- Elly De La Cruz slapped a 1-1 changeup to left field, and took second on a sweeper down and in that got away from catcher Andrew Knizner.
- Sal Stewart walked, then took second on a changeup that bounced in front of the plate. De La Cruz walked to third.
- JJ Bleday walked three pitches later, loading the bases and inducing whoever was in charge after manager Tony Vitello was ejected in the first inning to pull Bivens for Dylan Smith.
- Two pitches later, Eugenio Suarez golfed a chest-high fastball over the wall in left center for a grand slam that turned 9-3 into 9-8. So far, so 2026 Giants. (They'd just called up another pitcher, a Rothian creation named Braxton Roxby, but the time was not yet right for that festival of X.) Also, Defector had not made its ethereal presence felt yet, because that would be morally and ethically wrong. I mean, we'll take your money without a nanosecond of shame, but we won't intervene in the games. We're not Kalshi, for gods' sake.
But an editors' meeting was quickly called to examine the possibility when Dane Myers overcooked his own bunt attempt and third baseman Buddy Kennedy, part of the Giants' new army of payroll-minimum experiments, skipped the ball past first baseman Rafael Devers, allowing Myers to take second easily. And the editors decided by a vote of 4-1, with Comrade Petchesky dissenting because he may have had money on the Giants, to declare, "Screw the Giants and their tiresome bullpen-made-of-oatmeal. We owe them nothing. Destroy them. It is Reds Week." And so:
- Matt McLain cheekily bunted his way on, moving Myers to third and the editorial board to stop watching the abominable Phillies-Mariners game and hone in on the potential hilarity unfolding bayside.
- Moments later, scheduled hilarity ensued. McLain stole second, and a 1-0 pitch to Jose Trevino that was called a ball was appealed and turned into a strike, momentarily arresting Cincinnati's momentum and prompting Comrade Ley to snarl, "When does Valkyries-Sun start?" Three pitches later, Trevino pushed a fly ball to right fielder Grant McCray deep enough to plate Myers with the tying run.
- And three pitches after that, pinch-hitter Tyler Stephenson lashed a single to left to score McLain and make it 10-9, Reds. They held on through a slightly bothersome bottom of the ninth to win a game the galactic pixies actually meant for them to lose, snapping San Francisco's 2,208-game winning streak when up six in the ninth.
All this number-crushing prompted the chastened Comrade Ley to leap upon his desk wearing his usual work attire of a torn Denver Nuggets T-shirt, old gym shorts, and a viking helmet and bellow, "WE DID THAT! US! KNEEL BEFORE THE POWER OF REDS WEEK!" To be fair, he had done that three other times this week, so it did not faze the rest of the office. An animal tranquilizer dart was administered out of an abundance of caution and he soon reverted to his normal more contemplative state. Through his narcotic haze, though, he knew the truth. We all did. The Reds had defied history, in the most insignificant possible way. Cincinnati had won its first game when down six runs in the ninth inning since 1958; it was the second time they'd done so since the end of World War I. You know what else we did? We beat the Giants with a six-run ninth-inning lead for the first time since anybody started noticing records like this in 1901. And that is what your subscription gets you.
Why did we do this? Because it's Reds Week, and we can do whatever we want for whatever selfish reason amuses us at the moment. We are Green Lantern only in tattier clothes, and our power is to make prospective blog subjects into stupid and inconsequential realities with a single thought. We are masters of the time-space continuum, and can alter historical events with a single staff meeting, provided it involves a getaway day game between two teams at the bottom of the league that nobody in their right mind is actually looking at.
You may be wondering, therefore, why we aren't fixing the evils of Satan's own president, or curing poverty and social injustice and making the planet more ecologically sound. For a mere $139 a year? Are you joking? You want societal ills changed at that price? At this rate, a diaper blowout by an awful bullpen seems more than fair. You want a more harmonious world, or at least a less doomed one? Let's talk easy monthly terms.
If you doubt our powers, wait until the Orioles play the Pirates in the World Series; that one's just a staff meeting away, too. We are the supernatural made three-dimensional, and we are not to be screwed with, from the editorial politburo all the way down to your shambolic hobo of an author. We're self-absorbed psychos imbued with the terrible power of the galaxies, and we don't mind showing it when the week is right. Just ask the Giants.
