They were [url=http://www.studyofsports.com/?p=29276-76[/url. Last time they won was 1990. I went over there working on exchange during the summer of 1992 and went to Cincinnati first for a couple of weeks. Caught L7, Babes In Toyland and my first ever baseball game. Fell in love with the game in those two weeks because it was everywhere and when I went down to Myrtle Beach to get a job I couldn't stop watching the baseball and quickly developed a passion for the Reds. Sounds silly but I think most of know what that feels like in a sporting context.

Anyhow, as you know, us Brits can be very loyal when it comes to supporting our teams and I ended up getting off with this bird from Florence, SC, whilst in Myrtle Beach. She invited me to go with her mates to celebrate a 21st birthday. The girl's parents had hired us a chevy type van with a driver and had paid for all of us to go to Atlanta for the weekend to watch the Braves against the Phillies. At the time the Braves had come through to be the main team in the then NL West so I instantly hated them which meant when we went to the game I couldn't cheer for the Braves. The girl I was with couldn't understand that and it led to a very frosty remainder of the Labor Day weekend lol. I was supposed to stay at her's for a couple of days before I went off to New York before returning home, however my loyalty to the Reds had destroyed what was going on between us and her old man drove me 60 miles to drop me back off in Myrtle Beach right away instead. It was incredibly awkward the night when we got back to her folks house. Instead of the romantic sleeping together I was put on the sofa bed and left to watch the TV whilst they all went off to bed lol.

Loyalty to my team was worth more to me than poontang even after having seen only four or five Reds game in the flesh. I am legend

3 losses on the bounce for us for only the 2nd time this season. Lousy pitching to blame for all 3. We're knocking ball out of the park like there's no tomorrow. In fact, since he returned 5 games ago, Edwin Encarnacion has had 5 hits in 15 ABs, all homers. How barmy is that?

Marcum up today so hopefully we can snap this losing streak. Wonder if EE can add to his HR tally?

Hoping that the Jays can make the most of their 3 game home stand against Baltimore because after that they're going to rack up a lot of losses in June. I'm not being pessimistic, just realistic. Here's what we face in June...

Rays @ home
Yankees @ home
Rays away
Rockies away
Padres away
Giants @ home
Phillies @ home - but actually away
Indians away

Given our inability to beat the Rays or win on the road at interleague, I don't see many wins in the month of June. In fact, I think the players will be so dejected by the time they get to Cleveland, they'll struggle to win there too.

I could be wrong, but I think come end of June we'll be fighting it out with Baltimore for the bottom spot in the AL East. So I will be glad that we had such a good April/May and hope for much needed sweep against the O's this weekend.

Dear god Matt Garza's beard is horrendous

Top quality run we are on (Red Sox); sweeping the rays IN THE JUICE BOX



2 games out of 2nd place now playing the Tigers.

How does your June look fixture wise? Anywhere near as horrendous as ours?

Ours is okay
3 at home to Oakland
3 on the road to to Baltimore
4 on the road at Cleveland
3 at home to Philly
3 at home to Arizona
3 at home to the Dodgers
3 on the road to Colorado
3 on the road to San Fran

Isn't too bad. How bad is yours?

Weve got Cleveland, Toronto, Astros.

Potential early season breaker for us with a trip to St Louis on the cards after this weekend. Amazing start by the Reds. I watched last night's game and it looked like the team with the worst record in the NL playing the team with the second best in the MLB. A real chance of a winning record and tbh I'd be very disappointed if we didn't manage that from here the way we are playing. Our consistency has been excellent. Even in games we've lost we've competed in most of them so I expect the team would be looking for a wild card spot after this start.

You are not wrong. Got to see it up close last night at the Rogers Centre. Yikes!

Great start to a tough month as we hung on for the win last night. Morrow pitched one of his best games so far for the Jays and it's certainly looking to me that we got the better end of that deal. Speaking of great deals, word is that we only paid $75k to the Giants for Fred Lewis. Bargain of the season!!

We're now in June and have yet to implode.



It's Tallet going for us tonight against Niemenn, who is 5-0 on the season. Odds are not exactly in our favour in that match-up. Especially when you consider that Tallet has been rushed back from the DL and in his last rehab outting in AAA gave up 8 runs in 1 1/3 innings before getting yanked from the game.

Got to comment on the perfect game from Halladay. All I can say is, us Jays fans already knew he was perfect, now everybody else does too.

Keeping up with us this year spooky.Leading the majors in homers. A-Rod went deep yesterday. Were muddling through despite injuries.

I'm still not sure WTF is going on to be honest! We were supposed to have a crap year and finish well below 500 (and below Baltimore).

Our young pitching staff have been for the most part just fantastic. Marcum, Cecil, Romero are looking like a great 1-2-3 for us and even Morrow is improving game by game. If Litsch can make even half the comeback that Marcum has later this month then who knows.

We hit 54 HRs in May and that's with Hill and Lind (our biggst producers last year) both still struggling. It's been pretty incredible so far and a lot of fun to watch too.

I expect there'll be some burnout at some point in the season so I'm just enjoying the ride while it lasts.

Ah, well. I wasn't expecting to get much from the Rays, but to blow a lead twice in the 9th. That's just so frustrating. Off day today and then bring on the Yankees. Got tickets for Saturday which will be one hell of a pitching duel between RickyRo and Pettitte. Can't wait. Cecil vs Burnett should be a cracker too.

Anyone see that blown call that robbed Armando Galarraga of a perfect game? It wasn't even close. Umpire Jim Joyce has admitted he blew the call which would have been the final out of the game. He even met with the player after the game to personally apologise. Sucks for both those guys.

Just watched that. Heartbreaking for both.

Great video on the usual site if you search for George Carlin Baseball vs Football

Another belter from Mike Leake again last night. Got to be in there for the rookie of the year awards if he keeps this up. 5-0 now with a 2.28 ERA, only four home runs allowed and is hitting .417. First time I've seen him pitch a live game and he gave the Nationals nothing.

Well that was an epic yesterday! Our BP totally redeemed itself with great performances all round. Always fun to witness a walk off win, even better when you're surrounded by big gobbed Yankee fans



Incredibly, we are going for the sweep today! Might have to start taking this team seriously.

Ooooooh, you couldn't resist. You'd done so well to last ill june.

I know, I shouldn't even think it! That said, we did just take 2 games fromt he Yankees (and it should have been 3).

All 3 losses in the Rays & Yankees series were blown leads thanks to an underperforming BP and some unfathomable moves by the manager (and some pretty damn good opposition of course). While that's happening, it's not possible for me to take us completely seriously. Which is a crying shame because our offence is getting it done for the most part and our starting pitchers have been performing beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Hell, even Tallet pitched a beauty against Tampa. I know it's hard to look at this Jays team on paper and think anything good about them. But it's been the most exciting Jays team to watch in my breif time as a fan. Whatever happens now, that's something I never thought I'd see this year.

By the way, is walking Teixeira (hitless in June) the dumbest move by an MLB manager this year, or would that be not walking Cano (hitting 0.363 for the season)?

Robinson Cano dontcha know. He's putting up MVP type numbers for us. I do think it's time fof the divisions to be realigned. 4 of the best teams in the american league are in one division.

I know! So let's walk Tex, who clearly couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat right now, but we'll pitch to Robbie, who's raking. Senile Gaston does it again!



Either that or make it the top 4 teams in the AL/NL who make the play-offs. Winning a crappy division shouldn't automatically get you into the playoffs. If that means that 3/4 AL East teams make the play-offs then so be it. They'd be there on merit.

One thing's for sure. If we keep this up, it's going to be one hell of an interesting race for that wild card spot.

So young Mr Strasburg looks like the real deal. 14ks in 7 innings on your major league debut is pretty impressive. Haven't seen highlights yet but apparently his curve is unbelievable and his fastball got up to 100mph.

That was the first thing I checked on the news this morning. Incredible debut. I haven't read much of the reaction about it yet but 14k's is first rate stuff any other time normally, so to do it on your debut and over just seven innings. Wow! I hope the Nationals can keep hold of him and some of their other talent to make things interesting. They could grow that club on the back of him and some of their other talent.

First time in MLB history a pitcher has had 11k's+ in his debut.

The record is 15ks according to MLB.com



14ks is pretty amazing though.

Jays are stinking it up in Tampa, but then we always do so I'm not overly concerned. We have a shot at avoiding the sweep tonight, which is pretty much all I could have hoped for out of this series. We really do hate going to Tropicana.

14K's and no walks is incredible!!

MLB TV is the best thing ive bought in recent memory.