You wants a lotta dingers? You want to play that show? Bring it AWN. The Reds, fighting for their wild card lives, thought they would try hitting balls out of the park early, but even a 3-0 lead proved to be, for the green and gold, tantamount to a pesky gnat on the arm.

That’s what the A’s did the rest of the afternoon. Luis Morales struggled in the first 2 innings, though it’s unclear exactly how Noelvi Marte, the game’s second batter, reached for a changeup down and away and hooked a lazy fly ball to LF…that somehow carried over the wall to give Cincinnati a 1-0 lead.

Easier to explain is how after walking Gavin Lux to lead off the 2nd, Morales served up gopher #2 to Will Benson on a straight fastball right out over the plate.

That meant lefty Nick Lodolo was staked to a 3-0 lead and that’s usually a problem for the opposition considering his 3.10 ERA entering this game. But after dazzling the A’s for 3 innings, in the 4th inning Lodolo ran into the power that is the 2025 A’s.

First Jacob Wilson ambushed a center cut fastball for his 13th HR and later in the inning Colby Thomas hit one roughly 300 feet high and 400 feet far. 3-2 Reds after 4.

Morales settled down to fire shutout innings in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th, leaving on the short side but still “in the game” as the A’s batted in the bottom of the 5th. With a man on, Nick Kurtz gave the A’s the lead, and Morales the win, when he took a fastball the other way and found the LF berm for a 2-run HR that gives him 32 for the season.

The Reds had another dinger in them, a solo blast in the 8th off of Justin Sterner, but by then the A’s had already pushed across an insurance run on a Brett Harris RBI double and launched big fly #4: Brent Rooker’s 29th HR was a 2-run blast to straightaway CF in the 7th that gave the A’s a 7-3 cushion.

The Reds homered 3 times, the A’s countered with 4 and the result is a series sweep that gives the A’s, for the first time since 2021, a 70th win. 70-80 with 12 to play, 69-60 when they’re not enduring a bizarre 1-20 stretch.

Also noteworthy today were Brett Harris’ 3 for 3 day and a flurry of web gems, one by Harris taking extra bases away, another by Kurtz on a similar snag down the 1B line, capped by Wilson’s fine play in the hole at SS for the 9th inning’s second out and Lawrence Butler’s sliding catch in CF to end the game.

They’ve earned a smooth flight to Boston and a day off to prepare for a rematch, this time at Fenway Park, with the Red Sox beginning Tuesday. How sweep it is (to be gloved by you).