For those of a certain generation, you may never not hear the fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates chanting CUETO! CUETO! CUETO!
It runs through my head whenever the Cincinnati Reds play Pittsburgh. It runs through my head whenever I think of Johnny Cueto. It certain runs through my head whenever I try to remember what it’s like to actually see the Reds play big-time, playoff baseball, something that sadly has eluded both them and me during the bulk of my adult life.
October 1st, 2013 – twelve years ago in another week – was the last time the Reds so much as scored a run in a Major League playoff game. It’s the last time they really even participated in a playoff game in semi-normal conditions, as the 2020 Wild Card series against the Atlanta Braves – in which they did not even score – only came about when they snuck in as the 7-seed in playoffs intentionally expanded for that season due to its regular season being shortened by the COVID pandemic. Barely any fans were even in the stands for that atmosphere, either, as social distancing was still in place.
They lost those games, all of them. You know that already.
Even that 2013 game came as a single, one-game Wild Card play-in game in Pittsburgh, meaning it’s been since Buster Posey destroyed a Mat Latos meatball for a grand slam in Great American Ball Park in Game 5 of the 2012 National League Division Series since the Reds so much as played a playoff game beyond a token Wild Card opener. You remember that one, right?
Sorry, sorry…not sure how that one got embedded here. You might just have to watch it on accident.
Those, mind you, were the good times, thirteen entire years ago. The Reds actually won a pair of playoff games that year, in that series, and had the Giants – who went on to win the World Series – on the brink for a trio of games in GABP. They lost all three of those, of course, because these are the Reds and these are their heartbreaks of which we speak.
Turn the clock back another pair of years to 2010 and you see the Reds, division champs as they were again in 2012, being no-hit by Roy Halladay and the Philadelphia Phillies as they were swept aside without advancing in their first trip to the postseason since 1995. That 15 year gap has now been doubled, as the aforementioned folks of a certain generation feel their knees ache, backs tighten, and gray hairs continue to sprout.
1995. Disney’s Toy Story debuted – the first one. OJ Simpson was found not-guilty, Kobe was destroyed by the Great Hanshin Earthquake, and the IOC selected Salt Lake City to host a 2002 Winter Olympics that similarly seems like eons ago. The aptly named Windows 95 debuted. Dave Winfield, who debuted in 1973 alongside Don McMahon (who was born in 1930) was still playing ball for Cleveland, and the nascent ESPN2 was still called ‘the deuce.“
That 1995 club, as anyone who’s followed the Reds in those trio of decades, was the last one to actually win a postseason series. That team was managed by Davey Johnson, rest his soul, and featured Frank Viola, who was once teammates with Larry Milbourne, who was once teammates with Cincinnati Reds legend Johnny Edwards, who is 87 damn years old.
It’s been 30 years since the Reds were even one of the four teams remaining with a chance to win the World Series. It’s been 13 years since they were even as close as the final eight. Beyond that, it’s not as if the years in between 1995 and 2012 afforded us the same kind of opportunities as, say, those of the Atlanta Braves, who kept winning NL East title after NL East title only to drop 10 straight playoff series between 2002 and 2020.
Do you, a Reds fan, even know what network is televising the NL Wild Card round this year? Or what channel the World Series will be on? Did you schedule a bunch of fun non-baseball things to do in late September and early October because, as a Reds fan, that’s become precisely the time of year when you don’t have any rooting interest in a baseball team? Has that become such a yearly ritual that you didn’t even notice?
These Reds, who have surged into playoff position thanks to timely hits and the perpetual stumbling by the New York Mets, have the chance to turn this miracle not just into something you’ll recall for a week until the next great college football game. At the time, we pretty well assumed 2010 and 2012 and 1995 would each be filed away in our Reds-related memories as ‘the starts of something,’ too. As we’ve aged, and as we’ve learned, it’s readily evident that this franchise has mostly robbed us of the opportunity to root for legitimately good teams playing good baseball at the most important times of the year, and the chance to glimpse that for yourself comes around so seldom that it sears itself into your memory forever when it’s actually here.
2025. The 2025 Reds have the chance to do it to us, on the arms of Andrew Abbott and Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo, on the hot bat of Spencer Steer and the swagadocio of young Sal Stewart. On an Elly De La Cruz late-season renaissance, on Nick Martinez pitching anytime, anywhere.
It’s fitting that tomorrow, Tuesday, the Reds will begin their final two-series push for the postseason with Pittsburgh in town. Folks of a certain generation – my generation – have something of a connotation of only playing Pittsburgh in the biggest of games. It happened in 2013. It happened back in 1990, over Barry Bonds, Doug Drabek, Andy Van Slyke, and Bobby Bonilla. If the 2025 Reds are going to fend off all challengers and actually make the playoffs, they’ve got to treat every game they play this week – including against Paul Skenes and Pittsburgh – as if it’s a playoff game, too.
This, right here, is the biggest week of a Cincinnati Reds baseball season since Sal Stewart was 8 years old. If they play their cards right this week – and next – it could be the biggest week of lifelong Reds fan Brent Suter’s life since he was six, and he just turned thirty-six.
All it takes is great play and a continued miracle, and these Reds could well exorcise some an entire generation of baseball demons.