Tuesday, August 30, 2016

My 2,500th Post: How to Watch a Game With Me

This is my 2,500th published post, and a takeoff on my "How To Be a (Name of Local Team) Fan In (Name of City)" series.

*

First, note where the game will be: Live, in a bar, or in a private home. There will be different rules for each.

If It's Live 

I will dress for the game. If it's Major League Baseball's New York Yankees, I will wear my cap. I have many caps, acquired over 30 years of adult sports fandom, but there's 2 that get regular usage: A cap for regular usage, and a cap I use only for gamedays, which is going to be considerably cleaner.

If it's the National Hockey League's New Jersey Devils, I'll wear a cap and my jersey with my name on it. Remember: They can never release you, trade you, or choose not to re-sign you to save money. And you don't retire. Players come and go, but your fandom is forever. So having your own name on the back isn't stupid or childish, as some would have you believe. It's a badge of honor.

If it's the football team or the basketball team at Rutgers University, I have a cap and a sweatshirt.

I have several shirts of English Premier League team Arsenal Football Club, including a throwback from their 1971 "Double" season, which I wore when they came to America to play a friendly against the New York Red Bulls. Which one I would wear if I ever actually went to London remains to be decided.

I will not paint any part of my body. I painted my face for 1 high school basketball game in 1986, and regretted it. I won't do it again. I once asked a Rutgers student, painted from the waist up, head and hair included, how long it took to get it done. He said it was 20 minutes. That's nuts. They called me "Crazy Mike" in high school, but I was never that crazy, and I certainly am not now.

There is only one way to go to the game, and that's on the Subway. If the city in question doesn't have one, a light rail system will do. If it doesn't have that, either, I will make the sacrifice of going on a bus.

If it's a place I haven't been to before, or in a while, I like to arrive early, and explore the venue, including any feature they may have such as the Yankees' Monument Park. A team hall of fame, statues, things like that.

I also want to know where the best place to get food is within the stadium or arena, and where the closest restroom is to my seat. I will want to take care of "output," then "input," before the first pitch/kickoff/tipoff/faceoff/opening whistle. Once the game begins, I want my food tray in my lap and my drink in the cupholder.

This way, I don't have to wait until halftime (or, in the case of hockey, the 1st or 2nd intermission) to get my lunch/dinner. If I still need something, I can use that time for a snack or an additional drink, or an additional trip to the can, and probably spend less time on line.

I usually don't drink beer at a live game. It's not just the ridiculous prices that the concessionaires charge. I generally don't like beer. There are maybe 5 or 6 brands that I can drink without making a face. And Budweiser is not one of them. Nor is Bud Light. Certainly not Coors Light. I once tried to type that Coors Light was "barley-flavored water." It came out "barely-flavored water." I left it alone, because that's also true! This will be very different if I'm at a bar or at someone's house.

I will stand for the National Anthem. I will not sing it, because I'm a lousy singer. The exception is if my team is playing a Canadian team. Then, I sing "O, Canada" -- in French. (Yes, I know the words, and, when translated into English, they're a bit different from the English version.) This pleases visiting Montreal Canadiens fans. It angers Toronto Blue Jays and Maple Leafs fans. Fans of the Edmonton Oilers and the other Canadian NHL teams just think it's weird.

It matters whether the game will involve one of my teams. If it does, I will be very much into it. The word "intense" comes to mind. If it doesn't, if I'm a neutral, then my attitude will be very different. I will be a lot calmer. Though I still reserve the right to question the decision of an umpire/referee. Out loud.

If it's a high school game, the standards are different. You don't yell things at a kid that you would yell at an adult. Although, since the regular readers of this blog generally aren't fellow graduates of East Brunswick High School, we almost certainly won't be going to a high school sporting event together.

If it's a college game, then I don't care that they're not professionals: They're still adults, and poor play is fair game. I was once at a Rutgers football season opener, and the season started with a great deal of promise. By the end of the 1st quarter, the entire season was effectively over. Complete incompetence. Now, I wasn't calling them "bums" or worse, but I was yelling that they had to block better, that they had to tackle better, that they had to hang onto the ball. And this woman across the aisle yells at me for not supporting the team. I had paid $50 to get into the game, and the least I should get for my money is the right to say what I want if I don't get competent product.

Any official -- umpire, referee, or whatever -- gets a light jab the 1st time in a game that he gets a call wrong. The 2nd time, I let him know he's getting on my nerves. The 3rd time and thereafter, he's a bum. Or worse. I might use the "Where's your father... " song from English soccer. But I will not use some of the harder language you might hear at one of those games. (More on that later.)

If the manager or head coach makes what I think is a dumb decision, I reserve the right to say so. If he turns out to be right, I'll admit it. If I turn out to be right, I reserve the right to say, "I told you so!" Or something harsher.

I will curb my language if there's kids around. If not, the "George Carlin words" may well fly.

I will not dance. Especially to "YMCA" or "Cotton Eye Joe." I hate those songs. And so should you.

I may follow the pattern of English soccer fans and adapt a song to a player. This usually doesn't work well. People heard me sing, "One Derek Jeter, there's only one Derek Jeter!" and unless they knew the Premier League, they'd wonder what the hell I was doing. One I miss doing, and the only thing I miss about former Devils star Ilya Kovalchuk, is singing, to the tune of "Jesus Christ, Superstar," "Kovalchuk! Kovalchuk! He scores a goal and the Rangers suck!"

If it's a Devils game, there will be "Rangers suck!" chants, and I will join in. But if it's a Yankee game, it's a little different. It's hard to say, "Red Sox suck!" because of the combination of the X and S sounds. So they usually say, "Boston sucks!" But I really like Boston as a city. It's the sports teams I hate. So I usually don't join in with "Boston sucks!" "Mets suck!" is another matter.

If it's a baseball game, and "God Bless America" is played during the 7th Inning Stretch, I will stand, but I will not sing along. It's been 15 years since 9/11, and it is well past time to retire this tradition. We go to sporting events to escape from the world at large, not to be reminded of it. Besides, all those people who think we should keep politics out of sports never consider that playing the National Anthem and "God Bless America" are political acts.

The National Anthem before the game, I accept; being told to be patriotic when we should be cheering on our local team is overkill. But I do sing along with "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." The definitive version of that is not by an opera singer like the late Robert Merrill, but by the boozy old broadcaster Harry Caray, so if you sing it poorly, you're fine.

If the result of the game/match/meet seems clear early -- win or lose -- I will be considerably calmer than I will if the result is still in doubt until the end. Words like, "Oy vey," "I can't look" and "I can't take this" may be heard.

If it's an away game for one of my teams, much of what I've said thus far goes out the window. I would be "a guest in someone else's house." So the language would be calmer, even if the ump/ref really screws my team over (intentionally or otherwise). Unlike European and Latin American club soccer, all the visiting fans are not grouped together, separated from the home fans, so you have to be very careful.

And never, ever mock the host city. It's one thing, if you're at home, to say, "You still have to go live in Detroit!" or, "You still have to live under Mayor/Governor (name of corrupt idiot)!" It's another thing if you're surrounded by people who are proud of their City or their State. They will defend it, with words, and possibly with fists.

At home, surrounded by fellow fans, I will gloat and, as they say in English soccer, "take the piss." On the road, I try to follow the advice of the great football coach Paul Brown: "When you win, say little. And when you lose, say less." Lose, suck it up; win, do not gloat. Smile, yes; enjoy it, yes; gloat in public, no.

What I do after the game depends largely on whether it's home or away. I usually like to leave the venue as soon as possible. Unless it's a Rutgers football game, in which case the traffic will be bad, with long lines for the Campus Buses. So I usually stay and watch the band's postgame show.

I never go to a local bar or restaurant after a home game, usually because I don't drive, and thus am at the mercy of the public transportation system. (Then again, if I did drive, that would limit my booze consumption -- which isn't a problem anyway, since I don't drink much.)

If it's an away game, again, I am at the mercy of public transportation, both short-distance (to the bus or train station) and long-distance (Greyhound or Amtrak). If it's a day game, I'm probably fine, and can stop off someplace first. In which case, I'm very careful not to rub it in if my team has won.

If it's a night game, then we're talking an overnight trip, meaning I probably have to take the 1st possible conveyance back to whatever station I used to enter the city, and then sleeping on the bus or the train, and possibly taking the 1st bus of the morning out of Port Authority back home.

If It's In a Bar

Know the clientele. Get a feel for what you can say, and what you shouldn't say. A bar showing an English soccer game will have fans shouting obscenities that you wouldn't hear even at the toughest of baseball, football or hockey bars, like "cunt," "twat" and "wanker." These shouters may include the women.

Knowing the clientele also involves knowing what percentage is rooting for your team. If I'm watching the Yankees, but there's also a Met game on, and there are Met fans in the place, I do as little as possible to engage those troglodytes. But if they try to get into it with me, and the Yankees end up winning, and the Mets end up losing, well, they're fair game.

When it comes to drinking, I pace myself. Soccer, I have a drink in each half. Baseball, 1 for every 3 innings. Hockey, 1 for every period. Football, 1 before the game to get me through the 1st quarter, 1 to get me through halftime, 1 to get me through the 2nd half. That way, I never have more than 1 full drink in my system.

I always pay my check before the game ends, so that, after the game, I can finish my meal and/or drink, and get out. No reason to stick around. Do more drinking? Suit yourself, but I don't need it.

If It's In a Home

Host's house, host's rules. I abide, no matter what. I sit where the host says to sit. If he/she doesn't say where, then any open seat is available. If the host offers a beer, and it's a brand I don't like (most of them), I will politely ask what my other options are. Usually, there will be a good one.

Again, I have to know the character of the "crowd." If they're intense people, I'll be intense. If they're more sedate, I will adjust. If any of the other guests are rooting for the other team, I'll have fewer people having my back than I would in a bar, let alone in a stadium or arena, in which case I'll let the scoreboard do the talking.

I have this nasty habit of overdoing it with chips and dip, and also with shrimp, much like George Costanza. Keep this in mind; it may cause you to rethink inviting me. (Unlike George, however, I would never double-dip a chip.)

When the host says it's over, Yogi Berra lines aside, it's over. I would almost certainly have been driven by someone else, so we head for the car and go home.

Regardless of where the viewing is: If my team simply did not put up the effort, I will be angrier than if we were cheated by the opposition or the officials (or both). Take that into account.

*

Watching a game with me could be a hazardous and/or exasperating experience. Or it could be fun. Or it could be all of the above.

You have been briefed, and warned.

Tony Romo Needs to Retire; Joe DeMaestri, 1928-2016

Quarterback Tony Romo was injured during the Dallas Cowboys' preseason game against the Seattle Seahawks this past Thursday night. He suffered a compression fracture to a veterbra in his back, and is scheduled to miss from 6 to 10 weeks of playing time.

That means that the soonest he could reappear would be on October 16, Week 6 of the regular season, away to the Green Bay Packers. If it does turn out to be 10 weeks, then he would return in Week 10 (the Cowboys have a bye in Week 7), on November 13, away to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Romo is a 4-time Pro Bowler. In 13 seasons, he has gotten the Cowboys into the Playoffs 5 times, including 3 times as NFC Eastern Division Champions, most recently in the 2014 season. That's a decent career.

But not a great career. He's only won 2 Playoff games, against the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2009 season, and the Detroit Lions in the 2014 season. The Cowboys then lost to the Packers by 5 points, leaving them 3 wins short of a Super Bowl win, 2 wins short of a Super Bowl appearance. They were 4-12 last season, despite going 12-4, 13-5 counting the Playoffs, the season before.

Like all people with taste, I despise the Dallas Cowboys. But I can look at this objectively:

The greatest quarterback in Cowboys history, Roger Staubach, led them into 5 Super Bowls, winning 2, and retired in 1979, at the age of 37. Troy Aikman led them into 3, winning them all, and retired in 2000, at 34. They were both concerned about the long-term effects of their injuries.

Staubach is now 74, and, as far as I can tell, he is in good shape for his age. Aikman is about to turn 50, has no noticeable physical impairments, and, judging by his analysis on Fox broadcasts, his brain works fine.

Romo is 36. He hasn't won the big one. And, if he never plays another down, he is probably not going to be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Winning a Super Bowl and making the Hall of Fame are an NFL player's 2 biggest goals.

They aren't worth the risk. Despite being 34 years old when he was traded to the Giants, Y.A. Tittle kept going for the big one (reaching the NFL Championship Game 3 straight times in the pre-Super Bowl era, in 1961, '62 and '63) and didn't get it, and has battled Alzheimer's for years.

Jim McMahon did get the big one, with the 1985 Chicago Bears, and got another ring as a backup with the 1996 Packers, and is now dealing with cognitive issues. Johnny Unitas won 3 titles with the Baltimore Colts (1958, '59 and '70), and in the last few years before his death, this candidate for the title of "Greatest Quarterback Who Ever Lived" was so physically impaired, he could no longer even hold a football, and died of heart trouble before he was 60.

There is another way for Romo to occupy himself for whatever remains of his life. He needs to find it.

He should not worry about what the Dallas Cowboys are going to do without him. They're the richest team in the league, and have a very resourceful front office. They can draft a great quarterback prospect, or they can trade for an established one. This might be a bad year for them, or it might turn out all right. They will not turn into the 1980s Tampa Bay Buccaneers or the 1990s Cincinnati Bengals in the next few years. They might not become champions, but they'll be in the mix.

Romo needs to think about his own future, and his family's. He needs to retire, while the decision is still his, and while he is less likely to regret it.

UPDATE: With Dak Prescott doing well in Romo's absence, Romo did not actually return until the regular season finale, on January 1, 2017, against the Philadelphia Eagles. He threw a touchdown pass to Terrance Williams, and that was the last play of his career. Like Aikman, he became a color commentator with Fox Sports, and has gotten rave reviews. He follows Aikman and the late ABC analyst Don Meredith as Cowboy quarterbacks who did very well in the press box.

*

Joe DeMaestri has died. The San Francisco native, nicknamed "Oats," was 87, and was a major league infielder from 1951 to 1961. He was, until last week, a surviving St. Louis Brown and a surviving Philadelphia Athletic.

In 1960, the Kansas City Athletics traded him to the Yankees. He took over at shortstop in the 8th inning of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series after a ground ball hit a pebble, took a bad hop, and hit Tony Kubek in the throat. (On the official highlight film, he can be seen as one of the players looking on as Kubek is attended to, wearing Number 20.) In 1961, he was a backup infielder on the Yankees as they won the World Series, but he did not appear in the Series, and never played another major league game.
He retired after that 1961 season, because, for all their wealth, the Yankees were cheap, and he could make more money in his father's beverage distribution business. His one regret was that, the next season, the Yankees played in the World Series against the San Francisco Giants, and he wasn't able to play in the World Series in his hometown.

He married, had 3 children, inherited the distribution business, retired, sold it for a tidy profit, and played lots of golf, living out his life in Marin County, north of San Francisco.
With his death, there are now 10 surviving players from the 1961 World Champion New York Yankees: Whitey Ford, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Hector Lopez, Ralph Terry, Rollie Sheldon, Bud Daley, Jim Coates, Billy Gardner and Jack Reed.

UPDATE: DeMaestri's final resting place is not publicly known.

Monday, August 29, 2016

Was 2 of 3 from O's Enough? Not Really

If the Yankees were really in the thick of the American League Eastern Division race, taking 2 out of 3 games of a home series with the Baltimore Orioles would be good news.

But we're not in the thick of it. We're on the thin outer edge of it. We needed a sweep, and we didn't get it.

On Friday night, the Yankees scored a lot of runs in support of rookie starter Luis Cessa. A 6-run explosion in the 2nd inning settled it. But none of the 3 home runs the Yankees hit on the night were in that inning: Mark Teixeira hit one in the 1st (it was his 11th of the season), Chase Headley in the 4th (his 12th), and rookie sensation Gary Sanchez in the 5th (his 10th).

Yankees 14, Orioles 4. WP: Cessa (4-0). No save. LP: Yovani Gallardo (4-6).

*

Saturday was the high-water mark of the Yankee season this far. Again, there were lots of runs, much more than were needed. Sanchez hit another homer (his 11th), Starlin Castro hit one (his 18th), and Aaron Hicks hit one (his 7th). The latter 2 came in a 4-run 5th inning, but that was too late for Chad Green: He'd already been knocked out, and replaced by Tommy Layne, who ended up as the winning pitcher.

Yankees 13, Orioles 5. WP: Layne (1-1). No save. LP: Dylan Bundy (7-5) -- and that's not the Florida serial killer (Ted Bundy), the idiot from Married... with Children (Ed O'Neill as Al Bundy), or the even bigger idiot on that ranch in Nevada (Cliven Bundy). The Yankees were 6 games over .500.

*

Yesterday, as is so often the case, the Yankees needed a few runs from recent offensive explosions, and couldn't transfer them. Kevin Gausman pitched brilliantly for Baltimore, going 7 innings, allowing no runs, 7 hits, and no walks, striking out 9. Sanchez and Ronald Torreyes each hit doubles, while those 2, Teix, Hicks, Brian McCann and Didi Gregorius each hit singles, but that was it.

In contrast, CC Sabathia allowed only 2 hits and a walk over the 1st 5 innings, but a home run by Steve Pearce gave the O's a 1-0 lead in the 6th. CC tired in the 7th, and Joe Girardi brought in Adam Warren to replace him, because he could no longer bring Dellin Betances in for the 7th, Andrew Miller for the 8th and Aroldis Chapman for the 9th, because Brian Cashman had stupidly traded Miller and Chapman.

Instead, Warren (brought in the trade for Chapman) and Ben Heller (brought in the trade for Miller, and his 2 major league appearances thus far, both for the Yankees, have been horrible) turned a redeemable 1-0 deficit into a pathetic 5-0 performance.

Brian Cashman, this one is on you: Orioles 5, Yankees 0. WP: Gausman (6-10). No save. LP: Sabathia (8-11), who really deserved a better fate.

*

There are 5 weeks left in the regular season -- 33 games. In the AL East, the Toronto Blue Jays lead the Boston Red Sox by 2 games, the Orioles by 3, and the Yankees by 6 1/2. The Yankees trail the O's by 3 1/2 for the 2nd AL Wild Card.

It is beginning to look bleak for the Division, and I'm not sure we deserve the Wild Card. Well, we do, but Cashman doesn't, and Girardi probably doesn't, either.

Tonight, we begin a series in Kansas City, away to the Royals. The defending World Champions, the 2-time defending Pennant winners have not done well, either, but they're also in the Wild Card race.

Here are the projected starting pitchers:

* Tonight, 8:15 PM (7:15 local time): Michael Pineda vs. former Met Dillon Gee.

* Tomorrow, 8:15 PM: Masahiro Tanaka vs. Edinson Volquez.

* Wednesday, 8:15 PM: Cessa vs. former Yankee Ian Kennedy.

Come on you Bombers... please! We don't have any more games to waste.

The Yankees are making me a nervous wreck again. With the death yesterday of the great comic actor Gene Wilder, I'm reminded of his scene in Blazing Saddles, as Jim, the Waco Kid. He holds out his right hand, and Cleavon Little, as Sheriff Bart, says, "Steady as a rock." But Jim holds out his left hand, and it's shaking like crazy, and he says, "But I shoot with this hand!"
It's been that kind of season for the Yankees. The movie had a happy ending. But this isn't Hollywood.

R.I.P., Gene.

Saturday, August 27, 2016

How to Be a Met Fan In Cincinnati -- 2016 Edition

On Monday, September 5, Labor Day, the Mets will be in Cincinnati, to begin a 3-game series against the Reds at Great American Ballpark.

In 2013, due to circumstances beyond my control, the Reds were the only Major League Baseball team I didn't get to do an updated trip guide for. I was able to do 28 teams in 2012, and 29 in 2013. In 2014, the Reds were supposed to be the 30th and last, but with the Mets and Jets going to Cincinnati within a few days of each other, I decided to do the Reds and Bengals at once, the 1st time I did it for 2 sports at once. (This past February 23, I did it for all 3 teams that play in Los Angeles' Staples Center.) And in 2015, I didn't do these trip guides for any MLB teams, except for the Yankees and Mets.

Well, this time, I'm able to do it for the Reds, and that will close it out for MLB this season: As ESPN would say, "30 for 30."

Before You Go. Cincinnati can get really hot in the summer -- and though the Monday is Labor Day, the cultural end of summer, September 5, 6 and 7 are is still in scientific summer. The Cincinnati Enquirer website is predicting low 90s by day and low 70s by night for Monday and Tuesday, and thunderstorms for Tuesday, which may cause a postponement and a day-night, separate-admissions doubleheader for Wednesday. Due to the rain, Wednesday is predicted to be cooler: Mid-80s for daytime, low 60s for the evening.

Cincinnati is in the Eastern Time Zone, so you won't have to set your clocks back.

Tickets. Great American Ball Park -- yes, 4 words -- seats 42,319 people. The Reds are averaging 24,730 per home game this season, a drop of 5,000 over last season. So tickets should be available; whether they're good tickets is for you to decide.

Given their frequent claims of a "family atmosphere," you would expect the Reds' tickets to be cheap. Compared with previous seasons, they are. Infield Boxes will go for $55, Field Boxes (down the foul lines) for $39, Mezzanine and View Box seats for $27, and View Level (uppermost in the stadium) for $129. The right field bleachers go for $12. In honor of a similar section at the old Reds’ ballpark, Crosley Field, these bleachers are known as the Sun Deck for day games and the Moon Deck for night games. Terrace Outfield (left field) are $25.

Getting There. It's 641 miles from Times Square in New York to Fountain Square in Cincinnati, and 650 miles from Citi Field to Great American Ballpark.

Flying may seem like a good option, and don't let the fact that Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport is in Florence, Kentucky fool you: It's just 13 miles southwest of downtown, a little closer (and in the same direction) than Newark Airport is to Midtown Manhattan. And if you order now, you can get a round-trip nonstop ticket on United Airlines for $700.

Greyhound's run between the 2 cities is not good, a 16-hour ride that costs $160 round-trip (but it can be dropped to $118 with advanced-purchase) and forces you to change buses in either Cleveland or Columbus. The terminal is at 1005 Gilbert Avenue, less than a mile northeast of Fountain Square. Take the Number 11 bus to get downtown.

Amtrak's run to Cincy is problematic as well, as it only offers service out of Penn Station to Cincinnati, on the Cardinal, every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, and it'll nearly 19 hours, from 6:45 AM until 1:31 AM outbound and from 3:27 AM to almost 9:58 AM back. At least it'll be cheap by Amtrak standards, $164.

Union Terminal, now also a museum and shopping mall, is at 1301 Western Avenue, about a mile and a half northwest of downtown. And you'd have to walk 5 blocks to Linn & Clark Streets just to get to the closest downtown bus (Number 27).
In the 1970s, Cincinnati-based Taft Broadcasting owned
Hanna-Barbera Productions, producers of the cartoon Super Friends,
and so the Terminal became the model for
the Justice League's headquarters, the Hall of Justice.

If you decide to drive, it's far enough that it will help to get someone to go with you and split the duties, and to trade off driving and sleeping.

You'll need to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. Take it to Exit 14, to Interstate 78. Follow I-78 west all the way through New Jersey, to Phillipsburg, and across the Delaware River into Easton, Pennsylvania. Continue west on I-78 until reaching Harrisburg. There, you will merge onto I-81. Take Exit 52 to U.S. Route 11, which will soon take you onto I-76. This is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the nation’s first superhighway, opening in 1940.

The Turnpike will eventually be a joint run between I-76 and Interstate 70. Once that happens, you’ll stay on I-70, all the way past Pittsburgh, across the little northern panhandle of West Virginia, and into Ohio all the way to the State Capitol of Columbus. Then leave I-70 at Exit 99 and get on Interstate 71 south to Cincinnati.

If you do it right, you should spend about an hour and 15 minutes in New Jersey, 5 hours and 30 minutes in Pennsylvania, 15 minutes in West Virginia, and about 3 hours in Ohio. That’s about 10 hours. Counting rest stops, preferably halfway through Pennsylvania and just after you enter Ohio and around Columbus, and accounting for traffic in both New York and Cincinnati, it should be no more than 14 hours, which would save you time on both Greyhound and Amtrak, if not flying.

Once In the City. Founded in 1788, Cincinnati was named by Arthur St. Clair, then Governor of the Northwest Territory. He was a member of the Society of Cincinnati, an organization that was a tribute to George Washington, then called "the New Cincinnatus." Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was, like Washington, a farmer who had previously led his country, in his case ancient Rome, into battle, and was called back to lead the nation as a whole in 458 BC. He defeated the Aequi in battle, and then, just 16 days after he took charge, resigned and retired to his farm.

Germans, including "Pennsylvania Dutch" (including some Amish, and many remain in Ohio) were among the first settlers, which explains why the city had a strong brewing tradition, and why the 1882 version of the Cincinnati Red Stockings founded the original American Association, known as "The Beer and Whiskey League" because, unlike the National League, they refused to prohibit the selling of alcohol in their stadiums. Even in the early 20th Century, sportswriters would refer to that team's spiritual (if not lineal) descendant, the Reds, as "the gingery Germans of Zinzinatti." Like Notre Dame's nickname of "The Fighting Irish," the nickname no longer has much ethnic relevance; unlike "The Fighting Irish," however, it's not still used.

Cincinnati is one of the smallest markets in the major leagues, with the city being home to just 298,000 people. If you count Tampa and St. Petersburg as one city, that would make Cincinnati the smallest in Major League Baseball. The metropolitan area is home to only 2.2 million people, making it the 2nd-smallest, ahead of only Milwaukee. However, if you count nearby Dayton, then it jumps to a little under 3 million. That makes it 24th in MLB, and 21st in the NFL.

Despite this, and despite having lost their NBA team in 1972 and never regained it, Cincinnati has never been in serious danger of losing either the Reds or the Bengals. While the Reds were targeted by cities looking to get into MLB in the 1950s and '60s, the city was proactive in stopping them, and the construction of Riverfront Stadium made sure the teams were set to stay for the rest of the 20th Century. The construction of replacements for Riverfront has made sure the teams are set to stay for at least the 1st half of the 21st.

In spite of the city's willingness to drink, it's one of the most conservative cities in America, home to the Taft political family that has now seen 5 straight generations achieve high office: Alphonso Taft was Attorney General under Ulysses S. Grant; his son, Charles Phelps Taft, was a Congressman who owned the Philadelphia Phillies and later the Chicago Cubs; another son, William Howard Taft, was Secretary of War under Theodore Roosevelt, was elected to replace TR as President in 1908, and became the only President also to serve on the Supreme Court, as Chief Justice no less; his son, Robert Taft, was a power in the Senate, so conservative he was known as "Mr. Republican" in opposition to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, serving as Majority Leader at the time of his death in 1953; another son of William Howard, Charles Phelps Taft II, was Mayor of Cincinnati in the 1950s, and became known as "Mr. Cincinnati"; Robert's son, Robert Taft Jr., served in both houses of Congress; and his son, Bob Taft, was Governor of Ohio.

Cincinnati's conservatism is reflected in the Reds' long-standing policy banning facial hair, considerably stronger than that of George Steinbrenner in liberal New York, who at least allowed mustaches. And if you watched the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati, you noticed that station owner Mama Carlson (Carol Bruce) only made the switch from "beautiful music" to rock and roll in 1978 because the station was losing money. Even her son, Arthur "Big Guy" Carlson (Gordon Jump), while willing to manage a rock station, was hopelessly square -- though not as square as newsman Les Nessman (Richard Sanders). Things hadn't changed much in the century or so since Mark Twain remarked that if the world came to an end, it would take Cincinnati 20 years to notice.

Vine Street is the street address divider between East and West, with the North-South streets' addresses increasing as you go north from the Ohio River. The sales tax in the State of Ohio is 5.75 percent, rising to 6.5 percent in Hamilton County, including the City of Cincinnati.
The Tyler Davidson Fountain
at Fountain Square, 5th & Vine Streets

ZIP Codes for Cincinnati start with the digits 452, and the Area Code is 513. Cincinnati does not have a subway: Construction of a system began in the 1910s, but was abandoned in the 1920s, and occasional attempts to try again, using the existing tunnels, have never gotten anywhere. Cincinnati Metro buses have a one-zone fare of $1.75, and $2.65 outside the City but within the County.

Going In. Great American Ball Park (they spell "ball park" as 2 words, and it is named for the insurance company owned by former Reds owner Carl Lindner Jr.), opened in 2003, is separated from downtown by I-71/U.S. Route 50, and is right on the Ohio River. Although, like Arm & Hammer Park in Trenton, the park is close enough to the river that a very strong player could hit a fair ball into it, unlike in Trenton as of yet this has not happened in an official game.

The Southbank Shuttle leaves from 5th & Vine Streets in Fountain Square, although the park is basically close enough to walk to from anywhere in downtown. The park's official address is 100 Joe Nuxhall Way, named for the 1950s-60 Reds reliever and longtime broadcaster who died in 2007. Officially, the streets around it are 2nd Street (3rd base) to the north, Broadway Street (left field, and, no, that's not "Broadway," it's "Broadway Street") to the east, Mehring Way/U.S. Route 27 (right field) to the south and Main Street/Joe Nuxhall Way (1st base) to the west. Extending from the 1st base side is Pete Rose Way.
Great American Ballpark, with U.S. Bank Arena next-door

Parking in Cincinnati is cheap. Most parking meters are free after 6:00 PM, and there's a garage on 6th Street between Broadway & Sycamore that charges only $2.00.

You'll be most likely to enter by 2nd Street or Pete Rose Way. You'll see a limestone carving of a kid in a baseball uniform looking up at grownup players. These statues are known as The Spirit of Baseball. They also have a mosaic paying tribute to the 2 most famous baseball teams from Cincinnati, which I’ll get to when I discuss Team History Displays.
The ballpark faces southeast, away from downtown and the city's skyscrapers. But the park's openness does provide a nice view of the river and the Kentucky shoreline beyond. The scoreboard has a steamboat motif known as the Power Stacks. The field is natural grass. The foul lines are rather close, 328 to left and 325 to right. However, the alleys have respectable distances, 379 to left and 370 to right, and center field is 404.
The Power Stacks. Behind them
is the Taylor-Southgate Bridge.

Adam Dunn hit the longest home run in the park's history, a 535-foot shot in 2004. Mark McGwire hit the longest at Riverfront Stadium, a 473-foot shot in 2000. Who hit the longest at Crosley Field isn't clear, but most sources cite a 1967 drive by Jimmy Wynn, a native of nearby Hamilton, Ohio: Then with the Houston Astros, "the Toy Cannon" (he was only 5-foot-9 but had a lot of power) cranked one over the left-center-field scoreboard (58 feet high), and it landed on Interstate 75, the Mill Creek Expressway. This was probably at least 475 feet.

Food. Being in Big Ten Country, where tailgate parties are practically a sacrament, you would expect the Cincinnati ballpark to have lots of good options. Not really: The options are plentiful, but I wouldn't recommend them.

That traditional Midwestern favorite, the bratwurst, is sold at Queen City Brats, behind Section 514 in the upper deck. A stand called State Fair is at Section 130, and sells tradition state/county fair stuff like corn dogs, fried doughnuts and funnel cake -- check that, "funnel cake fries."

If your stomach is strong enough for that stuff, you may be prepared for this: Not only does Cincinnati, like Detroit, favor the "cheese coney," a hot dog with chili and cheese on it, but they like chili over… spaghetti. Huh? Cheese coneys are sold at Skyline Time stands at Sections 103, 116, 130, 519 and 534. A recent Thrillist article on the best food at every Major League Baseball stadium
names Skyline Chili as the best food at GABP, admitting, "out-of-towners might not be able to grasp what makes the famous Skyline puddle so damn endearing to Queen City taste buds," and calling it "messy pseudo-chili."

The 4192 Bar, named for Rose's record-breaking hit, is behind Section 306. Another section named for Rose, Pete's Head First Dogs, is at 512. (Apparently, MLB can prevent Rose from working for the Reds, or any other team, but they can't control who the Reds name facilities after.) Doggy's Dogs, a hot-dog stand named for the nickname of Tony Perez, is behind 525. Frank's Franks, named for Frank Robinson, are at 113, 143 and 531. Roebling Dogs, named for the family that built the old suspension bridge near the ballpark before moving to New York and building the Brooklyn Bridge, is at 112 and 130.

There's a Bob Evans restaurant (the chain is headquartered in Ohio) at 516. And the Machine Room, named for the 1970s "Big Red Machine," is at Suite Level -- which you're unlikely to even see. What you may see, at 130 or 514, is a stand called Penn Station, but this is no reference to New York. Indeed, it's closer to a Philadelphia-style stand, selling cheesesteaks.
The Mosaic's tribute to the 1869 Red Stockings

Team History Displays. Outside the park is The Mosaic, honoring Cincinnati's 2 most famous baseball teams: The 1869 Red Stockings, baseball’s first openly professional team (though the current Reds have no official connection to this club, which was disbanded after the 1880 season) and the 1970s Reds, manager Sparky Anderson's Big Red Machine.
The Mosaic's tribute to the Big Red Machine.
L to R: Ken Griffey Sr., right field; Tony Perez, 1st base;
Johnny Bench, catcher; Joe Morgan, 2nd base;
Pete Rose, 3rd base; Dave Concepcion, shortstop;
George Foster, left field; and Cesar Geronimo, center field.

A tribute to Rose is on the back of the left-field scoreboard, known as the 4192 Mural for his record-breaking 4,192nd career hit, which he notched at Riverfront Stadium on September 11, 1985. (A revision of records shows that Ty Cobb actually had 4,189 career hits, not 4,191, and this was known as early as 1981; however, MLB hadn't yet officially changed it by 1985. If they had, Rose would have broken the record earlier, on the road.)

The Power Stacks have 7 bats on them, totaling 14, a way of acknowledging Rose's Number 14, before they finally decided to retire it without caring what the MLB suits did. (It had only been issued once since, in the brief 1997 callup of Pete Rose Jr., who's had his own problems but has never been banned from the game. The street named Pete Rose Way is outside the ballpark, and MLB and its Commissioner has no say in what the street can be named.)
The team's officially retired numbers are shown behind home plate, at press box level: Bench's 5, Morgan's 8, Anderson's 10, Concepcion's 13, Rose's 14, Robinson's 20, Perez's 24, the 1 of 1961 Pennant-winning manager Fred Hutchinson (who died of cancer in 1964 shortly after nearly leading them to another Pennant), the 11 of 1990s-2000s shortstop Barry Larkin, and the 18 of 1950s slugger Ted Kluszewski.
June 26, 2016 -- almost 30 years after he played his last game

Phillies legend Mike Schmidt grew up in nearby Dayton, Ohio, while Robinson was starring for the Reds in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and wore 20 in tribute to him. Along with Willie McCovey and Reggie Jackson wearing 44 in honor of Hank Aaron, and Al Kaline wearing 6 in honor of Stan Musial, as far as I know it's the only number in baseball retired in honor of a player who wore it in tribute to another player’s number that ended up retired. (Troy Tulowitzki has admitted to wearing Number 2 in honor of Derek Jeter, but he is currently still active, and it remains to be seen whether the Colorado Rockies or the Toronto Blue Jays retire it for him.)

Logos of microphones in honor of broadcasters Waite Hoyt, Joe Nuxhall and Marty Brennaman are placed alongside the retired numbers. Nuxhall, like Jimmy Wynn a native of Hamilton, was in high school, just short of his 16th birthday, when the manpower shortage of World War II made the Reds desperate enough to sign him, and make him the youngest player in major league history, on June 10, 1944. It didn't go so well: He got shelled in his one and only appearance. This did not deter him, though: After graduation, he remained in the Reds' minor-league system, worked his way back, and pitched for them from 1952 to 1960, including their near-miss season of 1956, when he made his 2nd straight appearance on the NL All-Star team. But they traded him, and he missed their 1961 Pennant. He came back, retiring in 1966, and went into the broadcast booth.

Nuxy wore Number 39 for most of his Reds career, but the number has not been retired for him; it is currently worn by backup catcher Devin Mesoraco. Nuxy would conclude a broadcast by saying, "This is the Old Lefthander, rounding third and heading for home." Kind of an odd signoff, considering he was a pitcher... and is best remember outside of Cincinnati not for being old (he wasn't quite 38 when he pitched his last game), but for being in a major league game when he was 15 years old.

Hoyt was also signed to his first pro contract at age 15, by the New York Giants out of Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School. He made his big-league debut with the Giants in 1918, shortly before turning 19. But they sent him to the Red Sox, who made him one of several players they sent to the Yankees, and he became a Hall-of-Fame pitcher throughout the 1920s. He would return to the Giants in 1932, and closed his playing career with his "hometown" Dodgers in 1938. He won 237 games, but after he joined Alcoholics Anonymous -- one of the first pro athletes to admit having done so -- he said he would have won 300 if not for his drinking. I believe him. He broadcast for the Reds from 1942 to 1972, and was so popular that the team released 2 record albums of his rain-delay stories, The Best of Waite Hoyt in the Rain. Born in 1899, he died in 1984.

Brennaman, who was recently honored with the Hall of Fame's Ford Frick Award for broadcasting, actually started in the Mets' organization, doing 3 years with the team then known as the Tidewater Tides, as he is a native of the Norfolk area. He has been the Reds' main voice since 1974, the middle of the Big Red Machine years. His postgame tagline, in the event of a Cincinnati victory, is "And this one belongs to the Reds!" His son Thom Brennaman has joined him as a Reds broadcaster, after having been part of the inaugural broadcast team of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Outside the main entrance is Crosley Terrace, a reference to Crosley Field, with statues of Crosley-era stars Nuxhall, Kluszewski, Robinson and 1930s-40s catcher Ernie Lombardi, a Hall-of-Famer and one of the best-hitting catchers ever, but whose Number 4 has never been retired by the Reds.

Banners for the Reds' 5 World Series wins are hung in the left field corner. They do not hang any other banners, for the Pennants where they lost the World Series, the Division titles where they didn't win the Pennant, or their 1999 Wild Card Playoff in which they lost to the Mets at Riverfront.
The team has a Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum, located on the west side of the park on Main Street. Oddly, the Reds have more players in their team Hall of Fame than any other – in fact, more than any team in the 4 North American major league sports except the Green Bay Packers: 86.

* From the 1869 Red Stockings: The brothers Harry and George Wright (not to be confused with the Wright Brothers from Southern Ohio who invented the airplane in 1903, these Wright Brothers invented professional baseball). They are in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

* From the remainder of the 19th Century: Pitchers Will White and Tony Mullane, 1st basemen John Reilly and Jake Beckley, 2nd baseman John "Bid" McPhee, and center fielder Billy "Dummy" Hoy, a deaf player who was supposedly the inspiration for umpires' hand signals for balls and strikes, and who threw out the first ball at a 1961 World Series game between the Yanks and Reds, at age 99, then the oldest ex-player ever. (Sadly, he didn't quite make it to 100.) McPhee and Beckley are in Cooperstown.

* From early in the 20th Century, but not making it to 1919: Pitcher Frank "Noodles" Hahn, and outfielders Cy Seymour and Bob Ewing.

* From the 1919 World Champions: Team president August Herrmann, center fielder Edd Roush, 1st baseman Jake Daubert, left fielder Raymond "Rube" Bressler, 3rd baseman Henry "Heinie" Groh, shortstop Larry Kopf, and early Cuban pitcher Adolfo "Dolf" Luque. Roush, who is in Cooperstown, was the possessor of the most lauded outfield arm of his era, and lived until 1988 insisting that the Reds would have beaten the Chicago White Sox in that World Series even if the "Black Sox" had played on the level. (He had a case: The Reds won 95 games that season, the White Sox only 88.)

* From between the 1919 and 1939 Pennants: Catcher Eugene "Bubbles" Hargrave, 2nd baseman Hughie Critz, and pitchers Eppa Rixey, Pete Donohue and Charles "Red" Lucas. Rixey is in Cooperstown.

* From the 1939 Pennant winners and the 1940 World Champions: Manager Bill McKechnie, general manager Warren Giles, catcher Ernie Lombardi, 1st baseman Frank McCormick, 2nd baseman Lonny Frey, shortstop Billy Myers, 3rd baseman Billy Werber, left fielder Mike McCormick (who didn't debut until 1940), center fielder Harry Craft, right fielder Ival Goodman, and pitchers Paul Derringer, Johnny Vander Meer (he of the back-to-back no-hitters in 1938) and William "Bucky" Walters. McKechnie, Giles and Lombardi are in Cooperstown.

* From between the 1940 and 1961 Pennants: Pitchers Ewell Blackwell, Brooks Lawrence and Joe Nuxhall, catcher Forrest "Smoky" Burgess, 1st baseman Ted Kluszewski and shortstop Roy McMillan.

* From the 1961 Pennant winners: Manager Fred Hutchinson, 1st baseman Gordy Coleman, 2nd baseman Johnny Temple, shortstop Leo Cardenas, left fielder Jerry Lynch, center fielders Gus Bell and Vada Pinson, right fielders Frank Robinson and Wally Post, and pitchers Jim Maloney, Joey Jay, Jim O'Toole and Bob Purkey. Robinson is in Cooperstown. The next season, Gus Bell became an original Met. His son Buddy and grandson David became big-league stars as well. Each of them had David as their real name.

* From their 1970 and/or 1972 Pennant winners, but not making it to 1975: 1st baseman Lee May, 2nd baseman Tommy Helms and pitcher Wayne Granger.

* From their 1975 and 1976 World Champions: Manager George "Sparky" Anderson, GM Bob Howsam (also responsible for establishing the Denver Broncos), catcher Johnny Bench, 1st basemen Tony Perez and Dan Driessen, 2nd baseman Joe Morgan, shortstop Dave Concepcion, 3rd baseman Pete Rose, left fielder George Foster, center fielder Cesar Geronimo, right fielder Ken Griffey Sr., and pitchers Gary Nolan, Clay Carroll, Don Gullett, Pedro Borbon and Jack Billingham. Anderson, Bench, Perez and Morgan are in Cooperstown, lots of people think Concepcion should be, lots of people thought Foster would be, and Rose would have been if he hadn't broken that rule.

* From their 1979 National League Western Division Champions: Pitchers Tom Seaver and Mario Soto, and 2nd baseman Ron Oester. Seaver, of course, is in Cooperstown.

* From their 1985, '86, '87 and '88 teams that finished 2nd in the NL West, but had no Wild Card berth to take: Cincinnati native right fielder Dave Parker.

* From their 1990 World Champions: Shortstop Barry Larkin, 3rd baseman Chris Sabo, center fielder Eric Davis, and pitchers Tom Browning and Jose Rijo. Larkin is in Cooperstown.

* From since 1990: Center fielder Ken Griffey Jr., elected to Cooperstown this year; and 1st baseman Sean Casey.

Only 1 Reds player was chosen for the 1st All-Star Game in 1933, and while he is in the Hall of Fame, he's better known as a St. Louis Cardinal: Slugging outfielder Charles "Chick" Hafey. Robinson, Rose, Bench, Morgan, Seaver and Griffey were named to The Sporting News' 100 Greatest Baseball Players in 1999. The same year, Rose, Bench and Griffey (then still active and not yet having played for the Reds) were named to the Major League Baseball Hall-Century Team. In 2006, DHL ran its Hometown Heroes poll, and Reds fans chose Rose.

Outside the stadium are statues of Lombardi, Nuxhall, Robinson, Bench and Morgan. The statue of Bench calls him "Baseball’s Greatest Catcher." To turn Sparky Anderson's words from the 1976 World Series about Thurman Munson on their head, Don't embarrass anybody by comparing him to Yogi Berra.
It doesn't mention that Bench hosted The Baseball Bunch
on NBC from 1980 to 1985.

Oddly, there seems to be no mention in the fan-viewable areas of Powel Crosley, who owned the Reds from 1934 until his death in 1961 (before that Pennant season began), and made the Reds' 1930s revival, and perhaps their long-term future in Cincinnati, possible.

Stuff. Clubhouse stores are located all over GABP. The usual items that can be found at a souvenir store can be found there.

With the 1970s nostalgia wave in full flower now, books about the Reds teams of that decade, known as the Big Red Machine, have come out. Tom Adelman's The Long Ball tells of the 1975 season, and how the Reds and the Boston Red Sox went through them on their way to their meeting in an epic World Series. There's The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-Stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, by Joe Posnanski; and The 1976 Cincinnati Reds: Last Hurrah for the Big Red Machine, by Doug Feldmann, a tribute to the only team ever to go undefeated in a baseball postseason of more than 1 round (7-0; the 1999 Yankees went 11-1).

There's also Before the Machine: The Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Reds by Mark J. Schmetzer and Greg Rhodes, issued on the 50th Anniversary of that team. A contemporary book about that team, Pennant Race, was written by one of their pitchers, Jim Brosnan, who had previously written about a less successful season with the St. Louis Cardinals in The Long Season. Jim Bouton's Ball Four was clearly influenced by Brosnan, who died a few weeks ago.

Available DVDs include Cincinnati Reds Memories, the official World Series highlight films of 1975, 1976 and 1990 (the 1919 and 1940 titles preceded official films), and a box set of the 1975 Series, including every Series game (yes, including the legendary Game 6 that the Red Sox lost) and a few bonuses from that era.

During the Game. A recent Thrillist article on "Baseball's Most Intolerable Fans" ranked Reds fans 11th, putting them not quite in the Top 10 of the most intolerable. Though I suspect they might not be even that bad if it weren't for their still being too willing to defend the indefensible Pete Rose.

Because of their Midwest/Heartland image, Reds fans like a "family atmosphere." You won't hear much dirty language at a Reds game. And you do not have to worry about wearing Met gear in Great American Ball Park. Just because the sight of the Reds' "Wishbone C" logo still makes Met fans remember the 1973 NLCS fight that Rose picked with the far smaller Bud Harrelson doesn't make Reds fans hate the Mets. Though they do tend to not like New York, for reasons beyond baseball.

But unless you're wearing Cleveland Browns gear to a Cincinnati Bengals game, University of Michigan gear to an Ohio State University sporting event, or gear of either side of the local college basketball rivalry -- the University of Cincinnati or Xavier University -- to the other school's home game, people from Cincinnati aren't going to go out of their way to be obnoxious to you, let alone violent.

This season, the Reds are wearing patches in memory of Bernie Stowe, who died this past February at age 80. He first worked for the Reds in 1947, as a 12-year-old batboy, and became a clubhouse attendant and eventually equipment manager, retiring after the 2013 season.

The Reds made the Wednesday a Senior Citizens Special. Other than that, they haven't made these games a promotion. No caps, T-shirts, bobbleheads, towels, etc. are being given away. Nor are there any anniversary commemorations on these days. And they don't have a regular National Anthem singer, instead holding auditions for it.

The Reds don't have any notable in-park fans, although Harry Thobe, a stonemason from nearby Oxford, Ohio who showed up at Crosley Field wearing a straw hat and carrying a megaphone. He was sort of a Midwestern version of the Dodgers' Hilda Chester, the Yankees' Freddy Sez or the Mets' Cow-Bell Man.
Nor do they have many celebrity fans, although George Clooney is one, coming from Lexington, Kentucky, 83 miles away. True, that's about as close as Northeast Philadelphia is to Midtown Manhattan, but the Reds are still the closest major-league team, unless (as is incredibly unlikely) Louisville gets back into the majors for the first time since 1899.

The Reds were one of the first teams to have a mascot, Mr. Red. He served as the team's logo for a long time before becoming a man in a costume on the field. There is a retro version called Mr. Redlegs, which matches the team's logo from the 1950s when, due to McCarthyism, being called "Reds" was considered un-American. This version had a 19th Century-style mustache, reminding people that Cincinnati was the birthplace of professional baseball (though, again, this Reds team, which began in 1882, is not the same team as the 1869 one). A female mascot, Rosie Red, and a furry red… thing called Gapper have joined Mr. Red.
During the 7th Inning Stretch, following "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," the Reds play "Twist and Shout" -- the Beatles' version, possibly in honor of their 1966 concert at Crosley. This is a little odd, since the vocal group that originated the song, the Isley Brothers, were from Cincinnati. Their postgame victory song is "Unstoppable" by Foxy Shazam.

James Brown and some other big-time musicians were also associated with Cincy-based record companies. And George's aunt Rosemary Clooney got her start there as well. But Cincinnati is simply not a very hip town – and those rural natives of Southern Ohio, Northern Kentucky, Southeastern Indiana and Western West Virginia like it that way. Mark Twain said in the 1880s that if the world came to an end, it would take Cincinnati 20 years to notice.

After the Game. Downtown should be safe, but stay downtown. Cincinnati does have a bit of a crime problem. In 2001, there was a race riot there, something rarely seen in America since the 1960s until the recent rash of police brutality protests in cities like St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland and Dallas.

Across Joe Nuxhall Way, to the west of the Ball Park, are Holy Grail Tavern & Grill, and Moerlein Lager House. A little further down, on East Freedom Way at Walnut Street, is the Yard House. For anything else, you'll have to walk north, and cross over Interstate 71, the Fort Washington Way, into downtown Cincinnati proper.

I can find no references to well-known postgame bars, or to places where New Yorkers gather in or around Cincinnati. The sites that usually list bars for football fans in exile don't seem to have references to where Yankees, Mets, Giants or Jets fans go when they live near Cincy. In contrast, Phebe's, at 359 Bowery at East 4th Street, is New York's home for fans of the Cincinnati Reds and Bengals.

If you visit Cincinnati during the European soccer season, which is now underway, the main "football pub" in town is Rhinehaus, 119 E. 12th Street and Clay Street, in the neighborhood called Over-The-Rhine, or OTR, just north of downtown. Bus 19, or Streetcar to Washington Street. 

Sidelights. Cincinnati may have only 2 major league teams now. One of those, the Reds, has usually been respectable, but hasn't won so much as an NLCS game for 26 years. The other, the Bengals, has been a joke for most of the last 20 years, even when they've had good regular seasons. But it's a pretty good sports town, and here's some of the highlights:

* Site of Riverfront Stadium. The home of the Reds from 1970 to 2002 (known as Cinergy Field in its final years) and the NFL's Bengals from 1970 to 1999 was across Main Street from its baseball replacement, bounded also by 2nd Street, Mehring Way and Vine Street.
Here, the Reds reached the postseason 9 times (yes, Mrs. Bueller: "Nine times!"), winning 5 Pennants and 3 World Series. The Bengals made the Playoffs here 7 times, winning the AFC Championship in 1981 (beating the San Diego Chargers in what is officially listed as the coldest game in NFL history) and 1988 (on both occasions, going on to lose the Super Bowl to the San Francisco 49ers). Riverfront was a pioneer in artificial turf, the 1st outdoor stadium in either MLB or the NFL to have it, and the 1st to host either league’s postseason on it.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is now on the site. And just beyond it is the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, opened in 1866 and named for its designer, who used it as the basis for his greatest achievement, the Brooklyn Bridge. The bar and restaurant district on the Covington, Kentucky side of the bridge is known as Roebling Point.

* Paul Brown Stadium. Opening in 2000, and named for the legendary coach of the Cleveland Browns and the founding owner and coach of the Bengals, This 65,000-seat stadium has also hosted the University of Cincinnati (including its entire 2014 home schedule while Nippert Stadium was being renovated, thus the Bengals returning the favor of UC letting them play there in their 1st 2 seasons), Ohio State, and Miami University of Ohio.
It's 4 blocks west of Great American Ball Park, and 2 blocks west of where Riverfront Stadium was. Officially, the address is 1 Paul Brown Stadium. It's bounded by 2nd Street, Elm Street, Mehring Way and Central Avenue.

* U.S. Bank Arena. Formerly known as the Riverfront Coliseum, this building went up across Broadway from Riverfront Stadium (and can be seen from Great American Ball Park) in 1975, and has hosted minor league hockey ever since, including the current Cincinnati Cyclones.
The Cincinnati Stingers of the World Hockey Association played here from 1975 to 1979. They reached the Playoffs in 1977 and 1979, but were not invited to join the NHL. Hall-of-Famers Mark Messier and Mike Gartner made their "major league" debuts here, and, as such were named to the WHA All-Time Team.

The University of Cincinnati basketball team played home games here from 1976 to 1987 -- though, contrary to what I had posted in previous years, rivals Xavier University never used it as a home court. It hosted the NCAA's hockey Final Four, a.k.a. the Frozen Four, in 1996. Elvis Presley sang there on March 21, 1976 and, just before his death, on June 25, 1977.

Unfortunately, the arena is best known for the tragic events of December 3, 1979, when 11 fans were killed and 26 others were injured, when fans rushed in for "festival seating" for a concert by The Who. This event was immortalized shortly thereafter in an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, ordinarily one of the funniest situation comedies of its time, and easily the best TV show set in the city.

It's unlikely that Cincinnati will get a new major league team for this arena anytime soon, partly due to its being a typical 1970s arena, with 1 level of concourse for 2 levels of seating, and not enough skyboxes; and partly due to Cincinnati's market size. The metro area would rank 22nd in population among NBA markets, and 21st in the NHL.

The closest NBA team is the Indiana Pacers, 113 miles to the northwest; the Cleveland Cavaliers are 249 miles to the northeast, the Chicago Bulls 296 miles to the northwest. The closest NHL team, representing the entire State of Ohio (including Cincinnati and Cleveland, normally bitter rivals), is the Columbus Blue Jackets, 107 miles to the northeast; the Detroit Red Wings, 260 miles to the northeast; the Nashville Predators, 274 miles to the southwest; the Pittsburgh Penguins, 288 miles to the notheast; the St. Louis Blues, 350 miles to the west.

* Crosley Field site. Three different ballparks were at a location bounded by Findlay Street, Western Avenue, Liberty Street and Dalton Avenue, a convenient location for teams coming into the city through the Union Terminal: League Park from 1884 to 1901, the elaborate Palace of the Fans from 1902 to 1911, and the 3rd from 1912 to 1970. First named Redland Field, appliance executive Powel Crosley renamed it for himself when he bought the Reds in 1934.
Photo possibly taken during the 1961 World Series,
since the path for the Expressway has been cleared.

Here, the Reds won the Pennant in 1919, 1939, 1940 and 1961, winning the World Series in 1919 and 1940. The Yankees clinched World Series wins here in 1939 and 1961. Bush Stadium, the former home of the Triple-A team in Indianapolis, stood in for it and Comiskey Park in Eight Men Out, the film about the Black Sox scandal.

Best known as the first big-league ballpark with lights, in 1935, it had an infamous incline, a.k.a. the "terrace," that was trouble for left fielders; a building behind left field with an ad for the Superior Towel and Linen Service, nicknamed the Laundry Roof, which was torn down in 1960 to make way for Interstate 75 and a rerouted U.S. Route 52, the Mill Creek Expressway; and a right field bleacher section known as the Sun Deck for day games and the Moon Deck for night games.
The "terrace," and the "laundry roof" before its demolition in 1960

Crosley was also home to an NFL team named the Cincinnati Reds in 1933 and '34. There was also a Cincinnati Celts, pronounced with a hard C unlike the Boston basketball team, that played in the NFL from 1920 to 1923, but they were a traveling team, playing no home games.

The Beatles played there on August 21, 1966, and the Cincinnati Pop Festival was held there on June 13, 1970, featuring Iggy & the Stooges, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, Alice Cooper, Traffic, Bob Seger and Mott the Hoople.
Note the terrace in left field, and the Sun Deck in right field

The park was demolished in 1972. An industrial park now stands on the site, a 15-minute walk from Union Terminal. The Number 27 and 49 buses will get you Linn and Findlay, a 7-block walk (counting I-75) from the site.

* Blue Ash Sports Center. A replica of Crosley Field was built in 1988 in suburban Blue Ash, complete with a few original seats. The field dimensions are the same, including the left-field terrace. The scoreboard shows the correct information (and advertising signs) from the last game, a 5-4 Reds win over the San Francisco Giants on June 24, 1970. The light towers are in the right places.

There is, however, no laundry roof behind left field or Sun Deck behind right field. Edd Roush and Ted Kluszewski are dead, and Frank Robinson and Johnny Bench won't show up -- although Pete Rose might, if you offer him enough money.
Baseball at Crosley
"New Crosley" is the centerpiece of the Blue Ash Sports Center, which also includes 10 other baseball fields and 2 soccer fields. 11540 Grooms Road, 16 miles northeast of Fountain Square, just inside Interstate 275, Cincinnati's "beltway." Reachable by car only

As for the original 1869 Red Stockings, they played at the Union Cricket Club Grounds, a field with a stand for about 4,000 people. The Union Terminal was built on the site, so if you do come into Cincinnati by train, you're already on the birthplace of professional baseball. 1301 Western Avenue. Bus 1 from downtown.

* Nippert Stadium. Home to the University of Cincinnati's football team since 1924, and the original home (1968-69) of the Bengals, this ground has been extensively remodeled, so that it has few of the difficulties of being an old stadium, but also none of the look and atmosphere of one. 99 W. Corry Street, at Backstage Drive, on the UC campus. Number 17 or 19 bus.
Nippert Stadium. To the north, Campus Recreation Hall.
To the east, Fifth Third Arena. To the south,
the Corbett Center for the Performing Arts.
To the west, the student center and the bookstore.

On August 15, 2015, pro soccer came to the Queen City of the Midwest, as Reds owner Carl Lindner founded FC Cincinnati. They use Nippert as their home field, and their manager is John Harkes, a native of Kearny, New Jersey, a mainstay of the U.S. soccer team in the 1980s and '90s, and a star at English club Sheffield Wednesday. They play in the United Soccer League, the 3rd tier of American soccer. For now, the closest Major League Soccer team to Cincinnati is the Columbus Crew, 111 miles from Fountain Square.

* Fifth Third Arena. Formerly the Myrl H. Shoemaker Center, the new home of the UC basketball team is adjacent to Nippert Stadium. It seats 13,176 and opened in 1989. The baseball stadium is also adjacent, and it's named after former Reds owner, cheapskate and Nazi sympathizer Marge Schott. Apparently, the University thought her money was as good as anyone else's. Then again, they also stood by coach Bob Huggins for years, despite his recruiting violations and drunken driving.
* Cintas Center. Opening in 2000, this is the new home of Xavier University basketball. Its tight quarters, seating only 10,250, make it one of the toughest arenas in the country for a visiting team.
And when the Xavier Musketeers and the UC Bearcats play each other, well, let's just say you should pick another game to attend. Since there's no other intracity rivalry of any consequence (unless you count high school football), this game gets the kind of treatment that Duke-North Carolina, Louisville-Kentucky, and English soccer "derbies" get. As the great college football broadcaster Keith Jackson would say, "These two teams just... don't... like each other." 1624 Herald Avenue at Clenay Avenue, on the XU campus. Number 4 bus.
* Cincinnati Gardens. Seating 10,208 people, this is now one of the oldest surviving indoor sports arenas in North America, opening in 1949 and hosting the NBA's Cincinnati Royals from 1957 to 1972. Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas went from here to Hall of Fame careers, although neither won a title with the Royals. (The Big O did so with the 1971 Milwaukee Bucks, Lucas with the 1973 Knicks.) The Royals moved to Kansas City (and, due to the baseball team having the same name, became the Kansas City Kings, and, in 1985, the Sacramento Kings).
A succession of minor league hockey teams has played here, and it has hosted arena football, too. The Gardens played host to the Beatles on August 27, 1964; and to Elvis on November 11, 1971 and June 27, 1973.
This past June 16, the Gardens was bought by the Greater Cincinnati Development Authority, and it will be demolished so that property for "light manufacturing" can be built. 2250 Seymour Avenue at Langdon Farm Road, on the northeast side of town, near the Seymour Plaza, Swifton, and Hillcrest shopping centers. Number 43 bus.

Currently without an NBA team, a recent New York Times article shows basketball allegiances around the country. Since most people in Southern Ohio would rather vote for a Democrat than support a Cleveland-based team, the Cavaliers are not popular here, not even with LeBron James back. The Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Bulls were the top 3 choices in that article, although the Heat have no doubt fallen off dramatically without LeBron.

A recent Business Insider article shows the most popular basketball team in each State. Although the Columbus Blue Jackets, as you might guess, lead Ohio, neighboring Kentucky is led by the Nashville Predators, and neighboring Indiana by the Chicago Blackhawks.

It's 109 miles from downtown Cincinnati to Ohio State, 82 miles to the University of Kentucky, 103 miles to the University of Louisville, and 130 miles to Indiana University. And it's 52 miles from downtown Cincinnati to the University of Dayton, whose 13,435-seat University of Dayton Arena (I know, not a very imaginative name), opened in 1969, has hosted more NCAA Tournament games that any other building: 107. (No Final Four has ever been held in Ohio, and none probably ever will, unless they end up putting a dome on Paul Brown Stadium, FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, or Ohio Stadium in Columbus.)

Elvis sang at the University of Dayton's old Fieldhouse on May 27, 1956, and at its "new" Arena on April 7, 1972; October 6, 1974; and October 26, 1976. He also sang at the Hobart Arena in Troy, 77 miles north of Cincinnati and 23 miles north of Dayton, on November 24, 1956.

The Dayton Triangles were an early pro football team, playing from 1913 to 1929, first in the Ohio League -- winning the title in 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1918 -- and then from 1920 to 1929 in the NFL. They were named for Triangle Park, at the confluence of the Stillwater and Miami Rivers, where they erected a 5,000-seat stadium. The Jim Nichols Tennis Center is now on the site. 2424 Ridge Avenue.

But from 1923 onward, they only won 5 games, as the better players didn't want to go to a city as small as Dayton. (Green Bay, the only surviving small city from the NFL's early days, had... other forms of entertainment to lure players.) Then they became... a New York team, being bought by Bill Dwyer, owner of hockey's New York Americans, moved to Ebbets Field and becoming the NFL version of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Through a convoluted series of transactions, today's Indianapolis Colts are descended from the Dayton Triangles, though not officially recognized as such by the NFL. In other words, if the Colts tried to put up banners saying "World Champions 1913, 1914, 1915, 1918," the NFL wouldn't count it.

* Spring Grove Cemetery. If you're a visiting Met fan, you won't care about this. But if you're a visiting Jet (or Giant) fan and a Yankee Fan, Spring Grove is the final resting place of Yankee Hall-of-Famers Miller Huggins (a Cincinnati native who played for the Reds) and Waite Hoyt (who broadcast for the Reds.) 4521 Spring Grove Avenue. Number 20 bus to Winton Road & Froome Avenue, then a left on Gray Road.

Weeb Ewbank, the only man to coach the Jets to a Super Bowl win, is buried at Oxford Cemetery in Oxford, home to his alma mater, Miami University. (Not the one in Florida -- this Miami came first.) 4385 Oxford Millville Road, about 40 miles northwest of Cincinnati.

Cincinnati isn't a big museum city, but it is a Presidential birthplace, very nearly a Presidential birthplace twice over, and a Presidential burial place. The William Howard Taft National Historic Site, where the 27th President of the United States and the 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was born and lived the first 25 years of his life, is at 2038 Auburn Avenue on the north side of town. The same Number 43 bus that would take you to Cincinnati Gardens would take you there.

The tomb of William Henry Harrison, the 9th President, who famously won the Battle of Tippecanoe (near Lafayette, Indiana and Purdue University) against Indians (not the Cleveland variety) in 1811 and died only a month after becoming President in 1841, is 16 miles west of downtown in North Bend. A 10-minute walk from the Tomb is a house at Symmes & Washington Avenues, where "Old Tippecanoe" lived, and his grandson Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President (1889-93), was born. The Number 50 bus will get you within 2 miles of these sites.

The 1856 Democratic Convention was held at Smith and Nixon's Hall. The Renaissance Cincinnati Downtown Hotel is on the site today. Former Secretary of State James Buchanan was nominated for President, and he won, but his Administration was possibly the most disastrous in the nation's history. 36 E. 4th Street at Walnut Street.

The 1876 Republican Convention was held at Exposition Hall. Ohio's sitting Governor, Rutherford B. Hayes, was nominated for President, and "won" the election in "The Fraud of the Century." But the Hall had a bad roof, and was replaced. Cincinnati Music Hall opened in 1878, and, in 1880, the Democrats held their Convention there, nominating Civil War General Winfield Scott Hancock, who lost an incredibly close race to Congressman James Garfield. Music Hall still hosts concerts. 1241 Elm Street at 14th Street, downtown, across from Washington Park.

As I mentioned, the Underground Railroad Museum is on the site of Riverfront Stadium, between the ballpark and the football stadium. Since Cincinnati was on the north side of a river between the free State of Ohio and the slave State of Kentucky, it was a major point on the Underground Railroad. The Cincinnati Museum Center is on the grounds of the Union Terminal.

The Cincinnati Art Museum is at 953 Eden Park Drive, in Johnston Park. The Taft Museum of Art is closer to downtown, at 316 Pike Street. The Number 1 bus will take you to each of them.

The tallest building in Cincinnati is the Great American Tower at Queen City Square, at 660 feet and opening in 2010. 301 E. 4th Street. It surpassed the Carew Tower, a 574-foot Art Deco building at 441 Vine Street, which had been the tallest in town since 1931. (No, it wasn't named for Baseball Hall-of-Famer Rod Carew. Joseph T. Carew had operated the Mabley & Carew department store on the site.)

The transmission tower seen at the beginning of WKRP in Cincinnati belonged to the city's NBC affiliate, WLWT-Channel 5, even though the show was on CBS. The tower has since been dismantled. The building shown as the home of WKRP and referred to on the show as the Osgood R. Flimm Building is the Cincinnati Enquirer Building at 617 Vine Street, so it was (and remains) a media center in real life.

As far as I can tell, the only other TV show set in Cincinnati has been Harry's Law, starring Kathy Bates as lawyer Harriet "Harry" Korn, which was recently canceled after 2 seasons. There was a series titled John from Cincinnati that ran on HBO in 2007, but it was set in Southern California.

Aside from Eight Men Out (filmed, as I said, in Indianapolis), the best-known movie set in the city was Rain Man. A few other movies had scenes filmed there, including the sports-connected films Summer Catch (the final scene, where Freddie Prinze Jr.'s character makes his big-league debut at GABP and gets taken deep by Ken Griffey Jr. on his very 1st pitch), Seabiscuit and Mr. 3000.

*

Cincinnati calls itself the Queen City of the Midwest, and thinks of itself as a good, solid, family town. Read: They'd rather slit their economic throats and condemn their women to no say in if and when to have a child than vote for a liberal for national or Statewide office. Although they have elected mostly Democratic Mayors including, in 1977, Jerry Springer. (No joke.)

But it's a good sports town, and a Reds game is well worth the trip.

Top 10 Reasons the 1980s Were the Worst Decade of the 20th Century

I grew up in the 1980s. Too bad the Republicans who are around my age still haven't grown up. Even though people who grew up in the 1960s are now old and dealing with the consequences thereof, I still envy them.

As Bill Maher put it, "Your Kennedy was Reagan. Our Kennedy was Kennedy."

And the comparisons don't get any better:

* Our Beatles were Van Halen. Their Beatles were the Beatles.
* Our Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were Jose Canseco and Barry Bonds. Their Mantle and Mays were Mantle and Mays.
* Our Ford Mustang was the Pontiac Trans Am -- and not the Knight Rider version, either. Their Mustang was the Mustang.
* And as dumb as he was, Maxwell Smart will always be cooler than Sam Malone. After all, Agent 86 got Barbara Feldon. Mayday got Kirstie Alley -- you know what she was like then, well, look what happened to her after.

As goofy, as ridiculous, and as depressing as the 1970s were, they were still better than the 1980s.

Compare 1970s G.I. Joe with 1980s G.I. Joe. Seventies Joe was Indiana Jones with a beard, represented by a 12-inch-tall action figure with a Kung Fu Grip. You knew he was a real American hero. Nobody had to tell you that he was. He was such an American hero, he didn't need to prove it by posing with a flag.
Eighties Joe was a bunch of guys blowing shit up, represented by 4-inch action figures. They had to advertise themselves as "a real American hero." And pose with the biggest Star-Spangled Banner they could get their hands on.
The Marines on Iwo Jima, they ain't.

The only way this photo could be more Eighties is if they were wearing neon Spandex (and I'm not sure their uniforms aren't made of Spandex), and if they had big hair (which wouldn't fit under their hats/helmets). You can almost hear the loud, horrible theme song

And how many guys did it take to make the Eighties Joe team? Seventies Joe was the head of "the G.I. Joe Adventure Team," in radio contact with backup, but, essentially, he was one man. He was MacGyver before Richard Dean Anderson was and Indiana Jones before Harrison Ford took that role.

*

I will put aside my usual baseball bias, and I won't say that baseball sucked in the 1980s, even though the Mets won a World Series, were better than the Yankees for a majority of the decade, and, despite actually having Major League Baseball's best record in the decade, the Yankees didn't win a World Series in it, and reached the postseason only twice, ending ignominiously both times. (They had 3 other close calls for the Playoffs.)

The Yankees aside, frankly, baseball was pretty good in the decade. So was basketball. So was hockey. And, competition-wise, the NFL might never have been better, although we are now seeing the poisoned fruit of that time: The first decade of really huge but still fast players resulting in impacts that have left not merely a few, but many players with serious brain damage, resulting in terrible impairments in their 50s.

But the Eighties sucked. They were the worst decade of the 20th Century.

Top 10 Reasons the 1980s Were the Worst Decade of the 20th Century

1. Ronald Reagan. To paraphrase Robert Young's line from 1970s TV commercials, reminding us that he starred as Marcus Welby, M.D.: Ronald Reagan wasn't a great President, but he played one on TV.
Look at what his supporters claim his accomplishments were, and look at the truth. Take it from someone who was around then, and knows (me):

* "He turned the economy around." Bullshit. He brought inflation and interest rates back to earth. But he actually wrecked the economy.

When Reagan became President on January 20, 1981, unemployment was 7.2 percent. Not good, but not terrible. It was still around that for much of the year. Then, in August, he signed his tax cut into law. By January 1982, it was 8.2 percent. By November 1982, it was 10.8 percent, the highest it's been since the Great Depression. Indeed, it didn't even get that high during the 2007-10 George W. Bush recession.

So, in early 1983, Reagan, who knew that he couldn't "save the world from Communism" if he didn't get re-elected, and couldn't get re-elected if he had an unemployment rate that approached the one Herbert Hoover ran with in 1932, did what George H.W. Bush later did in 1990, and what George W. Bush refused to do until 2008: He compromised with the Democratic leaders of Congress, and he raised taxes. That's right: Ronald Reagan raised taxes.

Result? By January 1984, the unemployment rate had dropped below 8 percent. On November 6, 1984, the day Reagan stood for re-election, the rate was 7.2 percent -- the same as it was on November 4, 1980, when he won by saying the economy was bad. But Reagan was wrong, and the Democrats were right: Raising taxes worked.

And yet, unemployment still didn't drop below the rate he inherited until November 1985, near the end of his 5th year. For as long as he was President, it never dropped below 5 percent, which is generally, if erroneously, thought of as "full employment."

Oh yeah: On October 19, 1987, the stock market crashed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22 percent of its value in one day of trading, six and a half hours.

But there was no new recession (at least, not until the savings & loan scandal of 1989 and other causes led to the 1990-93 downturn), because the Federal Reserve Board stepped in. In other words, what really saved Reagan from becoming another Herbert Hoover was... the heavy hand of the federal government.

What else did Reagan do that his supporters love to claim that he did?

* "He won the Cold War." Bullshit. The Cold War was won by Lech Walesa -- who was something that Reagan hated: The leader of a labor union. (Never mind that younger, Democratic Reagan was the President of a union, the Screen Actors Guild.)

On June 12, 1987, Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate -- in front of a crowd half the size of the one JFK addressed at West Berlin's City Hall in 1963 -- and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" On January 20, 1989, Reagan left the Presidency, and the Berlin Wall still stood.

On November 9, 1989, the East German government passed a law that rendered the Wall meaningless. And the only thing Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had to do with it is that he... did absolutely nothing to stop it.

Meanwhile, Reagan signed a trade deal with China. Red China. Reagan strengthened the world's largest Communist country.

What else did Reagan do that his supporters love to claim that he did?

* "He stood up to terrorists." Bullshit. Reagan gave Iran weapons in exchange for money and hostages. Then he used the profits to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. We liberals correctly called them "death squads" at the time, but we can also say they were terrorists.

Then there was his veto of sanctions on the government of South Africa, whose apartheid policies were, in part, terroristic. Congress properly overrode that veto, one of the dents in Reagan's reputation for strength and beating liberals.

And then there was the fact that he sent American money and weapons to the anti-Communist rebels in Afghanistan. These were the guys who became al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Ronald Reagan made Osama bin Laden, as we came to know him, possible.

Conservatives love to talk about "the law of unintended consequences" when they want to show that "throwing money at poor people" actually hurts them; but when it turns "freedom fighters" into 9/11 hijackers, they don't want to hear it.

In other words, if someone else had been President from 1981 to 1988, the Berlin Wall would still have fallen, but the World Trade Center would not have fallen.

And I haven't even gotten to the criminal charges. Just from Iran-Contra, Reagan's Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and 2 National Security Advisors, Bud McFarlane and John Poindexter, were convicted. Secretary of the Interior James Watt, whose paranoia about religion and drugs marked a bridge between the old John Birch Society and the current Tea Party, was convicted. His White House Chief of Staff Michael Deaver and his Press Secretary Lyn Nofziger were convicted. His Attorney General Edwin Meese resigned as part a deal to avoid prosecution.

Ronald Reagan was a disgraceful President.

I mentioned that Bill Maher had compared Reagan with John F. Kennedy. This was on the 50th Anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, November 22, 2013. He even compared the eras, in temperament and fashion as well as in politics:

Can we at least agree that Kennedy was cooler?... Our liberal hero was a smart sexy war hero who said he wanted to go to the Moon! Yours was an old fuddy-duddy who tried to rock denim. Our guy was Don Draper. Yours was Rooster Cogburn...

When they named an airport after Kennedy, flying was sexy and fun... When they named an airport after Reagan, it was purgatory with a food court...

The one reason we looked uglier in the '80's, is because we were uglier. It was when the Baby Boomers, the generation that was supposed to be different, just gave up and sold out completely. Kennedy's time was the time of "Ask not what your country can do for you." Reagan's was the time of "Greed is good."


JFK was far from perfect, but he was a true wit and a sex machine, and he knew how to wear a pair of shades. Reagan was an amiable square in a cowboy hat who had sex with a woman he called "Mommy."
Kennedy was James Bond. Reagan was Matlock. Love him or hate him, we win. Republicans can call Reagan their Kennedy all they want, but it's like calling Miller High Life "the champagne of beers." It's why calling someone your Kennedy will never really cut it, because our Kennedy... is Kennedy.
Yeah, about "Greed is good"...

2. Greed. The Reagan Revolution, a "reverse Robin Hood" movement that (to borrow Al Gore's phrase) taxed the many to enrich the few, sure inspired greed. What Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko said in the 1987 film Wall Street -- filmed before the crash of that October, but released after it, making it the Quiet American or the China Syndrome of the decade -- was this:

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms: Greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A. Thank you very much.
He's a liberal in real life.
I still hate him for marrying Catherine Zeta-Jones.

It was based on something that Ivan Boesky, the Wall Street trader who ended up caught in the decade's insider trading scandal, said in a commencement address at, of all places, the University of California's legendarily liberal main campus in Berkeley in 1986: "I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself... Seek wealth. It's all right." He got a big cheer from those snotnosed schmucks.

Since Reagan was elected Governor of California in 1966, in no small part due to the "Free Speech Movement" at Berkeley of the preceding 2 years, and the antiwar movement that had developed on the campus at the same time, the graduates, some of them surely the kids of Sixties Berkeley grads, cheering Boesky's public lauding of greed may have been Reagan's greatest triumph, at least on a personal basis.

The film's director with Oliver Stone, before he started making period pieces full of lies and conspiracy theories. His intention was to issue a warning. But most people saw Wall Street, and took it as a how-to manual, forgtettinf that Gekko ended up in the federal pen.

The Eighties were the decade that made celebrities out of fictional rich bastards Gekko, J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman on Dallas) and Blake Carrington (John Forsythe on Dynasty); and real ones like Boesky, "junk bond" trader Michael Milken, and an up-and-coming real estate developer named Donald Trump. As if you needed another reason to hate this evil decade.

The Eighties saw the rise of Young Urban Professionals, or YUPs, or Yuppies. Maher was right: The Baby Boomers decided, "Hey, idealism isn't working, so let's cut the lefty crap and start making big money." With their clothes that mimicked, but didn't actually match, the styles of the rich people they thought were classy (but really weren't).

And when you do make that money, you move out to the suburbs, to Westbury or Greenwich, Armonk or Saddle River. Screw the safe Volvos: Buy a BMW (or "Beemer"), and buy a bumper sticker that sums up your driving philosophy: "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do own the whole damn road."
Did you think I was joking? These things actually existed.

And when the time comes that you've got enough money to spend on kids, and you're ready to toss aside The Pill, send your little brats to the best private school in the county, rather than the suburban public school that was good enough for you.

Indeed, when the ex-Hippies became Yuppies, they crashed the economy 4 times (1981, 1990, 2001 and 2008 (UPDATE: add a 5th time, 2020)), went back to doing whatever they could to ruin the environment, and gave us MTV, "reality" TV, trash movies, "Me Too moments," a renewed "War On Drugs" that was really a war on poor nonwhite people, and another generation of a conservative South messing up our elections.

And of the people who stayed true to their ideals, it seems as though half of them gave up: They really did, in a way that LSD guru Dr. Timothy Leary didn't envision when he lectured us, "Turn on, tune in, and drop out." They stayed home when it really mattered.

As comedian George Carlin, born in 1937 so he was older than the "Baby Boomers," born between 1946 and 1964 put it:

These people were given everything. Everything was handed to them, and they took it all. Took it all. Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. And they stayed loaded for twenty years, and had a free ride. But now, they're staring down the barrel of middle-age burn-out, and they don't like it.

They don't like it, so they've turned self-righteous, and they want to make things hard on younger people. They tell them to abstain from sex, say no to drugs. As for the rock-n-roll, they sold that for television commercials a long time ago, so they could buy pasta-machines and Stairmasters and soybean-futures.

You know something? They're cold, bloodless people. It's in their slogans. It's in their rhetoric. "No pain, no gain." "Just do it." "Life is short, play hard." "Shit happens, deal with it." "Get a life." These people went from "Do your own thing" to "Just say no." They went from "Love is all you need" to "Whoever winds up with the most toys wins." And they went from cocaine to rogaine.

And you know something? They're still counting grams, only now it's fat grams. And the worst of it is, the rest of us have to watch these commercials on TV for Levi's loose-fitting jeans, and fat-ass Docker pants, because these degenerate yuppie boomer cocksuckers couldn't keep their hands off the croissants and the Häagen-Dazs. And their big fat asses have spread all over, and they have to wear fat-ass Docker pants. Fuck these Boomers! Fuck these Yuppies! And fuck everybody, now that I think about it!

For the record: George, who discovered the hard way that "The purpose of cocaine is to run out of it," went bald, and never got a hairpiece or rogaine or any other treatment for it.

I mentioned MTV:

3. MTV. There were music videos before MTV debuted on August 1, 1981. Sometimes, they were called "promotional films." Before that, in the 1940s, they were called "soundies," and would be shown with movie theaters' newsreels or in jukeboxes containing small film projectors.

But MTV, whether knowingly or not, promoted Marshall McLuhan's idea that "The medium is the message." Suddenly, the visual meant more than anything else. Never mind whether the lyrics, the voices, or the playing of the instruments sounded good: Did the performance look good? (Most of the time, my answer was, "Not to me, but it sure did to a bunch of people with no taste.")

Oddly, some already-established performers -- including David Bowie, Elton John, Michael Jackson, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen -- didn't need videos to become famous and respected, yet ended up making great videos. Even the sappiest of disco performers didn't need videos: They just needed to go on American Bandstand, The Midnight Special, Soul Train or Dance Fever, and do their stuff.

Disco sucked, and polluted the airwaves in the Seventies, but it was better than the synthesizer-driven, wouldn't-be-on-the-radio-if-not-for-MTV crap of the Eighties. Duran Duran were crap, but teenage girls loved the way they looked, and so they became huge.
If you'd never heard of these guys, and had to guess
how they sounded, your guess might well be, 
"Like a bunch of twats." And you would be right.

If Bruce Springsteen looked like Jon Bon Jovi, he would have been as big as Elvis Presley; if Bon Jovi looked like Springsteen, we'd have never heard of him. The distance between them is a lot more than the 14 miles of U.S. Route 9 between Springsteen's Freehold and Bon Jovi's Sayreville.

Or, to put it another way: Susan Boyle is 3 years younger than Madonna. If Susan looked like Madonna, she might have become famous at the same time; but if Madonna looked like Susan, she would never have become famous.

Think about it. Doris Day had a hit record in 1942, when she was 20. Teresa Brewer had a hit record in 1950, at 19. Connie Francis had a hit record in 1958, at 19. Lesley Gore had a hit record in 1963, at 16. Ronnie Spector had also had a hit record in 1963, at 20. All of these women, at those respective times, were attractive, but they didn't need to play off that, because they had talent.

Madonna's 1st hit came in 1982, when she was 24. Why not sooner? Was it because she was not attractive enough? No, it was because MTV allowed her to overcome her comparatively lower level of singing and writing talent.
She could stare, she could dance, she could writhe.
But she couldn't sing or write a song worth a damn.
But it was the Eighties, so no one cared.

4. Synth-Pop. Even 1960s and '70s music icons got watered down. Neil Young refused to get beaten down by it. So did Bruce and Billy. Elton managed to avoid it (mostly). But Paul McCartney's descent into schmaltz was completed. Aretha Franklin recorded a lot of songs that were hardly worthy of her.

Even the biggest musical star of the decade, 1970s holdover Michael Jackson, I'm sorry, I realize that this will be blasphemy to some of you, but his best work was already behind him. Thriller (released on November 30, 1982) was not as good as Off the Wall (1979) or his early Jackson 5 material (1969-71). Not to mention that Pepsi commercial accident (January 27, 1984) has been postulated as the reason his life went downhill.

Far be it from me to speak ill of the recently dead, but I was never a Prince fan. Even if his in-your-face sex themes weren't too much for me, then or now, I just didn't like the sound of his music. And Madonna... Never mind the sexual themes, it was her music that was obscene. So much so that it was her 1987 chart-topper "Open Your Heart" that made me give up on current music in high school, and turn my FM radio dial from 100.3, New York Top 40 station Z100, to the next station over, 101.1, oldies station CBS-FM, and allowed me to rediscover past music.

Today, nearly 30 years later, CBS-FM is playing Eighties music. It's "oldies." Excuse me while I puke.

5. Hair Metal. A bunch of guys thought they could be as good as Led Zeppelin if they played high piercing guitars, screamed their vocals, bared their chests, wore Spandex tights, and used enough AquaNet to personally kill the ozone layer. And sometimes even wore makeup. They sounded macho as hell, but the look they achieved suggested they were trying to turn on teenagers of both sexes.

Hint: Led Zep did not wear Spandex or use AquaNet. And they could actually play their instruments well.

Def Leppard. Motley Crue. Poison. Warrant. It seemed to get progressively worse and more ridiculous. This is what happens when ego and MTV combine to make the quality of the music irrelevant.

Thank God for Neil Young and his 1989 album Freedom. It didn't kill hair metal -- more often, Nirvana is given that credit -- but Neil dealt it a mortal blow. As somebody I saw online said of the lead single of that album, the mighty, anti-Republican, substantive opus "Rockin' In the Free World": "To me it was a signpost putting the death knell on a lousy decade of music IMO. End of 1989 couldn't come fast enough."

6. Hair and Clothes. Bill Maher again: "Was there ever a more garish decade than the Eighties? Neon clothing, big hair, spandex, blazers with shoulderpads... for men?" 

Don't take my word for it, or Maher's. We started out with a natural extension of the '70s, with the Magnum, P.I. look of Tom Selleck.
So far, not particularly offensive.

But then came the "wifebeater" look, which did more to damage the perception of Italian-Americans than 100 Mob movies could have done.
Yo, Sly.

Tracksuits became regular walking-around wear. This was a preferred fashion of both middle-class jerks in America and soccer hooligans in England.
The guy in the blue one reminds me of
Richard Kline as skeezy used-car salesman
Larry Dallas on Three's Company.

Then came the Yuppie look.
Shut up, Wesley. You too, Samwise.

Then came the Miami Vice look. Pastels. "No earth tones."
"Baby, you're goin' to prison for 20 years.
But if you rat out your boyfriend and suck my cock,
I'll see that you get a suspended sentence."

Maher admitted it himself: "I tried to find a good picture of myself in the Eighties. It doesn't exist!"
On Late Night with David Letterman, July 22, 1986

Women's fashion was no better. Don't wear this unless you can pull off the Joan Collins Dynasty attitude. Being as hot as she was (and she was already 48 when she started on that show) won't help you unless you can match her Alexisness. (Hint: You can't.)
"I could ask, 'Whatta you lookin' at?' like an Italian girl.
I don't have to. I know what you're looking at, darling."

It's okay to like Cyndi Lauper's music. But her clothes, oy vey.
By mid-1984, she was not so unusual.

Then came the Yup-ettes. Yes, that big thing (bigger than the shoulder pads) is the late 1980s version of a mobile phone.
The hair doesn't help.

Don't even get me started on the hair. The "A Flock of Seagulls" hairstyle recently made a comeback: Donald Trump may be the only guy still famous in the 2010s whose hair looked better in the 1980s.
Pictured: Not Donald Trump.

Seriously. Here's Hillary Clinton with her husband in 1986.
The occasion was the National Governors' Conference at the White House, and Bill was about to be elected Governor of Arkansas for the 3rd time. And, by Hillary's standards before she became First Lady, this was a good look. It had to be: It was a formal occasion.

But here's Donald Trump and his wife in 1986.
That's Ivana. Melania would have been 16 at the time.
In other words, just right for Donald.

See? Today, even though she's old, Hillary looks a lot better than she did then -- and Donald should have stuck with his '80s look. In '86, he actually looked like the man he now claims to be: A man competent enough to fix big problems, and successful enough to back up his claims. Now, he just looks like... a guy having his midlife crisis at age 70.

7. Cars. As I said in my piece "Top 10 Myths About the 1950s," when you think of 1950s cars, you think of big bastard things with tailfins -- full-figured, like actresses And Russell, Mariah Monroe or Sophia Loren. When you think of 1960s cars, you think of sporty little numbers, the vehicular equivalent of Twiggy, the decade's top fashion model. When you think of cars in the late 1960s or the early 1970s, you think of larger vee-hicles, "muscle cars," healthy and solid like pinups Raquel Welch and Cheryl Tiegs.

But the era of comparing cars to celebrity women was already coming to a close. In 1970, AMC (American Motors Corporation) began producing the flat-ended Gremlin. In 1971, Ford began producing the Pinto, with its built-in explodiness.

In 1972, Honda began producing the Civic. In 1974, America met the Toyota Corolla. In 1975, AMC introduced a a dinky little thing even dinkier than the Gremlin, the round-ended Pacer. In 1976, Chevrolet introduced the Chevette. You knew a TV game show was lame if the "A new car!!!!" it awarded was a Chevy Chevette.

But the cars of the 1980s were worse. Was there a more Eighties car than the IROC-Z edition of the Chevrolet Camaro?
Stick a hair metal singer wearing a Reagan campaign button in there,
and it might be the most Eighties picture ever.

Actually, there may have been: The Yuppiemobile itself, the BMW 325i.
Aside from when the Dodgers and Giants were moved,
or maybe JFK vs. Nixon, IROC vs. Beemer may have
been the original "East Coast vs. West Coast feud."

Of course, in Yuppie couples, his car was the Beemer, because male ego. Hers, since she might have had to take the rugrats somewhere, was the pinnacle of automotive safety, the Volvo.
Ford's Escort and Taurus weren't so bad. And the introduction of minivans helped. But the most fondly-remembered car of the decade is the 1981 DMC-12. That's "DeLorean Motor Corporation." And, let's face it, the DeLorean may have been the 2nd-biggest marketing bust of the decade, behind New Coke. (Unless you're one of these people who thinks New Coke was designed to make people nostalgic for Classic Coke, and thus turn away from Pepsi, for whom the Eighties were a golden decade.)

Hell, I didn't even need a caption for this one. It was provided for me. I ask you: Would anybody now think of the DeLorean as anything but laughable if it wasn't for its being turned into a time machine in Back to the Future?
Speaking of movies...

8. Movie Heroes. Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as Dr. Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future films. Tom Cruise as Lt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun. Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (admittedly, a holdover from the '70s). Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones (admittedly, a character set in the 1930s). Detective John McClane in the Die Hard films.

Sylvester Stallone as both Rocky Balboa (admittedly, a holdover from the '70s) and John Rambo (though his struggle is based in the '60s, he's an '80s character). Mel Gibson as both Max Rockatansky in the Mad Max films and Sergeant Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon films. Chuck Norris in pretty much every movie he was in. Arnold Schwarzenegger in pretty much every movie he was in (even if his Terminator turned into a hero, or at least a protector, in the '90s). 1
"I'll be back. This shit won't."

These guys range from, at best, well-meaning bumblers (Marty and Doc, Rocky) to anti-heroes who specialize in, as I put it in my mention of 1980s G.I. Joe, blowing shit up.
"Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!"

And there was a difference: The "anti-heroes" of the '70s, guys played by Paul Newman, James Caan, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Richard Roundtree as John Shaft (just so you know it wasn't all white guys), Pam Grier as Coffy and Foxy Brown (just so you know it wasn't all guys), Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes in Chinatown and Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Eastwood as Dirty Harry, you saw them advertised as rebels, as imperfect guys who you could still root for.

But in the '80s? It was "Let Reagan be Reagan," and "Let Harry be Dirty." Harry, Rambo, Riggs, McClane, Ahnold and the rest could blow shit up and have crazy car chases, causing all kinds of damage that really wasn't necessary; and kill indiscriminately, including guys who were mere henchmen and didn't really deserve to die.

And movie audiences loved it. It was a "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" idea.
He was no longer interested in whether you felt lucky.
He was giving you a direct order, punk:
"Go ahead. Make my day."

Ironically, the James Bond movies moved away from this. With Roger Moore, the gadgets and plots got sillier after his best film, The Spy Who Loved Me, in 1977: Moonraker in 1979, For Your Eyes Only was a step back toward more realistic stuff in 1981, then came Octopussy in 1983 and A View to a Kill in 1985. But then he was replaced by Timothy Dalton, and the tide was turned with The Living Daylights in 1987 and Licence to Kill in 1989.

But Bond was an anomaly. Even the Superman movies with Christopher Reeve got progressively louder, cheesier, and more destructive -- the Eighties "triple threat." And, of course, with a nod to Frank Miller's comic books, when the Tim Burton version of Batman premiered in 1989, it was obvious that Adam West's 1960s idea of the Caped Crusader -- and the Super Friends cartoon version as a takeoff on it, with Olan Soule voicing Batman and Casey Kasem voicing Robin -- was history.

The '60s were over, and no one wanted a lesson in morality. The '70s were over, and no one wanted "complicated" heroes. We wanted heroes, the kind of guys who were willing to kill motherfuckers and blow shit up for America and Jesus. We wanted the kind of guys who would have made John Wayne jump out of his coffin, raise his fist in the air, and yell, "Fuck, yeah!"

I can think of no bigger difference between '70s pop culture and '80s pop culture than these 2 quotes, from the same actor, who was also the screenwriter both times (albeit with help the 2nd time from, yes, James Cameron):

* In 1976, playing Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone tells his girlfriend Adrian Pennino, played by Talia Shire, "It really don't matter if I lose this fight. It really don't matter if this guy opens my head, either. 'Cause all I wanna do is go the distance. Nobody's ever gone the distance with Creed, and if I can go that distance, you see, and that bell rings, and I'm still standin', I'm gonna know, for the first time in my life, see, that I weren't just another bum from the neighborhood."

And he does go the distance. And he loses only by a split decision. And he wins the rematch. In the 1970s, it was okay to say, "If, at first, you don't succeed, try, try again."

* In 1985, Sly, playing John Rambo, asked his former commanding officer, Sam Trautman, played by Richard Crenna, "Do we get to win this time?" As it turned out, the answer was, "No, but I'm gonna turn it into a yes."

Cartoons reflected this. It wasn't just G.I. Joe that had loud, even metal music and lots of explosions. He-Man looked like a metal-inspired hero, even though he was a Superman-style sunny optimist and "boy scout." The Thundercats wouldn't have looked out of place onstage on the Monsters of Rock tour. And while they didn't look metal -- they didn't even have hair -- the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sure talked the talk, dude.

Even comedy reflected this. The days of the fun, rebellious comedy of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Freddie Prinze were over. By the end of the '80s, the 2 leading standup comics in America were both loud, profane and misogynistic: Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay.
His real name is Andrew Clay Silverstein.
He was the kind of Brooklyn Jewish (or Italian) kid
the Beastie Boys were mocking in that song,
but people accepted the joke as reality.

Comedian Artie Lange said that "political correctness" ended (or, at least, long interrupted) the comedy careers of Clay and Eddie Murphy. Kinison died in 1992 -- ironically, in a crash caused by a drunk driver after he had gotten sober himself -- and Lange added that he "died at just the right time, 'cause no one was going to tolerate what he was saying anymore, either."
I'm not so sure: Lange -- born at the same hospital I was, St. Barnabas in Livingston, New Jersey, just 2 years earlier, and raised in nearby Union in the '70s and '80s while I was being raised 25 miles away in East Brunswick, still within the New York media market -- became famous as a result of appearing on The Howard Stern Show, and Stern, the king of the politically incorrect slimeballs, got more popular than ever in the mid-1990s, more popular than Clay or Kinison ever were.

With all this shit going on -- bad economics, bad social policy, bad foreign policy, bad music, bad cars, bad clothes, bad hair, bad movies, bad comedy -- I'm not surprised that America's drug problem was worse than ever before:

9. Drugs. Say it the way Carlin, who knew whereof he spoke, said it on his 1972 album FM & AM: "Druuuuuuuugs!" This category sort-of ties into the last one, because the defining movie from the 1980s might well be the remake of Scarface.

What's that? You didn't know Scarface was a remake? I suppose that's part of the problem. Don't blame yourself if you didn't know. In the case of the ending, and only of the ending, the remake was an improvement:

* In 1932, Tony Camonte, an Italian-American hood played by Paul Muni (who was Jewish, not Italian) as an obvious copy of Al Capone (whose nickname was Scarface), sees his alcohol bootlegging and protection rackets collapse around him. Cornered by the cops, he takes the coward's way out: He begs them not to kill him, then makes a run for it, and is shot, dying underneath a neon sign he could once see from his apartment, inspiring him: A travel agency's ad saying, "THE WORLD IS YOURS."

* In 1983, Tony Montana, a Cuban ex-con played by Al Pacino (who is Italian, not Cuban), goes down fighting, attempting to defend his crumbling cocaine empire, before falling in front of a fountain with the same inscription.
Had he long blond hair doused with AquaNet,
and had the jacket been pastel with shoulder pads,
this might be the most '80s photo of all.

The 1980s was the decade when cocaine was turned into crack, and it became cheap for the first time. You no longer had to have gobs of money to get it. But it turned the urban crime problem from horrible to absolutely catastrophic. Huge chunks of cities became absolute no-go zones for fear of drug-induced violence. Unless you needed a fix. Then you didn't give a shit. Your chances of dying soon anyway were pretty good.
And it was a gateway to other drugs. Including heroin. By the mid-1990s, treatment programs, President Bill Clinton's crime bill, other anti-crime measures, and urban renewal would turn New York and many other cities around. But in the 1980s, it was not easy to take a walk anywhere in a city and not see at least one dirty needle.

Which is a segue into my last reason:

10. AIDS -- and How Mainstream America Reacted To It. At first, the disease first clinically recorded in 1981 was called "The 4H Disease" -- not because of anything to do with the agricultural organization 4-H, but because it seemed to be affecting homosexuals, heroin users, hemophiliacs and Haitians.

But the media began calling it "GRID": Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. By September 1982, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) publicly released the name "AIDS," for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (the virus causing it was later named "HIV" for Human Immunodeficiency Virus), it was already in the public consciousness as "gay cancer."

As if hateful people needed another reason to be bigoted toward gay men. (It didn't seem to affect lesbians at the time.) The jokes were cruel: "What do you call a gay in a wheelchair? 'Rolaids!'" Ministers such as Pat Robertson called AIDS "God's judgement on homosexuals."

Meanwhile, there were people trying to raise awareness of the disease, and raise money to fight it. The sufferers seemed prematurely aged, their hair going gray or falling out entirely. Since AIDS seemed to particularly allow lung disease, pneumonia and breathing difficulty was common, making the victims much weaker than they should have been. Activists were saying things like, "I'm tired of seeing 30-year-old men with canes!"

On July 25, 1985, actor Rock Hudson announced that he had AIDS. He died the following October 2. His image as a great actor and a great-looking guy was shattered: Now, he was just another gay man who got AIDS and died. (To this day, there are people who knew him who say they didn't know he was gay, and others who say they did, but kept his secret. But both groups agree that he was a terrific guy.) When Liberace died from the disease on February 4, 1987, the reaction was not one of surprise: His being gay was one of the worst-kept secrets in show business.

"Flamboyant." What's the homophobia
equivalent of a "dog whistle"?

Once, gay men were laughed at, or, worse, viewed as moral degenerates. The gay rights movement that went from dormant to open after the Stonewall Riot of 1969, and expanded in the 1970s, suffered a major blow from "the AIDS crisis": Now, gay men, or anyone suspected of having AIDS, even incorrectly, were treated as pariahs, because people thought these people were spreading the disease. Most people weren't willing to accept, or simply didn't understand, that it was not a disease you could get unless you received tainted blood or tainted sexual contact.

Three people changed the perception of the disease. In 1985, a 13-year-old boy named Ryan White, who contracted the disease through a blood transfusion necessary due to his hemophilia, was denied the right to be readmitted to his Indiana public school after it was revealed that he had AIDS.

In 1988, he spoke before the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic. Infamously, Reagan never even mentioned AIDS in public until the previous year, even though Hudson had been a Hollywood friend of his and Nancy's. Ryan died on April 8, 1990, only 18 years old.
In its November 1990 issue, Life magazine published a photo by Therese Frare of David Kirby, a gay rights activist in Ohio, shortly before his death on the preceding May 5, at age 32, surrounded by his grieving family. It became known as "the photo that changed the face of AIDS."
And then, on November 7, 1991, basketball superstar Earvin "Magic" Johnson announced he was retiring due to having contracted HIV. The argument that AIDS was "a gay disease" was shattered: Everyone knew Magic was straight. The only people who were saying, "Well, he has AIDS, so he must be a (slur word)" were just being ignorant. (He didn't have AIDS, either: He had HIV, which is nearly always a precursor to AIDS.)
I've said in the predecessor posts that what we perceive as these "decades" don't begin on January 1, (year ending in zero) and end on December 31, (year ending in nine). "The Eighties," effectively, began with Reagan's election on November 4, 1980, as things in 1980 like the Iran Hostage Crisis and the Olympic hockey win over the Soviets were, culturally, more 1970s events.

Since the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91 hit so many of the Eighties "buttons" (noise, explosions, nationalism, killing nonwhite people), I say "The Eighties" didn't really end, and "The Nineties" didn't really begin, until November 7, 1991, when Magic made his announcement. Within days, Governor Clinton announced his campaign for President, and people began to realize that the Persian Gulf War hadn't ended the recession.

Magic would make comebacks for the 1992 NBA All-Star Game, the 1992 Olympics, and again briefly in the 1996 season. Someone wrote during the Olympics, during the fuss over the U.S. "Dream Team," that, "The world was reaching out to touch a man who is HIV-positive."

The day after the announcement, Magic appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show, and Arsenio told him that the disease was going to be beaten, "because we want you to live forever." Shortly thereafter, Magic appeared as member of the court of an Egyptian pharaoh played by Eddie Murphy, in the video for Michael Jackson's song "Remember the Time." It was a ridiculous video, but, hey, you only live once, right? Arsenio said, "I hope Magic lives a long time, so that, years from now, we can say, 'Hey, Magic: Remember the time?'"

In late 1999, Rick Reilly wrote in Sports Illustrated, "Joe DiMaggio is dead. Wilt Chamberlain is dead. Walter Payton is dead. Payne Stewart is dead. And Magic Johnson is alive." That year, DiMaggio had died at age 84 from lung cancer. Understandable. Chamberlain had died at 63. A shock, but most people didn't know he'd had heart trouble for some time. Payton had died at 45. Sad, but he had publicly mentioned that he had cancer, so it wasn't a surprise. Stewart had died at 42 in a plane crash. Shocking, but plane crashes do happen. It wasn't hard to understand.

But it had been 7 years since Magic's announcement of a disease that, at the time, had been publicly understood to be a death sentence. And yet, advancements had made it possible for him to still be alive.

In 2009, Michael Jackson died. In 2016, Magic Johnson is still alive. Indeed, the joke was that he was the only man who had HIV and gained weight.
Magic Johnson, now the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers,
at Dodger Stadium this past April 15. He is now 57 years old,
and says he feels great. I have no reason to doubt this.

Ryan White's battle was in the latter half of the 1980s, and showed that an innocent child could suffer from AIDS. David Kirby's photo was in 1990, and showed that AIDS victims were human beings, many with families who hadn't abandoned them or ostracized them. Magic Johnson's announcement was in 1991, and showed that a promiscuously heterosexual man could get AIDS -- from a woman. This was all either late in the 1980s or immediately after.

Eventually, people began to see that women were also suffering from AIDS -- and not secondhand, as the relatives, wives or girlfriends of men with the disease, but firsthand. In the 1995 film Boys On the Side, Mary-Louise Parker played an AIDS victim, saying that it wasn't fair that you could die as a result of making love.

And it was true: Most sexually-transmitted diseases, such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes and syphilis, while nasty, can be treated, even (in most cases) cured, and you won't die. Before the age of AZT and "triple cocktails," AIDS meant you were going to die, and it was going to be soon enough that you weren't going to be able to do all the things you wanted to do, but it was going to be long enough to be horribly painful and miserable. And it could happen if you "did it" just one time.

So don't preach to me about God and how "Jesus loves you" and then call AIDS "God's judgment." Nothing that any of these people did made them deserve it. Look at all the horrible people from 1980 onward who died from something other than AIDS. Osama bin Laden. Slobodan Milosevic. Saddam Hussein. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Timothy McVeigh.

Vladimir Putin, notoriously anti-gay dictator, is still alive. And so is Pat Robertson, at age 86.

Magic Johnson, you have given the world so much, through your athletic performances, through your businesses (he really is what the rich claim to be, a "job creator"), and your charity. You owe the world nothing more. But I do ask one more thing of you: Outlive Pat Robertson.

John Cardinal O'Connor, the Archbishop of New York from 1984 until his death in 2000, was a cultural conservative who preached against the gay lifestyle, and the condom distribution that has gone a long way toward preventing the further spread of HIV. But he practiced what he preached: He ordered the Archdiocese to open the 1st AIDS-specializing clinic in the State of New York. He viewed himself as a moral crusader, but he also saw ministering to the sick and the dying as part of that moral crusade. He saw all people as sinners, and also as human beings.

If more conservatives were like John O'Connor than like Pat Robertson, the world would be a better place.

That could have made the 1980s a better decade -- instead of the worst decade of the 20th Century.

You think the 1910s were worse, because of racism, World War I, and the Spanish Flu Epidemic? You think the 1930s were worse, because of racism, the Great Depression, and fascism? You think the 1940s were worse, because of racism, World War II and the Red Scare? If so, you have good points to make on those scores.

But by the 1980s, having already been through those decades, and the reforms of the 1960s and the 1970s, we should have known better.

But in the 1980s, many people still didn't know better. Worse, many others did, but chose to ignore what they had come to know, because selfishness. The Eighties, not the Seventies, were "The Me Decade."

Today, there are people who would like to go back to that decade. The decade of all the things I mentioned in this post. And the attempts to assassinate Reagan and Pope John Paul II, and the successful ones on Anwar Sadat and Olof Palme.

And the 1981 baseball strike. And the Beirut barracks bombing. And the Ethiopian famine (which did, however, inspire Band Aid and Live Aid). And the hijackings of TWA Flight 847 and the MS Achille Lauro, and the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103. And the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. (To be fair, Reagan's speech about the tragedy that night was his finest hour.)

And the Howard Beach murder. And the televangelism scandals. And the Hillsborough Disaster that killed 96 people in a stadium in Sheffield, and the Loma Prieta Earthquake that killed 63 people in the Bay Area (but, incredibly, no one in the stadium in San Francisco). And the Tienanmen Square Massacre.

You can take your good sports memories, your good entertainment memories, the rise of personal computers and portable phones, the perceived improvement in American feeling, and the end of the Cold War at the end of the decade, and add it all up, and put it all on the scale -- and it still doesn't outweigh the combination of all the evil things and all the things that, while not intentionally evil, were still crap.

I stand by what I said: The 1980s were the worst decade of the 20th Century.

In 2009, Time magazine called the 2000s "The Decade from Hell." So far, the 2010s aren't a whole lot better. But they still have time to redeem themselves, especially if Hillary beats Trump.

There is no redemption for the Egregious Eighties.

UPDATE: On July 18, 2019, David Wong of Cracked wrote an article about how the Eighties sucked, from the perspective of someone who, unlike me, didn't live in a suburb. It was even worse for him.