Again, I bid top dollar to you with my greetings! Yes, once and always, it has been a long series of moons since I shined my peculiar light on subjects for this varied website. Let me not recount how much less than zero my lump of a baseball playing career has summed into, and instead let us focus our racks on the innumerable joys of the fresh-starting baseball season! Were I thinking of boring long and windy recounts of my fielded exploits into your matter — well, as this is not being minded by me, so it should be so with you as well! I am onto moving!

My point, from where I am, it is easy to guess again and again at what other people are not doing, wrong or right. The market for back-seat drivers and passenger-side navigators is filled with the alluring yet fetid aroma of sour grapes. That does not mean the person in the forefront is the actual winner. I am for the hope that my contributions this year are of a sort to offer some well-informed guidance for your eyes only — if the powers-that-be actually spy on these musings with any intent (or, help us all, unabated interest), well then!

What turned my own wheels was witnessing the bare-knuckle logistical slapfight that crashed and burned around managers Dusty Baker and Charlie Manuel during yesterday’s tilted Phillies / Reds contest. To face upon the front: my feelings on Dusty Baker’s lack of fondness for me truly skew my results. I grant there were some poor fortunes against me during my time served in Chicago, but they should not include my holding the bouquet while statley elder Eric Karros swung like an athletic girl. But, as said, bias is my middle name. Still, I would not think of the most impartial judge that could stand blind and watch Baker’s injustices tip the scales against his own Reds.

The first slight-of-back-hand concerned Tim McCarver’s favorite walking malapropism, Bronson Arroyo. Through four innings, the only fool Arroyo was able to pull wool over was his team’s ersatz leader — of the seventy pitches offered for the Phillies’ pleasure, four were kindly deposited beyond the hitter-friendly confines of the Great American Ballpark. Still, the Reds were apt to find themselves with only three runs on their trail, 5-2. Even stiller, fortune seem to be sidled with a fondness for this peculiar stretch of adopted Ohioans, as second-class catcher Paul Bako managed to turn his usually flaccid swing into a two-base hit of priapic proportions.

With tosser Arroyo’s turn coming to roost, and having been quite the tosser to this point, perhaps it would behoove Dusty Baker to unstable one of his bench stallions for a chance at shortening the trail to victory. Instead, Dusty chose to stick his gun in his mouth and take aim footward, leaving Arroyo in to (as the saying in recap went) “grounded bunt out to pitcher.” And this now-shot foot would take great aim at the offending mouth in upcoming frames, for Arroyo almost gave the Phillies their fifth fan overture. Still, he managed to run back to the dugout with tail intact, and with no more damage to tally.

And so it went in perpetuity, 5-2, until the Reds’ last legs toed the line. Against newly returned (and soon-to-be-prodigal) closer Brad Lidge, third baseman Edwin Encarnacion (himself a victim of Baker’s roundabout sense of decorum and style) shortened up and fell, and Norris Hopper meekly followed in his nominal fashion. Once again, sub-catcher Paul Bako inched close to the plate, and once again, the odds were against us, as Bako managed to take a walk that was not back to his seat on the bench. (Glorious refrains about giving Bako hitting permission in this situation will have to turn sotto voce at this time, because even fish in a barrel have a right to their stupid lives.)

At this point, Corey Patterson (a substitute for both the pitcher, and the out-switched Adam Dunn) should have returned this book unread, as he flew out to left field. But make out he did not, as replacement So Taguchi, admirably filling Pat Burrell’s sizable tin glove, was unable to make play, leaving two Reds now at the bases. (Let us also not make fit pitches about leaving the fat-of-foot Bako in to bum-stumble; the day can only allow for so much hot air before we combust.) So, with two out still in the bag, and one ready to be rung up, in comes feared slugger Ken Griffey Jr. to hit in this particular pinch. And it is here that Charlie Manuel’s headfat rears back and briefly shows us its rolls.

Certainly there are arguments to pitching around Griffey to move the tying run to the field, but they usually involve scenarios where the base afield is empty. With loaded bases, Lidge’s margin of error shrinks, while the margin for error grows, and even the slightest of hitters can expand to fill these margins. To his credit, Dusty did his best to choose the hitter that could best fill this or any gap, making a call to first-place receiver Javier Valentin. While Valentin’s stout chest would ideally be mirrored in his lumber, it instead belies his pulled punch tendencies. There have been fits and starts of Herculean splendor during his decade-long reign, but they are ably mitigated by his tendency to serve up club-footed fits of futility more often than most.

What cuts even more unkindly is the one remaining spell in Baker’s hole-ridden bag of tricks — first baseman Joey Votto, a would-be potent weapon whose potential is as great as Baker’s sight is short. Votto has shown off his big guns at levels both minor and major, and having a hurler as fiery and flammable as Lidge can only help in pulling the trigger. Yet Baker opts to neglect that route, and instead chooses the more-traveled road warrior. And despite Lidge’s wild generosity in serving up one of the expectant basemen all by himself, the Reds’ rally runs aground. Fittingly, the pothole hit was a third strike that Valentine let fly unswung. That Valentine’s ire was stoked by the umpire’s daring third strike call is rather punchy of him, as I believe Valentine’s eye at the plate is somewhat cross, nevermind not being nearly as respected or incisive enough to lend any proof to his pudding.

As a character in one of my movies of favor has said, Boogie Nights, I am not looking for that much butter up my ass. I am simply wondering why teams can be forever taken by Baker’s peculiar knack for mismanaging his team and his game. Certainly the moves that were completed will curry favor among those fond of the taste of clubhouse harmony. But any chef knows that spice alone can’t save a poor meal. Yet Baker seems to love the taste of both warmed-over retreads and win-never tactics, and his time spoiling the soups of baseball viewers nationwide hasn’t fixed his recipe. Sure, this is a rough and stringy game that could be too early to tell this, but stripes are as stripes seem to be, and a change of color won’t hide that. Unless the manager learns how to deploy his ingrediants in a more vibrant and flavorful manner, Reds fans might be left hung by the telephone cord waiting for take-out when the dinner bell finally rings.