Noah Lennon-Heiden

At 8:30 pm I—still wet from my post-swimming practice shower– sat down on my soft blue couch with a plate of warm red pasta in my lap to watch the Cincinnati Reds take on the Milwaukee Brewers. After about 10 minutes two of my dogs, Butter the coonhound, (with her floppy ears and her habit of turning three times before curling up in a ball) and Albus, the old beagle, (with the tilted head and long pink tongue that sticks out the side of his mouth) crowded into the room and onto the couch next to me. My 6-year-old brother Thomas announced his entrance with his Black Panther spear and usual question of, “Did someone hit a cycle?” referring to his pride of knowing what a cycle in baseball is. (A player hits a single, double, triple and homerun in the same game.) The small green tv room is mostly all couch with a floor covered in Thomas’ toys and a wall of my mother’s books. Everyone on the couch always snuggles in one of the many fleece blankets with Santas or gnomes or orange bats that we seem to collect from Kroger the supermarket each holiday. On the flat platform top of the couch, dishes and glasses collect over the course of the night as I finish dinner and then we all snack on fruit, sherbet and root beer. In the top of the third inning Elly De La Cruz lifted a 456-foot homer to put the Reds on top of the Brewers 1 to 2! My brother and I whooped, yessssss!-ed, cheered and then high fived. My Dad ran into the room, late for the game. In the next inning, Spencer Steer made an error to the second baseman. After that play, my Dad and I both agreed that Spencer Steer should be playing 1st base. The sherbet was sweet and the root beer was fizzy. My Dad is wrapped in the gnome blanket between the wall of baby pictures and Butter. He talks to the players on the tv, criticizing errors that he is sure he would have avoided. His “yesssss!” is louder than mine and he usually pumps his fist Luis Castillo style. He is interrupted often by Thomas jumping on him while yelling, “Hulk-smash!” Dad flips him over on the couch for tickling. When the inning continues, they stop and settle down again. With each commercial break the three of us would repeat every commercial word for word. Only a handful of commercials are played during a game and they are played over and over. Most seemed to be public service announcements from the government and the acting was terrible. My brother laughed loudly and acted out the commercials. We both would start laughing as soon as we recognized the commercial. Near the end of the game, my dog Lucy joined and squeezed onto the couch, snuggling up to me with her big soft coat.  The Reds lost the game in the bottom of the ninth inning when Christian Yelich hit a walk off single that scored Blake Perkins from 2nd.  Only my dad and I were left with sleeping dogs difficult to wake up and the messy collection of Thomas’ toys. We collected the dishes to bring to the sink and made our way up the stairs to bed talking about the next Reds game to come.

It was all about the Frosty Malt. Frozen solid in a paper cup with a thick wooden spoon “like a stick,” my dad said, it took a while to make its appearance. “They came around with the most popular items that people wanted like beer, popcorn, and hotdogs. But I kept looking.” When the vendor finally appeared, he could already taste the cold chocolatey goodness while sitting in the hot sun in July in Riverfront Stadium. My Dad’s grandma and grandpa were Reds fans. “It was a different time,” my Dad repeated often, explaining how no one watched baseball on tv when Great-Grandpa became a fan in the 1940s. Even in the 1980s when my Dad was a kid, he listened to games or looked for results in the newspaper the next morning, when my Dad was young, Great Grandma and Grandpa shared season tickets with friends from the bank, traveling to Cincinatti, 20-25 games a season. They took my Dad and a chosen friend to one game a summer.  In Alexandira, Indiana, They would all jump into Great Granpa’s red Buick with a cooler full of soda. Halfway to Cincinatti, they would the stop the car at a rest stop to grab a coke from the cooler. Great Granpa was 6 foot 3 and never wore shorts. At Riverfront, a perfect “cookie-cutter” circle on the Ohio River, Dad would emerge from the underground parking lot and see that unmistakable green astro turf bright from the sun’s rays. There were four rows of seats: Blue, Green, Yellow, Red. Great Grampa always bought tickets in the green seats because an overhang blocked the direct sunlight during the game. Great Grandma would pull a pencil from her purse to keep track of the game on a scorecard. Great Grandpa would talk to the two boys about what was happening on the field.  Dad marveled at how Grandma could call a homerun long before he was sure. Great Grandpa explained how when a player hits a ball there is a sound, and “if they barrel the ball” it is a particular sound that tells you the ball is gone. How did you fall in love with baseball? Grandpa was a big fan of baseball. It was different then. NBA didn’t exist. Football didn’t exist. In the 1920s. Baseball was the only sport. He listened to baseball games on the radio. Detroit Tigers games. He switched to the Reds fan in the 1940s when he was young man. He loved baseball. He went to Reds games. He took me. Who was your favorite player? Bo Diaz, catcher in the 1980s. Pretty good catcher, really, but not a superstar. Couldn’t see a game on tv. In the 1980s, they didn’t film games. 1983, probably doesn’t exist. I didn’t watch. See box scores in the paper. Grandpa: ice cream floats, Barry Larkin. Now? De La Cruz, hard not to be a fan. So exciting. Joey Votto. Matt mcClean, young guys. If you become really attached, players become traded so often. Love the player while you got them, they will move on. Used to stay with team Leave early, backseat of Buick, red cars always drove. Drive to Cincinnatii from Alexandria. Halfway rest stop, cooler of soft drinks, cans. Wipe off cans. I want to get to the game. Different time. Go to bathroom. Parked underneath Riverfront. Parking pass. Shared season tickets, bank. 20-25 games. 1 game in the summer. Go in gates, all seats blue green yellow red. Green seats, Didn’t like the sun. Green seats second level, great view, 1st r 3rd baseline. Overhang.  Big concrete emerged, astroturf was an electric green. You look out and slightly Wanted to eat: frosty malt, cup, frozen solid. Wooden spoon like a stick. Spoon not great but frosty malt. Least popular. Beer hotdogs. Grandma kept score on a scorecard with a pencil. Buy scorecard each time. One flavor chocolate. I didn’t get up much during game. Talked some. Always brought a friend. Grandma, knew it was homerun. When a player hits a ball there is a sound, if they barrel the ball, certain speed, exit velocity, didn’t know, and that determines. Grandma knew. Everything new. Riverfron tStaduoun 970-2001 or something. Cookie cutter stadium, bowl. Big deal in 1970s. Camden Yards, have character. Astroturf, different time. My height 6’3, always were pants, collar polo shirt, stripes, glasses and prescription sunglasses. Gold watch. Reds hat, shirt, didn’t wear. M Very frugal. 90 NCLS jacket for me and him. Riverfront remembered.

Baseball Family Tornadoes tore through the Midwest in the early hours of April 1, 2023. Following the reports on my Dad’s iphone, the four of us pulled on shoes and wrapped ourselves in blankets to head down to the basement. Barely more than a potato cellar with bare beams on the ceiling and dirt on the floor, we were squished on folding chairs between Santa lawn decorations, old kitchen appliances, and the cat litter boxes. While my six-year-old brother peppered my Mom with questions about tornadoes, I could only think of one thing: Would the Cincinnati Reds game be postponed that day? It wasn’t. The morning was sunny and warm in Indiana as we headed to Kids’ Opening Day at the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. We parked on the Ohio River across from the ballpark and started across the street, my dad and I hotly debating why TJ Friedl wasn’t batting first that day. I carried my mitt for possible foul balls coming my way, and sported the sunglasses that made me look just like Jonathan India if you used your imagination to add curly shoulder length hair and a lot of tattoos. While I wore my “Big Greene Machine” t-shirt, I carried my Mr. Red sweatshirt under my arm. Halfway across the street, a huge gust of wind off the river hit our backs and carried the sweatshirt onto the ground and along a straight path to the gaping wide mouth of the storm drain. We all stood there in horror as groups of fans kept walking around us. First a tornado warning and now a lost sweatshirt. But nothing was going to stop us from the game. Our family is a baseball family. What this means is that when the temperature dropped below 40 degrees by the second inning and winds reached over fifty miles an hour, we stayed. We wrapped my brother in my mother’s coat and bought a fleece blanket for sweatshirt-less me in the team store. We watched Jonathan India bomb a homerun in the 3rd, TJ Friendl steal third base in the 5th, and Jake Fraley crushed a three-run homerun in the 8th. I could barely feel my hands as I dug elbow deep into the huge bag of caramel popcorn but there was no place I could rather be. But the rest of the family started to flag by the 6th inning as we watched groups and groups of families leave with chattering teeth. At the bottom of the 8th, my dad said, “We could leave….?” and my mother and brother nodded excitedly. “No!” I gasped. And we stayed. Our family is a baseball family. My dad taught me to love baseball. He was taught by his grandma and grandpa. My great grandparents were big Reds fans. At every game Great Grandma would pull a pencil from her purse to keep track of the game on a scorecard that she always would always buy before the Reds game at riverfront stadium. Great Grandpa would talk to my dad and his friend about what was happening on the field.  Dad marveled at how Grandma could call a homerun long before he was sure. Great Grandpa explained how when a player hits a ball there is a sound, and “if they barrel the ball” it is a particular sound that tells you the ball is gone.