Though the weary Reds fans travelled long and far, following the shining wishbone C glinting on the horizon, alas, there is no room at the inn for Reds merchandise. Fans of Cincinnati baseball must take shelter in the stables, for our team's marketing bites hard.

Target has 9″ figurines of Mark McGwire and Cal Ripkin, Jr. (which have been hanging on the same rack in the back of the toy aisle for at least a year). The Hallmark store is sold out of Albert Pujols Christmas tree ornaments. The calendar kiosk in the mall features calendars of the Cubs, Cardinals, Red Sox, Yankees, and one devoted entirely to Derek Jeter. The sporting goods store is drenched in Colts blue without so much as a drop of Cincinnati Red. The airbrushed shirt stand was overflowing with “Tampa Bay Will Have It's Day!” t-shirts.

OK, I made that last one up, but the rest are real. Here in east-central Indiana, where Cincinnati is but a mere 2 1/2 hour jaunt compared to the 5 hours to Chicago or St. Louis, I visited countless stores in three different malls, plus several department stores and saw exactly one piece of Reds merchandise.

The single, solitary piece of Reds merchandise that I saw in all of my travels was at the kiosk with the giant tins of popcorn. Team logos screamed to passers by at eye-level from the tins stacked high in the middle of the floor, but the one displaying Mr. Baseball, less than half the size of the others, was crammed out-of-the-way and out-of-reach on the roof of the kiosk, as if the proprietor hadn't actually meant to bring it with him to the mall and was just looking for a place to stick it until he could find an appropriately cruddy dumpster to deposit it in.

Complain about Dan O'Brien if you like. Say that the ownership has fostered a cheapskate culture where pinching pennies is more important than winning. Bitch about the players, the dedication, the conditioning. All of these concerns are legitimate to some degree.

But when you can't even buy your kid a Ken Griffey, Jr. action figure with kung fu grip, well, that's just blasphemy.

CINCINNATI, OH -- Reds center fielder Ken Griffey, Jr. announced today that he will no longer wear number 30 for the Cincinnati Reds.

Instead, Griffey's 2006 jersey will bear the number three. Three is the number of children Griffey has, as well as the number all of his children wear on their own jerseys.

“My children are the most important thing in my life,” said Griffey. “I want to recognize them in any way that I can.”

Griffey had chosen the number 30 when he arrived in Cincinnati to honor his father, who had also worn that number with the Reds. “I had hoped to continue that tradition,” Griffey said. “I wanted to recognize three generations of Griffeys with one number. But Melissa says she's not up for 27 more.”

Teammate Adam Dunn was inspired by Griffey's gesture, and expressed an interest in also displaying his number of children on his chest.

“I guess I'd better get started,” said Dunn, eyeing his 44.

Marc (and surely about everyone else in the world by now) says:

DALLAS -- Officially, the Reds have acquired Tony Womack from the Yankees for minor leaguers Kevin Howard and Ben Himes. The Reds will also get $900,000 from New York, which will take out a good chunk of the $2 million due to Womack in 2006.

Readers of Red Hot Mama know that I have not been a baseball fan very long, and I don't make a secret of the fact that I don't know much. There are many things about this sport that I don't understand.

This signing is one of them.

OK, after almost 24 hours, I'm finally in a place where I can talk about this. I'm very sensitive, you know.

As you've probably heard by now, the deal to send Reds' first baseman Sean Casey to the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for 26-year old left-handed starter Dave Williams is all but complete. In completing this trade, the Pirates bring a home-town boy in to help out at first and the Reds do a little something to improve their woeful rotation.

Losing Casey stings just about all Reds fans, regardless of whether they admit it. It's not that losing him will be a huge hit to the offense: ironically, our first baseman was one of the light power hitters in this line-up. In fact, he provided so few of the fireworks that it seems like sort of a strange move for the Reds who didn't deal from their strength. Plus, if the Reds don't make any further moves and just replace Casey with Wily Mo Peña, they're definitely downgrading the defense, at least in the short term. Not only that, but Casey is the leadership of this team and the shining face of the organization.

On the other hand, perhaps this team could use a change in leadership. They haven't exactly been on fire these last few years. And the buddy-buddy culture of the Reds' clubhouse, which might explain why so much losing has been acceptable for so long, can almost certainly be traced back to the amiable Mr. Casey. Perhaps an opportunity for him to play the role of “new talent” instead of “voice of experience” will be a good thing for everyone involved.

The more I think about it, the less I mourn the end of an era and the more I look forward to the next one: who will step up for the Reds now? Will Casey bounce back before the friendly faces of his home town? For what it's worth, I think he will. Plus, it'll give us all a reason to go to those games when the Reds host the Pirates, (above and beyond the cynicism that says they're the only games the Reds can win).

I think the one person for whom you can't explain all this away and make it better will be “Ben,” the little brother that Casey talks about having adopted with his wife, Mandi, through the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program.

From what I've seen in Internet Redsland, people are not super-psyched about Mr. Dave Williams, whom we'll see in return. But I think that's because he's average. And though Casey has also been average lately, he doesn't feel average. He feels special. Ideally, the Reds would have gotten some big name in exchange for Casey, but that just isn't realistic. At least we can be happy to know that they've dumped some payroll and somewhat improved the starting pitching. I mean, he can't be as bad as what we had last year, can he?

Oh crap, now I've jinxed it. Everyone knock on wood in hopes that GABP doesn't suck all the quality out of young Williams like it has out of so many other pitching hopefuls.

One thing that is interesting about Williams is that he contributed 10 of the Pirates 67 wins last season. His ERA away from home is also encouraging. I wonder how Williams lost the games he lost. Was he the victim of a lack of run support? Because the Reds can give him that, should they be so inspired. Or did he hand out one homerun after another? Or even one hit after another? With the defense dropping even further in quality, that could be a pretty big issue.

I could look up the answers to these questions, but instead I think I'll go see if I can convince some Pirates bloggers to come over here and tell me the answers. In the spirit of starting up conversations with strangers. That's what Casey would have wanted.

To wrap up, I hope we see more trades. This one hurts, but it doesn't feel this pain alone will provide all the gain we need. However, a couple more like this, and we may be getting somewhere.

I'll miss Casey, though.