Did you know that tonight is Hispanic Heritage Night at Great American Ball Part?

The first 10,000 fans attending Friday's 7:10 p.m. game against the Chicago Cubs will receive a magnetic baseball card presented by Chiquita. The cards feature Reds players Juan Castro, Edwin Encarnacion and Javier Valentin and their home countries' flags.

Oh man! I'm going to miss it! You think if they're rained out tonight they'll save the magnets for tomorrow?

Speaking of tomorrow…did you know that it's Crosley Day? And the first 20,000 of you who join the bloggers will be treated to a 12-page excerpt from the new book Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation. Sounds like fun reading for the whole family!

Plus, there's going to be Crosley automobiles by the front gate, heirs throwing out ceremonial first pitches, and Crosley Field-related activities ion the Reds Hall of Fame.

One of these days, Blogger Day is going to be an official Reds-sponsored event. When that happens, you'll be treated to me singing the anthem, JD throwing out the first pitch, and Daedalus handing out Voodoo Alberts to the first 40,000 fans in attendance.

I guess everyone's ready to look ahead to next year. The tentative 2007 Reds schedule came out today.

It's déjà vu all over again as our boys open the season on April 2 versus the Cubs. They upgraded from one weekend series against the Cards to two, one at home June 29-July 1 and one in The Lou August 31-September 2. So maybe Bellyscratcher can come out for a visit next season.

According to the press release:

Tickets for regular-season games will go on sale at a date to be announced. In mid-October, holiday gift certificates will be available at The Reds Team Shop by Majestic, located adjacent to Crosley Terrace at Great American Ball Park, online at reds.com or by calling (513) 765-7400.

I'm not 100% sure what this page of new graphics is about. The Crack Technical staff sent me a link about it from RedsZone, but I can't log in from work. Hopefully you can log in from wherever you are and check it out.

It looks like the the Reds are redesigning their uniform graphics. It's all old-timey in keeping with their “power of tradition” theme. I like it: maybe next they'll make Dunn pull up his socks.

Reds.com says that Ryan Freel is out for the rest of the season with a broken thumb. That hairline fracture, suffered while diving for Luke Scott's triple on Tuesday, will keep him from participating in the final ten games, but shouldn't stop him from partying with us on Blogger Night. Woo!

And heck, Eric Milton can come, too. We already knew he was done for the year, but now he's going to have arthroscopic surgery on his left elbow on Friday, according to the same article. I'm sure a few beers with Reds bloggers would be good for the stitches.

One person you can be assured won't show up is Ken Griffey, Jr. He is too busy using his sore toe as an excuse to practice his pimp walk.

I say one quasi nice thing about Bronson Arroyo and the guy falls apart. Was he being motivated by spite?

I mean, the Reds dropped a disappointing but not-particularly-important game to the Astros this afternoon by a score of 2-7.

Arroyo already wasn't doing that hot when he gave up a big, fat three-run homer in the sixth inning to Craig Biggio. I guess he should have plunked him. Arroyo left the game after five and one-third innings, having given up seven runs (earned) on seven hits and four walks.

The game wrap on Reds.com, titled Arroyo's award chances takes a hit, besides having a minor subject-verb agreement issue in the headline, leaves the impression that Arroyo's hopes for NL Cy Young aren't entirely gone. But certainly that can't be the case. Tonight's performance included Arroyo's 30th and 31st allowed home runs, second in the national league after Jason Marquis. He's got a 14-10 record. He's arguably not even the best pitcher on this team, let alone the entire NL.

However, he is from Boston, so clearly that's in his favor.

No, I'm afraid that the Cy Young is going to Chris Carpenter again this year if only for dearth of competition. Bah.

Moving on: Bill Bray, Brian Shackelford, Jason Standridge, and Todd Coffey all pitched in relief. I bet you'd about forgotten that those guys were still on the team. And get this: none allowed a run. Someone explain to me again why we haven't seen these guys in so long?

But just as much as our starting pitching put the game out of reach early, the offense equally failed to pull the team up. Of course, they were working with a pretty atypical line-up. Rich Aurilia and Edwin Encarnación got the day off, and Ken Griffey Jr.'s still out with the toe thing.

Aurilia made it into the game as a pinch hitter, but Javier Valentín was available when Brandon Harris, Norris Hopper, and Ray Olmedo made the final three outs in the top of the ninth. All-around, it was an afternoon of baffling management decisions. But if we sat around second-guessing everything Jerry Narron did, people might start to think this was a baseball blog or something.

Ugh. Enough. The loss brings the Reds' record to 74-78. They can't lose tomorrow because they take the day off. They pick back up with the Cubs in Great American on Friday. I guess they've settled on Chris Michalak to face up against Rich Hill.