It’s so strange having the Reds in the race but not in the lead. As of a moment ago, the Cubs beat the Brewers, pushing Milwaukee back into a tie for first place with the Cardinals, who are currently on a four-game losing streak. I knew they were playing over their heads, but they don’t actually have to fall back to earth all at once.

All this puts our Cincinnati Reds in third place in the division and three games behind on the leaders while being tied 1-1 after the fifth inning. I knew this team was playing below their ability, but making it up all at once would be just fine by me.

Joey Votto Figurine
Continuing the theme lately of late-night rambling…

The good people at the Blog Jog were kind enough to share a Joey Votto figurine when we were in town this weekend. It’s a nice figurine, but there has never been a spandex-clad superhero with a costume as tight as this. I’m not saying that this isn’t an accurate depiction of Joey Votto’s ass; I’m just saying they might have left a little to the imagination.

Link Request Backlog
The lengthy list of link requests in my inbox is growing shorter, and today I’m knocking of two at once: GameJ Baseball (www.PlayUpBaseball.com) and GameSlam (www.gameslam.com/) are both sites where you can predict the action in real-time games to compete against other fans, and probably win actual prizes. I can’t say I’ve tried it myself, what with hardly having time to watch games, let alone guess what’s going to happen next, but if you try it and it’s fun, let everyone know in the comments.

Your Cincinnati Reds, just four games back on the Brewers (?) are on the field even as I write this trying to improve their record against the LA Dodgers. It’s going OK so far. It was looking like we had Bad-royo on the mound for a minute there, but in the top of the fifth the Dodgers have only scored two. That shortstop of theirs has kept the Reds to just one, but seeing as its the top of the inning and, for some reason, I am still awake, I’m hopeful that this is going to be the time to see that number grow.

Johnny Cueto goes tomorrow, which is always a good show. I surely won’t mind when it’s a good show in my own timezone, though. The weather has even been nice ’round these parts the last few days.

This post won’t be exclusively exhausted late-night babbling: in the continuing effort of being aware of what’s going on in the Reds blogging community, tonight I bring to you Baseball on Twitter. It’s sort of like a Twitter app but for your desktop, and it saves you the effort of running your own Reds Twitter search when you’re following the game. It’s worth checking out to see the up-to-the-minute Reds conversation. Give it a look and let me know what you think.

Taking part in the Blog Jog and spending time with my fellow bloggers, like Brian from Chris Sabo’s Goggles, Dan from OMGreds, and Jamie from Better Off Red, I realized several important things, including:

• I am a slow-ass runner.
• I don’t give nearly as much attention to uniforms as some of these guys do.
• None of the guys I talked to were the same guys I used to talk to back when RHM started up in 2005.

And maybe most importantly:

• I have neglected my responsibility to participate in the blogging community for long enough.

So, effective immediately, we here at RHM are making a concerted effort to be a better blogging citizen. Maybe, if I keep it up, I’ll finally even review that book I received in 2009.

With that in mind, here’s a link to a Reds mash-up site you might be interested in: check out Chat Reds and let me know what you think.

Official time 40:30. Not great, but not bad either considering I could barely run a minute straight when we started training a month ago. Next year I think we can get down to 35.

Now of to the Holy Grail. Here are some snapshots of the Blog Joggers. Let me know if you see yourself and I’ll add a caption.

Checked in, number on, and ready for the wet t-shirt contest. Just 45 minutes till the pain, baby!