Boxscore

That was an awesome way to end a baseball game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Cincinnati Reds first baseball game after the All Star break started well. Johnny Cueto was cruising and mowing down the Cardinals. Even with some shaky defense behind him, he emerged with 7 innings of 3-run ball, 2 of them earned. He left with the lead, but the bullpen failed again.

This is where the game took a turn for the ugly. Aroldis Chapman entered the game and was unable to record an out. Two runs ended up scoring in the 8th before Nick Massett was able to finish the inning.

The Reds had lots of scoring opportunities, but were never able to break the game open. They continued to fail to achieve that 2-out hit.

Until the 9th. Down by 1 run, Zach Cozart got a one-out single. It was his third hit of the game and set the stage for Joey Votto to do something great. Sadly, his best pitch was a line drive straight into the right fielder’s glove.

But that was okay. The next batter was Brandon Phillips, who took a big swing and sent a ball into the seats in left field. The Reds had won their first game in what felt like an age. I mean, the Harry Potter movie series finished since the last time the Reds won.

The win moves the Reds to 3 games back of first and 1 game under .500. The Cardinals losing drops them into a tie for first with the Pittsburgh Pirates. (That was a weird thing to type. The Pirates in first place after the All Star break? What a strange season this is shaping up to be.)

Awful Announcing is running a fun little competition where they’re searching for a new awful announcer’s face to put on their site’s masthead. Up until this point, Joe Morgan had been prominently featured, but now that he’s retired from broadcasting and gone into the business of selling Hondas to Ohioans, they need somebody new.

The first round of 32 has already completed, and I have my personal favorites that I want to see in the finals. Yes, I want to see a fight to the death between the two sons of great baseball announcers who are the opposite of their fathers: Joe Buck versus Thom Brennaman. And Brennaman should win.

Thom beat out some guy named Jon Gruden in the first round. For his next battle, he’ll be going against Jim Gray on Saturday. I know who I’ll be voting for.

Got this email today:

Robinson Cano and Adrian Gonzalez put on a real show on Monday night. Each home run they hit (all the home runs hit actually) raised money for charity and helped get the ball rolling for State Farm’s Go To Bat campaign. Go To Bat encourages people to support their favorite charity – all it takes is a show of support online. Each week for the next 10 weeks, one charity will be chosen to receive $18,000 and one person who went to bat for the organization will be selected by State Farm to receive a pair of tickets to the 2011 World Series.

You can check out Go To Bat at www.statefarm.com/gotobat and find more information on the campaign.

Over the 2011 Memorial Day weekend, we visited Wisconsin for a Milwaukee Brewers game. Of course, there was a sausage race.

And what better time to share the video than during the 2011 All Star game?

The winning sausage prompted our son to grab as many items pertaining to that sausage from the gift shop as he could find, including a fridge magnet and a t-shirt. I think he’s still a Cincinnati Reds fan, though.

As I mentioned last week, we’ve been watching the Harry Potter series, all the way through, in preparation for the big premier on Friday. And as I witnessed yet another tragically horrid chapter in the life of young Harry, I realized that I watch way too many sad stories in my life, and I’m not even a Cubs fan.

But the Home Run Derby is the antidote, isn’t it? There are no death eaters or blown saves, just a bunch of brutish guys smacking gold-infused baseballs over walls into the hands of cheering fans. It’s the romantic comedy of sports activities.

Here’s the resulting info graphic from MLB.com: