The Cincinnati Reds, fresh off of being eliminated in the 2011 season, have announced their 2012 schedule.

The Cincinnati Reds’ tentative 2012 schedule has been released by Major League Baseball. It is subject to change.

The 2012 campaign will begin with Opening Day on Friday, April 6 against the Miami Marlins at Great American Ball Park. After that 3-game series, the Reds will host the St. Louis Cardinals from Monday through Wednesday, April 9-11 to complete the first homestand of the season.

“The Reds already are working with the Findlay Market Parade organizers on Opening Day 2012,” said Reds Chief Operating Officer Phil Castellini. “No fans look forward to the start of baseball season more than ours.”

Other featured matchups at Great American Ball Park in 2012 include a pair of weekend series against the National League Central Division rival Cardinals (July 13-15, August 24-26), plus weekend battles with the Milwaukee Brewers (July 20-22), Chicago Cubs (August 17-19) and Los Angeles Dodgers (September 21-23).

Highlighting the Reds’ 15-game interleague schedule are home series against the Detroit Tigers (June 8-10), Cleveland Indians (June 12-14) and Minnesota Twins (June 22-24) and road visits to new Yankee Stadium (May 18-20) and Cleveland’s Progressive Field (June 18-20).

It sucks to already be thinking about next year. The full schedule is here.

Boxscore

The Reds beat the Cubs tonight, thereby doing their part to keep their elimination number at 1 and put us one step closer to making it possible for the team to fulfill my prediction that they would be eliminated tomorrow. Check the events on the right-side of the page. Now all that we need is for the Rockies to help out by beating the Brewers. It’s sort of hard to imagine that happening, except 1) they’re on a bit of a roll right now and 2) as of this writing, they’re leading the Brewers in the bottom of the sixth.

The win tonight was Mike Leake’s, and likely his last start of the season, seeing as there’s no much point in burning him out now. He went eight innings, giving up one run (earned) on six hits and two walks. It’s nice that he got to get the win over the Cubs this time around, especially considering his last start, where he was one damn out away from a complete game shutout and then gave up the lead on a super-sized home run to Bryan LaHair.

But even more importantly (to me, anyway) is that it was a decent game that I didn’t mind watching. Seems like we haven’t had enough of those lately.

This has barely been a real game wrap, so I don’t mind tacking on another reminder that the CTS and I will be in Cincinnati on Saturday as “celebrity” tweeters in the Reds tweet-up. Hope you can join in. There’s some good pre-game stuff going on that day too, if hanging with twits isn’t enough for you.

Tonight, around the fourth inning, the Red Hot Family made the call to let the DVR change the channel from the Reds game to Eureka at 8:30 p.m. and instead go down to the basement to play You Don’t Know Jack! for the Wii. It’s a little blue for our 10-year old, but he’s got to learn these off-color references somewhere. There’s only so much we actually say during sporting events.

But I had some remorse tonight, thinking how, even though this game felt like a rerun, I’ll be missing even those in a month. Especially considering the sports craptacular that the Colts are promising to offer this season, I suddenly feel like I need to squeeze in as much baseball as possible. That’s why I’m sitting here listening to Thom and the Cowboy call the 12-7 routing the Reds are taking at the hands of, of all teams, the Cubs.

None of this really has anything to do with the title of this post, of course. Sometimes you think you’re going to go down one road and you just end up going down another, you know? Sort of like this whole season.

I won’t change the title, though, because I do want to make it known that a tweet-up is happening at the ball park on Saturday and that I’ll be there, desperately darting around the GABP trying to find the on magic spot in the whole place where I can get coverage with my AT&T phone.

As an added bonus, the team’s going to be dedicating the Johnny Bench statue, which is something that even the Cubs can’t mess up. Not even the Brewers, which is who the team will actually be playing by that point (assuming tonight’s game ever ends). Hope to tweet you there!

For twenty-six years before 9/11 was in the collective consciousness as a horrible tragedy, it was known to baseball buffs as the date when Pete Rose broke the hit record held till then by Ty Cobb.

There’s a 2-hour production about it on FSOhio on Tuesday called “4192 – The Crowning of the Hit King.”

On a warm September evening in 1985, before a sell-out crowd, Pete Rose stood on the edge of history. With one swing he would collect more hits than anyone in the history of the game he loved. 4192: The Crowning of the Hit King is a love letter to baseball that highlights the playing career of one of the games most honored and controversial stars.

But this story begins long before the legendary sprint to first on a walk in 1963. It begins in a neighborhood off the banks of the Ohio River, where a boy, with limited natural athletic ability, tosses a ball with his father, whose mantra is to win at all costs. The boy was Pete Rose and his awe-inspiring career spanned more than two decades and brought numerous individual awards as well as three World Series titles. But at it’s heart, beyond the awards and statistics, this is a baseball story about a man who loved to play the game and what drove him to chase a record that had been deemed unbreakable.

The program premiers Tuesday on FSOhio at 10:30 p.m. or right after the Reds risk elimination at the hands of the Astros.

Today at the Red Hot Household we’re holding our annual end-of-summer party. Coincidentally, this year the event happens to fall on my uncle’s birthday, so I thought it would be nice to make cupcakes. Then I realized it’s also Joey Votto’s birthday, so heck, why not make him one too?

I suppose if I were a true fan, I would have at least used red icing, and/or made the cupcake look like a baseball or maple leaf or something. But I’m not that obsessed; I’m just a woman with an extra cupcake and a rudimentary knowledge of baseball players’ birthdays.