Being a Reds fan in Indianapolis, I follow both the Reds and the Indianapolis Indians, who are the AAA affiliate of the Pirates. So it’s no big surprise to see announcements from both teams about clinching playoff spots in my Facebook feed this morning.

I came across the posting about the Indians first. When I scrolled down a little further to find the one from the Reds I thought, “my, that looks familiar.”

I guess MLB must have a template for this sort of thing? But they let the Reds use their special font and they let the Pirates use their terrible hashtag. “Buctober”? That’s apparently the month that comes after “Subtember” and before “Movember.” But now what’s to become of “Rocktober”?? Heavy metal stations around the country will be left scrambling!

In fact, all of the NL postseason contenders are now set; it’s just a matter of which NLC team will win the division, take the first wildcard, and take the second wildcard. Any of them could still fill into any slot, though the Reds doing things like letting the Mets take them into extras does sort of make me just grateful for what I have.

The Hardball Times had a nice piece yesterday recounting the events of the perfect game thrown by Tom Browning 25 years ago.

Now for the moment of truth, the bottom of the ninth. First up was long-time catcher Dempsey. The veteran would hit .251 on the year—not spectacular, but not a pushover. But Dempsey just flew out to right. That was 25 down, two to go.

Second baseman Steve Sax came up next. The former Rookie of the Year Award winner and three-time All-Star had never quite lived up to the hopes of his early career. Now, with a chance to ruin Browning’s hopes, Sax grounded one up the middle, but Barry Larkin fielded it cleanly for the 6-3 ground out.

I’ll leave the excitement of the last batter (and the story of the rest of the game) for you to go read over there. What a thrill that must have been.

Even so, as we’re acutely aware right now, even a perfect game is just a single win in the season record. With just 11 games left to play, the Reds are 2.5 games back on the Pirates and Cardinals. I think a lot of us are hoping they’ll swoop in and make a run for the division, but even with half of their remaining games against poor teams, I just can’t quite make myself believe it. The way our boys have played against crummy teams lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if they lost the series to the Mets.

I’ve focused a lot on the NLC with all the jockeying for position that’s been going on there, but there are other contenders that could make a challenge for the second wildcard spot as well. At 8 games back with 13 games to go, the Diamondbacks have entered It Would Take a Miracle territory, but the Nationals are a little closer. Just 5.0 games back, they wouldn’t need a miracle exactly, just some serious Wheels Falling Off from the Reds.

If you’re going to talk about late-season wheels falling off, though, you simply must mention the Pirates thanks to their late-season performances the last few years. What if the Reds surprise everyone (most of all: Dusty Baker) and find some intensity for the remaining games. With 6 of the 11 against the Pirates, the Reds could do some serious damage to the standings as we currently see them.

The winning, yes, I want. The pushing of the Buccos out of the postseason, not so much. I kind of like the Pirates. Besides, I might puke if ESPN turned out to have correctly predicted a Nationals-Tigers World Series.

With 23 games to go in the regular season, the Reds are 3.5 games back on the NLC and lead the second wildcard spot by 7.5 over the Nationals. It’s not exactly sewn up yet, but it’s felt pretty likely that our boys will be in the post-season for a while now. The real question has been: then what?

The first wildcard spot has belonged to the Cardinals for as long as the Reds have had the second one. The two wildcards have to play each other for the right to proceed, and for a while there it was seeming like the Cardinals were just unbeatable.

Which is just annoying. The Cardinals shouldn’t be that hard to beat. When the hell is Molina going to retire??

Lo and behold, the Reds have won their last three games against the Cardinals and have properly smacked around their ace twice. Pop quiz: if you’re managing the Cards in that one-game series against the Reds, do you start Adam Wainwright? The dude is 15-9 with a 3.14 ERA, but he’s given up 15 earned runs in his last two starts, both against Cincinnati. That stuff can get into a guy’s head.

The baseball season is too long to throw in the towel too early, even if it does look like it will be an early post-season exit, so I’m choosing to hope that this modest 2-game winning streak could be the start of something big.

I’ll close today with the latest offering from the Cincinnati Reds Wooo Guy, who hasn’t even given up on Pete Rose yet, he sure as heck won’t have lost hope for this team.

I didn’t hear about this until some 18 hours after it happened. When I did, I took a tour of the Reds blogs to see what reaction was. There was a whole lot of “everyone already knows about this” and “there’s nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.” I, as you may have noticed, have been busy with a life outside of baseball lately, though, and was actually looking for opinions, so clearly both those of those statements were dead wrong for me.

If they were wrong for me, I figure they might be wrong for someone else, and I might as well pile on.

Here are the offending tweets that BP was so up-in-arms about:

Reds go from a hitter with a .320 OBP in the 2 hole to one with a .310 OBP

— ctrent (@ctrent) August 28, 2013

and

Phillips career slash line: .272/.320/.430. career slash in 2 spot: .277/.320/.424

— ctrent (@ctrent) August 28, 2013

You might say these are stupid tweets to get upset over. They aren’t exactly damning. Oooooh, Phillips has 0.010 lower OBP than Franzier. BFD.

By the same token, you might also say they’re stupid tweets to have put up. The fact that C. Trent is drawing attention to OBP at all is tacit expression of disapproval. I mean, if he’d liked the move, he might have mentioned Phillips’ superior slugging (also a 0.010 difference).

And let’s not forget that moving BP to the second spot not only gets him more ABs, but also more for Jay Bruce, who moves up to Phillips’ previous position in the line-up. Frazier is great, but I really have a hard time taking seriously the assertion that he ought to be getting more ABs than Phillips and Bruce.

The whole situation sort of falls flat for me. It’s the brash, stressed-out guy versus the unbearably smug, under-deadline guy. You’re going to get hot words sometimes. And considering the people involved, some of them are going to be dirty words (cover your ears, grandma) and most of them are going to get reported. Shrug.

If it helps in putting the hurt on the opponent, though, I’m all for it. We could all take turns posting random stats, players can read whatever they want into them, go off, and then beat up on the likes of Adam Wainwright. Those Cardinals are the really smug ones.

I have been an outspoken critic of the title “Fox Sports Ohio Girls” since they were introduced last year.

I want to be clear, because it’s an important distinction that I have been a critic of the title “FSO Girls” and not the women who play the girls on t.v. These ladies are likely trying to launch a career in acting or modeling, and a gig is a gig. There’s no room for pride in show business.

On the other hand, there’s LOADS of room for pride in blogging, with plenty to spare to accommodate all your righteous indignation, so let’s go.

It’s not just that the network insists on calling grown-ass women “girls,” but even that would be enough. It’s demeaning. Women may call other women “girls,” as in, “I’m doing a fat flush with the girls at the office” or “feed the kids dinner; I’m heading to Chili’s with the girls to drink Sparkling Pomegranate Margaritas and flirt with the college-dropout bartender till I vomit at 10:15.” But just because members of a group call the other members of their group by a certain term does not mean it’s OK for outsiders to do the same. Any Chris Rock stand up routine will teach you that much.

And it’s not just that their only purpose appears to be to add a rack to the game-watching experience. To FOX Sports’ credit, at least these women aren’t actually wearing bikinis, though in some ways it might be better if they were. At least that would be an honest expression of what they’re there for. I get the feeling that if this weren’t the Midwest and if baseball weren’t such a “wholesome” sport, FOX would have the FSO Women in their skivvies in a minute. (Yes, I just did a Google image search of “FOX Sports girls” and other regions do appear to have their women in bikinis.)

And it’s not just that one of the FSO Women disappeared without fanfare (are the reasons you’re thinking of as looks-based as mine?) and now FOX wants fans to vote on the next one to replace her. Since the FSO Women aren’t given any tasks of any substance on which basis you could compare their skills, I guess you’re just voting based on which one you think is hottest. It’s all the icky feelings of watching the Miss America Pageant without the interview questions about geography.

It’s not any one of those things, but it is all of them. And more. It’s the vapid commercial break spots. It’s the Twitter account. It’s the “win a chance to have dinner with, and drool all over, the FSO girls.”

I’m psyched to see any women in a baseball broadcast. But is it really too much to ask that the women not only be included but also allowed to be intelligent professionals at the same time? Because these women have at least as much to add to the game-watching experience as Jim Day does. You don’t have to get rid of the t-shirts from the Alyssa Milano collection, just call them something that doesn’t imply they’re children and let them do more than pimp seat belt wraps. At least give us a little dignity about the whole thing. Maybe even a little pride.