Gotta give a shout-out to the following Web sites for providing knowledge above-and-beyond. Check them out for more (and better) information.

• Adam Dunn: A True (Outcomes) Hero on The Hardball Times
• JockBio:Adam Dunn Biography on JockBio.com
• Cincinnati Reds: Player Information on The Official Site
• Adam Dunn: Information from Answers.com on Answers.com
• The Boys of Summer on Cincinnati Weekly
• Mailbag: Fans hope to keep core on The Official Site
• Adam Dunn Love Match on CelebMatch.com

When you select a player’s jersey to wear, you are expressing your admiration for that player, but you’re also saying something about yourself. Should you decide to don #44, you are part of such a large group that you could be saying any number of things about yourself, including:

• You are a dude who likes to think that you’re as much of a big, tough guy as Dunn.
• You are a hot chick who picked your Dunn shirt out of the little kids section to get that super-tight fit that you like so well.
• You are a little kid who likes the number 4.
• You are a person who didn’t know which jersey to pick, so you picked the one they had the most of, figuring that at least you’d fit in.

I’m one of the few people non-plussed by Dunn, but certainly even I can pull together some bullets. Adam Dunn to me:

• Seems like he might behave like a very, very large 14-year old.
• Might be the kind of guy who chose the number 44 because that is the number of letters in his first and last name.
• Looks sort of like one of those hobos who stows away on trains with his earthly belongings tied up in a handkerchief on the end of a stick and a bottle of whisky in a brown paper bag. But only on days that he doesn’t shave.
• Looks sort of like Will Ferrell the rest of the days.
• Is the one Red whose vibe I jibe with the least, or so I thought until I found the Love Match on CelebMatch.com (link below). According to the very scientific looking graph it provided, he and I are, in fact, 98% compatible. 100% physically. Hubba hubba.
  

Adam Troy Dunn was born November 9, 1979 in Houston, TX. He graduated from New Caney High School in New Caney, TX in 1998 and attended the University of Texas on a football scholarship until he declared his intention to play baseball full time. He lives in Porter, TX.

You can’t talk about Adam Dunn without talking about Austin Kearns. The two have been linked one way or another since always. Again, this relationship has already been much better documented than I could do. Check out the Cincinnati Weekly link in the References for more information.

Among the hits I receive here at Red Hot Mama are people who are googling to find out whether Reds players are single, and Adam Dunn has always been among the top two or three that people are googling on. For a while there was a whole lot of media coverage of Dunn’s exploits, including multiple recountings of the cute little schtick he and Kearns used to pick up women at the park. They’d intentionally overthrow each other during warm-ups and use retrieving the errant ball as an excuse to check out women in the stands. This has been so oft reported now that it must seem like a pretty tired pick-up to anyone who’s being picked up by it.

In the Cincinnati Weekly article, this paragraph characterized the women that both Dunn and Kearns describe themselves as pursuing: “They even have the same taste in women: hot ones.” This line bothers me. Not the mild chauvinism, of course. That I expect. But that horrible reporting is a disservice to the community. After all, women everywhere are searching online trying to figure out how to best preen themselves to catch Adam Dunn’s eye, and the best this article can tell them is to be “hot.” Thank you, Mr. Obvious.

In the refernced Mailbag article, someone asked outright whether Dunn was single, and the response was “Dunn’s personal life is none of my business, though I know he did lose his true love when Dave Miley had his massage chair removed from the clubhouse.” I thought this was mysterious: the media didn’t seem to have any problem talking about Dunn’s personal life before. Why shut up about it all of a sudden now? But then I realized that the answer was written by Anthony Castrovince who is a total dork and probably thought it was funny.

So, at long last, for all those women out there who are searching for the answer, no, Dunn’s not married. At least that was the most recent thing I’ve heard, and I would be shocked to have missed any changes to that status.

Finally, no Non-Baseball Stuff section about Adam Dunn would be complete without mentioning the massage chairs that disappeared from the clubhouse this season. After they disappeared, Dunn held an impromptu “press conference” to talk about the chairs in which he was quite tongue-in-cheek. I was surprised by that reaction because:
1) it appeared to demonstrate that Dunn had the presence of mind to distract attention from superstar Griffey who bore the most guilt in the story. He did buy a brand new massage chair when the team was going belly-up, after all, and
2) I had never heard Dunn be witty before. Since then, I’ve read plenty of reports that he’s always been funny. And here I thought he was just funny-looking.

Adam Dunn plays left field for the Reds, plus occasional stints at first. There’s constantly talk of moving Dunn to first base permanently to add some power at that position and to make room in the outfield for this outfielder-rich organization. The club officially made him the first baseman after trading Sean Casey in December 2005, but moved him back to left field after acquiring Scott Hatteberg a couple months later.

As a hitter, Dunn hits home runs, walks, and strikes out. A lot. It’s actually kind of startling to see him do anything else. Rumor has it that he’s a fast baserunner, but it doesn’t seem like he does much baserunning, what with his three outcomes and all.

There was a huge to-do in 2005 when something like two years passed since Dunn had hit his last sacrifice fly. Dunn’s supporters said it was stupid because Dunn’s sac flies went over the wall. Dunn’s detractors said it was relevant because Dunn’s sac flies were strike outs. Dunn hit his first sacrifice fly of 2006 on Opening Day and his second one less than a week later, and that fact generated almost as much press as the draught did.

In the field, Dunn looks slow. Some of his staunch supporters (and there are A LOT of those) will tell you that he’s actually quite fast and only looks slow because he’s so large. I don’t know about that: he looks like a slacker to me, especially if the game is already out of reach. However, he did once blow a bubble while diving for a ball in left field, so he’s got to get a bunch of points for that.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that because the JockBios site that’s listed in the references already has the best, most complete biography of Adam Dunn ever, so I’ll just do a little slacking myself and provide the link.

Also, head over to JinAZ’s Better Know a Red profile of Adam Dunn to get the stat-side of the story.