‘Weapon’: How Cincinnati Reds trade deadline might impact prized rookie Chase Burns<\/a><\/p>\nWittenmyer: I\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s great for growing the game. Good baseball. Exciting pennant races. And giving those teams the best chance to succeed.<\/p>\n
Williams: It\u2019s good for the Reds. Great exposure. They\u2019re expecting to set an MLB record for regular-season attendance, more than 85,000 fans. Tito and Elly on the Fox national broadcast. This is fun. Get on board, you grump.<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: You know what\u2019s good for the Reds? Winning a damn playoff series for the first time in 30 years. This team is serious enough that they hired one of the best managers in baseball last October, and they did more at the trade deadline this week than they have in years. They don\u2019t need to divert their season to accommodate the big top, even if it\u2019s only for a day.<\/p>\n
Williams: I didn\u2019t hear you complain about the trip to Mexico or Iowa for the Field of Dreams game.<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: The difference between this and the trip to Mexico \u2013 or those trips teams take to Japan \u2013 is the larger importance of actually growing the game with exposure to new fan bases. This is just a gimmick connected to expansion efforts in an American region that has had professional baseball for a century. And I\u2019ll admit to a soft spot I have for the uniqueness that the Field of Dreams game offered to fans everywhere.<\/p>\n
Williams: News flash! The Field of Dreams game is a gimmick, too.<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: Are your ears painted on? I admitted that\u2019s a gimmick. But to me that was more of an organic baseball opportunity for a special event. This is nothing but a marketing gimmick. Crass commercialism with no connection to history, tradition or even heart strings. I mean, who will ever forget the Griffeys coming out of the cornfield and playing catch? It was corny, sure. But irresistible.<\/p>\n
Williams: The game is being played at the confluence of Reds and Braves countries. So I\u2019d say thousands of folks in the stands will tell you this means something to them. It tugs at their heart strings. I\u2019m sure there\u2019ll be a lot of fans who\u2019ve rooted for one of these teams their entire lives but have never been to see a game in Cincinnati or Atlanta \u2013 or don\u2019t get there very often.<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: That\u2019s on them. As you said, this area is at the confluence of Reds and Braves country. And as we saw the last two games at Great American Ball Park, Braves fans had no problem traveling to Cincinnati. This isn\u2019t about baseball allegiance. It\u2019s a gimmick. It\u2019s unnecessary. Go baseball \u2013 and take this damn sideshow with you.<\/p>\n
Williams: The Field of Dreams is in the heart of Cubs country, but I digress.<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: Hey, I didn\u2019t see Harry and Skip Caray out there playing catch.<\/p>\n
Williams: Anyway, you make this out to be like it\u2019s an afront to the game, like this is some kind of Savannah Bananas event. They\u2019re not requiring backflips on popups and choreographed dances between outs.<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: I admit, it\u2019s more oranges to Bananas. But to your point, just make it an exhibition game. Don\u2019t put a game that might be important in a playoff race at stake for a marketing scheme.<\/p>\n
Williams: Tell that to the Cubs, who lost both games in Japan to the Dodgers in March. By your own words, those games count as much as the games in the last week of September.<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: Right. And maybe those should have been exhibitions, too. At least they provided ample time accommodations for that trip. And there was the higher value of taking the game abroad. Even that game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham last year held major historic significance. It was tribute to Negro Leagues history played at the ballpark Willie Mays first played professional baseball, right down the road from his childhood home.<\/p>\n
Williams: Man, quit yelling at the clouds. So what would you do to make this speedway game more meaningful?<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: You mean, other than cancel it?<\/p>\n
Williams: Not an option.<\/p>\n
Wittenmyer: OK, you want to make this game mean something? You want a gimmick that also comes with historic value? Run a regular-season NASCAR race on the track while the regular-season baseball game is being played on the infield. There’s some heart-thumping action worth watching and paying for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bristol Motor Speedway field awaits MLB Speedway Classic The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds will play at Bristol…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[4131,4996,64,63,4034,4129,505,5127,5158,10027,5257,24537,36899,1791,5128,591,621,637,324,44,21851,36900,1721,21102,36898,323,335,13506,1792,85,635,973,39],"class_list":["post-41965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-baseball","tag-braves","tag-central","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-cincinnati","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-columnists","tag-columnists-opinions","tag-content","tag-cubs","tag-mlb","tag-national","tag-national-sports","tag-neutral","tag-news","tag-oh","tag-oh-content-sharing-reds-central","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-content","tag-opinions","tag-overall","tag-overall-neutral","tag-reds","tag-sharing","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-tennessee","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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