Tuesday, October 26, 2010

My First video blog

My first try at a video blog. What do you think?

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Support the local team

The Reds are National League Central Champs!!!!
It's been a long time coming to this baseball town! Cincinnati may have several major college teams nearby, a minor league hockey team, an NFL team, however at the heart it is a baseball town. I was born after the Big Red Machine and still know most of the team. The beginning of the season I wasn't sure who all the players were, but I think everyone has a pretty good idea now.
On Thursday, I decided to go buy a t-shirt. After all the sweatshirt I got when the Reds won the World Series is in the pile to make into a quilt as it is so old.
I went to Wal-mart to get some other things and looked. There was a rack of Bengals clothes at the entrance, a bunch of OSU racks, and one rack of Reds gear. They didn't have any NLC Champs items. They did have tshirts from the opening of the ballpark in 2003 that they were trying to clear out. I'm sorry how gross is that? "We don't have any new stuff, would you like some stuff that's been sitting on the shelves for 7 years?" I hope no one goes for it.
Next in the mall was Kohls. Same story except they did have room for North Carolina stuff. Why should you be making room for stuff that is no where near here?
We drove on down to Kroger's. After all, they are a local company so the odds are better. Nope. No Reds items at all. Bengals, a little bit of UC stuff, again a whole lot of OSU items.
Last chance was to go to Meijer. We walked in and right there were several t-shirts!!! Yes finally. The clerk said they had been selling them like crazy.
One thing though that annoys me so much. Why do people not root for their local team? Do they think they look cooler because they are rooting for a winning team? They don't. Is it because you like the player? Really, is it something she stands for? Or because they used to play for your team? Those are good reasons. Those may be good reasons. But he's cute, or he stands for something that almost everyone does aren't good reasons. Or they really mean - this guy/team wins and my local team doesn't.
Lean in really close while I whisper this to you - they aren't winning because of you. Your school isn't getting the recruits a lot of the time because the recruit is disappointed by the game day atmosphere or to put it bluntly the lack of butts in seats. The professional team can't compete with bigger teams for the bigger names because they don't have the money from the shirt and ticket sales or the ad revenue from the ratings on the games.
Stores won't stock the items because they don't sell. People won't buy because they won't look cool. But bottom line: being apathetic or only rooting for the winning team makes you look stupid not cool.