Reds Take Two in the City of Brotherly Love
Baseball is a funny game. Not the bent over, cackle-out-loud funny induced from your favorite cocaine-fueled comedians from the 1970s and ’80s. More like a dry wit observational humor as told by predatory funnymen from the 1980s and ’90s.
The Reds and Phillies had similar records when they met for a Mid-May midweek showdown. Yet the Phillies were rising, playing their best ball. The Reds, though not in the freefall of the first nine days of the month, were still scuffling.
On Monday night in the city of Brotherly Love, Nick Lodolo was kind enough to give up two runs in the home team’s first. But the Reds evened it immediately in the top of the se
cond. Lodolo settled down until giving up a solo shot in the sixth. Again the visitors responded with Sal Stewart launching an 0-2 curveball into the right-field seats. For the slumping rookie, it must have felt like a bell ringer, a Liberty Bell knock to get him healthy again after his heroic April. Then, Spencer Steer’s two-out double in the eighth gave the Reds a 4-3 lead. Say hey, could the Reds win this one?
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Graham Ashcraft gives up a leadoff single in the bottom of the eighth inning. He manages two outs but then surrenders a two-run homer to Bryson Stott. There was some radio-booth discussion about whether or not to leave Ashcraft in to pitch to the lefthanded hitter. Francona leaves him in, Bryson goes yard, and the Reds lose 5-4.
Tuesday, Chase Burns again showed his early-season dominance. He gave up three hits over six full innings. One hit, however, was a longshot from Trea Turner. The Redleg offense scratched out two runs in the fourth and two more in the seventh. And three guys from the bullpen held it down for a 4-1 victory.
The Wednesday matinee featured a Reds hit parade (15 in all, four from Stewart alone, including a left field upper decker that wowed the Phillie TV guys). Andrew Abbott pitched well for five-plus innings. A shaky bullpen in the sixth gave up three runs. But the Reds added on late for the 9-4 final and a series win.
I was on a Philadelphia rooftop to see Veterans Stadium demolished on March 21, 2004. We had champagne on what I think was a Sunday and the final day of spring break from Purdue. Seems like a million years ago given the differences in my life between now and then. But if my math is right it was just over 22 years ago.
Stewart, who surely would have been Joe Nuxhall’s “Star of the Game” on Wednesday, was only about 15 months old when I was in Philly. Born in Miami, he probably wouldn’t have been thinking about cheese steaks, or founding fathers, or even the sorry ass Slyvester Stallone (in spite of having the same initials). You never know. As I saw one stadium imploded almost his whole lifetime ago, perhaps something from Sal’s toddler days forecasted the reality of him breaking out of an offensive funk with multiple hits and two homers more than two decades later. Life, like baseball, can be a funny game.
William Meiners is the editor of Sport Literate. Among his summer 2026 plans are the documentation of 33 Reds’ series. That should be about 600 to 700 words every few days. If you don’t expect too much breakdown or analysis, outside of his own troubled head, you may not be disappointed. From losing streaks through high-water marks, he’ll follow the club, sometimes literally, from the reluctant spring of early May through the dog days of August. Then he’s off to something else.