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After beginning May in first place in the Central Division with a 20-12 record, the Cincinnati Reds plummetted to last fast, ending the month with a 10-17. You can read about the damage done below.

 

Homer-Friendly GABP Hospitable to Braves Who Take Series

Reds “Don’t Mind the Maggots” in Series Win Over the Mets

A Split Between Rainouts as Reds Escape with Walkoff Win Over Cards in Extras

Reds Take Two in the City of Brotherly Love

“Hello, Cleveland!” WTF, Bullpen?

A Collapse Between Blowouts as Reds Drop Series to Nats

Houston, We Got Bigger Problems Than the Astrodome’s Faked Moon Landing

Heartbreak in Wrigley: Three Walk Offs and a Rout

“Mayday, Mayday!”: Reds Swept by Pirates

First With No Second

A Review of Mark Remy’s The Running Dictionary

Since the publication of The Runner’s Rule Book in 2009, Mark Remy has been a genre unto himself and a veritable font of running humor. It might not be high praise to call him the premier running satirist, if he is literally one of a kind, but high praise is what he deserves. If you are a runner who hasn’t yet read Remy, chances are his several books and his website Dumb Runner are the treasures you didn’t know you were looking for.

Find it hard to believe there could be that much funny about running? Take a minute and click on the link in the previous paragraph. Or just consider the general ridiculousness of the modern runner’s life and habits, as seen through the eyes of one with above average (i.e., >0) self-awareness. He’s an insider (2:46 marathon PR ) with an outsider’s sense of irony. Holding his exaggerated mirror up to our obsessive faces, Remy gives us the chance to laugh at ourselves — a welcome opportunity for as self-serious a group as recreational runners.

In his latest book, The Running Dictionary, Remy finds a new form in which to fit his wits: the definition. Non-running English speakers will know the automobile as “A powerful, motorized multiton steel vehicle that provides a comfortable place for its operator to watch online videos and check social media” but may not be aware that automobile operators will “occasionally [glance] up to tell runners that they should ‘get off the road.’” Unlike drivers, Remy sees us.

Less flattering to the runner’s ego, the excesses of the running-industrial complex are ripe for Remy’s teasing. Take carbon-plated shoes, which “can cost more than twice as much as a typical pair of running shoes, yet are less durable — a combination that few runners can resist.” Before we assign all blame to Nike (“Greek goddess of marketing”), consider how runners use social media: “to share details of their latest run and to ignore posts from other runners sharing details of their latest runs.” If you can’t laugh, truth hurts.

Behind Remy’s jabs lies a compassionate ethos, described on his website and honored in his books. The Dumb Runner Manifesto (in full):

1. Running should be simple. Period.
2. There is beauty in every run, if you take the time to look. Music, too, if you listen for it.
3. Laughter is good. So is pie. More of both, please.

Laughter indeed (you’re on your own for pie). Even the most circumspect reviewer is tempted to quote the book pretty much in whole or at random:

Beginner: Someone who is new enough to the sport to feel insecure about how fast and how far they run, because they haven’t yet learned that other runners are too busy worrying about their own pace and mileage to care about anyone else.

Boston qualifier (BQ): 1. A marathon time that’s fast enough to allow entry into the famously selective Boston Marathon. 2. Any word or phrase used to modify the meaning of Boston, usually by those who are unable to meet the marathon’s time standards — e.g., “the hugely overrated Boston Marathon.”

Running should be simple. But few things are simple where the ego is concerned. Thank the running gods we have Mark Remy to keep us honest.

Scott F. Parker is the author of Run for Your Life: A Manifesto and The Joy of Running qua Running, among other books. His writing has appeared in Runner’s World, Running Times, Tin House, Philosophy Now, The Believer, and other publications. He teaches at Montana State University and is the nonfiction editor for Kelson Books.

Homer-Friendly GABP Hospitable as Braves Take the Series

by William Meiners

Off their shortest road trip to date, the Reds returned home from New York hovering two games over the even mark. Unfortunately, the Atlanta Braves, boasting baseball’s best record, rolled north for three games to end a woeful May in the Queen City.

Ronald Acuña Jr. hit Chris Paddack’s fourth pitch of the game over the fence. The Braves added three more in the second without benefit of a long ball. A pair of solo homers by JJ Bleday and Nathaniel Lowe made things interesting. Then Sal Stewart’s two-out single brought the homeboys to within a run at 3-4.

The sixth-inning box score for Yunior Marte, a pitcher just up from AAA not long for the big club, is noteworthy. In one third of an inning, he gave up three hits, one walk, and four runs… all accounting for an E.R.A. of 108.00. Not what you want on your baseball card. That 8-3 score held up as the Reds put up goose eggs in their final four frames.

Saturday sucked, too. Bleday homered in his second straight game, this time with Spencer Steer aboard, giving the Reds a 2-1 lead after two. An offseason pickup who started the season in Louisville, Bleday is one of two unexpected outfielders, along with Blake Dunn. In fact, one promising endnote to May was the 28-year-old being named the National League Player of the Month. Among his achievements… a .301 average, eight homers, and 25 RBI.

But Bleday’s two RBI was the last scoring for the Reds on May 30^th. With his “anything you can do” walkup song (not true), Acuña Jr. hit two more homers, both times pounding his chest as he rounded first base. Including his two, the Tomahawk Chop crew hit four solo homers in innings three, five, seven, and nine. For numerology fans, that’s some symmetry to ponder.

The Reds made a deep season run of not getting swept in 2025. Not so much in 2026 as they were swept by Pirates and Cubs on early May road trips. But they haven’t been swept at home since August 2024. The bullies with the racist mascot looked poised to fly out of town on brooms.

Acuña Jr. wasted even less time, hitting Nick Lodolo’s first pitch into the Sunday crowd in faraway fair territory. Who else but Bleday brought the Reds even in the bottom of the first with a double that scored Elly De La Cruz. That same tandem repeated themselves with Bleday’s third-inning double.

The Reds scored singletons in innings three through seven, a couple of which came on doubles misplayed in right by Acuña Jr. (he’s everywhere). The Braves kept it close with one-run innings in five, six, and nine. But the Reds held on with Lodolo’s quality start and a better day for a bullpen held together by band aids, glue, and St. Jude. With the bases jammed and two outs in the ninth, Sam Moll coerced a grounder to third to secure the 6-4 win. Mercy!

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.

Thanks, Gil

by Scott Bandremer

Oh no.
Another Knicks video just landed in my feed.
Somebody’s showing Game 5 again. Somebody else is filming grown men weeping in the streets of Manhattan.
Another guy is hugging complete strangers like he’d just been rescued from a deserted island.

And now they’re playing Sinatra.

Stop. Please stop.
I have no more tissues.
My New York Knicks are NBA champions. World Champions!
Even now, typing those words feels vaguely illegal, like I should look over my shoulder before publishing them.
For 53 years I lived with a simple understanding of the universe: the Knicks were not going to win a championship again. Ever.
That wasn’t pessimism. That was data.
I had decades of evidence. Entire presidential administrations came and went. Technologies were invented, became obsolete, and disappeared.
I got older. My hair got thinner. Ticket prices became the GDP of a small nation.
And still, no championship.

Eventually, disappointment becomes part of your identity. Knicks fans don’t merely root for a basketball team. We major in hope while minoring in heartbreak.
Then the impossible happened.
The Knicks won.
And here’s the strange part: I knew exactly how to handle losing. I’d been practicing since Richard Nixon was president.
What I wasn’t prepared for was winning.
Now every video sends me spiraling.
Every highlight reel feels personal.
Every replay unlocks some forgotten room in my memory.
To quote Jackson Browne, “Here come those tears again.”
I find myself sitting in the middle of this beautiful emotional hurricane, dazed and grateful and more than a little confused.
Because somewhere beneath the celebration, another memory keeps tugging at me.
The last time New York sports made me feel this way was when I was a kid. Oh, the Mets championship in 1986 was very special, indeed.

But this feeling I now have is something else.
Something that is drawing me back in time, as I close my eyes and begin to float away on a magic carpet ride deep into my past …
And suddenly I’m drifting backward through the decades. Back to a time of innocence. Back to the losing ways of the New York Jets, the New York Knicks and the New York Mets.
Back to a man named Gil Hodges who taught me something about heroes long before I understood the lesson.

Spring, 1969. I was almost 9 years old, living in the geographic center of my universe: Flatbush-Midwood, Brooklyn.
Our apartment building sat on Kenilworth Place directly across from Brooklyn College, surrounded by fraternity houses, single-family homes, and the sort of neighborhood characters that gave Brooklyn its PhD in personality.
From our kitchen window, I could watch history happen and then be home in time for dinner.

It was a different era, which is a polite way of saying our parents had a remarkably relaxed definition of child supervision.
At 5 years old, I walked three blocks alone to kindergarten at P.S. 152, passing Brooklyn College on one side and Midwood High School on the other. My educational future was basically laid out like a subway map.
My younger brother and I rode our bikes everywhere — through the college campus, down side streets, wherever curiosity pointed the handlebars.

Meanwhile, the late 1960s raged around us.
Anti-war protests regularly marched beneath our apartment windows. Thousands of demonstrators would flood Campus Road, chanting and carrying signs against the Vietnam War.
Even as a kid, I could feel the electricity in the air. Something important was happening. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but I knew it mattered.
Still, at the end of the day, I was nine.
And like many 9-year-olds, I had more pressing concerns.
Specifically, my terrible taste in sports teams.
I rooted passionately for the Mets, Jets, and Knicks — a trifecta of disappointment so reliable it should have come with a warranty. Somehow, probably through my father, who expressed most of his emotions through sports scores, I became hopelessly attached.
I watched every game on our black-and-white television. I memorized rosters. I collected trading cards with the intensity of a Wall Street investor building a portfolio.
For the record, I was once potentially worth millions (maybe).
My mother accidentally destroyed that possibility by throwing away roughly 2,000 football cards from 1968 while I was away at college.
Whenever people ask why I don’t own a yacht today, that’s the answer.
I knew every Met by heart: Tom Seaver, Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee, Jerry Koosman, Jerry Grote. I could probably have recited the batting order faster than I could complete long division.

Then, something miraculous happened.
Actually, three miraculous things.
Joe Namath guaranteed and delivered a Super Bowl for the Jets in 1969.
The Knicks won an unforgettable championship in 1970.
And amidst all of that, in the greatest sporting upset my young brain could comprehend, the Mets won the World Series in 1969.
The Miracle Mets.
For a kid who had invested emotionally in three chronic underachievers, this felt less like sports and more like proof that the universe occasionally rewarded loyalty.
I was living in fan paradise.
Then, two years later, reality showed up.

In April of 1972, Gil Hodges died suddenly of a heart attack.

I was almost 12 years old.
Until then, death had mostly existed as an abstract concept adults talked about. Suddenly it wasn’t abstract anymore.
One day Gil Hodges was managing the Mets. The next day he wasn’t.
Gone.
I remember being stunned. Not just sad but confused. How could someone be there one day and disappear the next?
My mother tried to comfort me, but I kept thinking about something else entirely:
Who was going to manage the Mets?
It’s amazing how childhood grief and childhood priorities can occupy the same space.

When I learned Gil’s funeral would be held at Our Lady Help of Christians Church on Avenue M, I made a decision.
Actually, my friend and I made a decision.
We were going.
This was no small undertaking.
Sure, kids had freedom back then.
We played stickball, punchball, basketball, and rode bikes until the streetlights came on — or until my mother’s voice, somehow capable of traveling several city blocks without technological assistance, summoned me home for dinner.
But Avenue M felt far away. Practically another borough.
Still, how could we not go?

So, without informing my parents of our expedition — which felt like a detail best shared afterward — we hopped on our bikes and headed off.
When we arrived, it looked like all of New York had the same idea.
The streets were packed.
The line stretched forever.
And there I was: a nice Jewish kid from Brooklyn about to enter a church for the first time in his life.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

As the line moved forward and we entered the church, I stopped cold.
Standing only a few feet away were some of the biggest sports legends I’d ever seen.
There was Bud Harrelson. Tommie Agee. Tug McGraw.
Then I saw Pee Wee Reese. Jackie Robinson. Sandy Koufax.
These weren’t baseball players.
These were superheroes.
At least they had been in my mind.
Then I noticed something.
They were crying.
Not quietly.
Not hiding it.
Just openly grieving.
I stood there staring.
Because this wasn’t what superheroes were supposed to do.
These men were strong. Fearless. Larger than life.
And yet here they were, mourning a friend.

For the first time, I understood something that would take many adults years to learn:
Strength and vulnerability aren’t opposites. They’re teammates.
Before I knew it, I was crying too. I couldn’t have explained why.
I just knew that if these men loved Gil Hodges enough to cry, then somehow I did too.
That moment never left me.
Neither did what happened next.

Remember, this was my first church experience. Nobody had issued me a handbook.
As the line shuffled toward Gil’s open casket — the first deceased person I had ever seen — I watched carefully.
Everyone ahead of me paused.
Many knelt briefly.
So when my turn came, I did exactly what any loyal young Mets fan would do.
I got down on one knee. Closed my eyes. Stayed there for a few seconds.
And hoped I wasn’t violating any major church regulations.
Then I stood up and moved along. Mission accomplished.

When I finally got home and told my mother where I’d been, I braced for impact.
I expected punishment. Maybe grounding.
Possibly a lecture delivered at volumes rivaling her dinner-time summons.

Instead, she surprised me.
She hugged me.
Then she told me she was proud of me for making the effort to honor someone who had meant so much to me.
At 12 years old, that felt pretty good.

The next day, my friend and I retold the adventure to anyone willing to listen.
We described every detail: the crowd, the players, the church, the tears.
Our friends listened like we’d returned from Everest.
And in our own way, maybe we had.

Looking back now, I realize that day wasn’t really about baseball.
It was about growing up. It was about discovering that heroes are human.
It was about learning that grief is simply love with nowhere to go.
And it was about taking one small bike ride that somehow ended up lasting a lifetime.

Today, when I take my grandchildren to Citi Field, I point toward the retired number 14 hanging above the ballpark.
Gil Hodges.
Our manager.
I tell them his story.
Sometimes they listen. Sometimes they’re more interested in the giant scoreboard or whatever snack costs eighteen dollars these days.
But every now and then, I catch that familiar sparkle in their eyes.
The same one I had.
The same connection to a team, a player, a moment.

And I realize that’s really what survives.
Not championships. Not statistics. Not even miracles.
What survives are the memories. The stories.
The people who mattered.

So these days I spend my time loving my grandchildren, loving my Mets, and holding onto the moments that shaped me.
The Knicks have held up their end of the bargain. Now the remaining two thirds of this sports triad need to step up.
Hopefully, years from now, my grandkids will have a few stories of their own.
Let’s Go Mets. Let’s Go Jets. And God Bless the New York Knicks.
Life is short. But memories are forever. Hold on to them tight.

Thanks, Gil.

Scott Bandremer is a writer, photographer, and digital video producer who resides in the greater NYC market. A 50-plus year devoted fan of the Mets, Knicks, and Jets, he can currently be found residing on Cloud9 as he celebrates the awesomeness of a Knicks championship.

Reds “Don’t Mind the Maggots” in a Series Win Over the Mets

by William Meiners

The heat arrived with the unofficial start of summer on Memorial Day in our central Michigan neck of the woods. Without much spring training for the high temps, it’s swimming pool days, lawn-mown evenings, and back porch grilling from here on out through late August. The fool in me wishes for a long hot summer, though I know it will pass faster than our early evening bats after mosquitoes.

The Reds late-afternoon start against the Mets began a three-game series in the sleepless city that couldn’t be further (culturally speaking) from our provincial college town. Three decades ago, I could make my way around Chicago neighborhoods. But flying into New York a few times, like parachuting into an island of buildings, made that city overwhelming to me.

Domesticated now, I listened to the game mowing my backyard in Mount Pleasant. A happy place for me these days as all my youthful tail chasing left me in a dizzying mess.

The Reds scored two in the second, J.J. Bleday added a solo shot in the third, and four in the fourth we’re all the visitors needed for a 7-2 victory. Tuesday seemingly repeated itself, albeit in different scoring fashions, as the Reds won again 7-2.

The finale should have been a sweet sweep for Cincy. And the scuffling Mets, featuring a futures lineup given a rash of injuries on a highly paid roster, lucked out. Andrew Abbott gave up home runs in the first and second innings but pitched well enough to win. Reds had baserunners all night, leaving a total of 17 men stranded. Oh, untimely deaths. In fact, Sal Stewart’s swinging bunt, with two outs and the bases loaded, brought the Reds to within one (3-2) in the sixth inning. Otherwise it was strikeouts, pop-ups, and non-stop missed opportunities.

Lance McAlister, from WLW, recaps the stats as well as anybody. Without signing up for it, Lance, a high school classmate 42 years ago, appears in my Facebook feed with a post-game take. He had a different last name in the 1980s, and we had a math class and played on a baseball team together. Perhaps a “fall ball” squad, kind of an extension of the Babe Ruth League days. I think he led off and I batted second. Or maybe vice versa. I was in my speed-bunting days, earning most of my hits dropping one down the third baseline. Lance also may have been in Chicago along with me in the 1990s as he began his career and I extended my schooling.

Back in the Big Apple, Mets closer Devin Williams stirred excitement in the ninth, walking two, fanning one, walking another (to load the bags), then striking out Dane Myers and Blake Dunn to end it. Not a single ball put in play among a shitload of pitches. Even with a series win, I suspect it’s a loss that could leave a manager sleepless. Regardless of the city, town, or madhouse where he might lay that weary head.

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.

A Split Between Rainouts as Reds Escape with Walk-Off Win Over Cards in Extras

by William Meiners

We had a fire in the house over Memorial Day weekend. Not a kitchen mishap but burning wood in the fireplace to keep us a little warmer and add some ambiance to sitting around the house, playing cards, sipping wine, whatever we do in our do-little dotage. No ear on baseball for me as the Cardinals-Reds matchup gets rained out on Friday.

Not a single team in the National League Central is under .500 going into the holiday weekend. The Cubs themselves, who greeted the Reds so angrily in the friendly confines of Wrigley in the first week of May (with a four-game sweep) have gone on a losing bender. They’ll drop 10 straight before it’s said and done to which I say, “Blow Cubs, blow.”

Forget the wild west, the central seems like that running group activity where the guy in the back has to sprint to the front of the single-line pack. A fartlek, I think, but I don’t think you can say that on television. Nevertheless, my Reds dropped from first to last in the central after an 0 for 8 start to May. Cubs, Cards, and Brewers have all surged, but that Milwaukee team (and I hate them like hell), usually rises to the top. Up until the second round of the playoffs anyway.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Reds, entering the weekend have played more American League teams than division opponents in 2026. Had they only been playing them, they’d be faring very well. Early in the season (late March if you can believe it), they took game one from the Pirates in a Cincy series. Then lost two straight.

Looking a bit like April road warriors, they swept the Rangers in Texas, swept the Twins in Minnesota, and took two of three in Tampa from the Rays. After a good homestand to win back-to-back series against the Tigers and Rockies, I had the great idea to document the summer in this recap thing.

Fast forward to this near end of May and they’ve lost nine straight against central foes. In the day-night doubleheader on Saturday, the Cardinals punched them in the mouth in game one. An 8-1 final. Do you really need the details? Bad pitching, weak hitting on the home team’s side. It was too cold to go to the opening day of our swimming pool, where I might have drowned myself. Ten straight losses in the division.

In the nightcap, the Reds are down 1-0, but muscle up for a five-run fifth with a three-run homer by Elly followed closely by a two-run homer by Nathaniel Lowe. Chase Petty, making a spot start for a rotation with a few guys injured or rehabbing, promptly allowed a three-run homer to Jordan Walker in the top of the sixth. So an easy win would not be in the cards. Maybe for the Cards, not for the Reds.

Cincinnati clings to a small lead, but what now seems commonplace — a long ball, a walk, and a knock courtesy of the Reds reliever — locks it up at six a piece in the ninth. Neither team scores a run in the 10th inning, which just seems like bad baseball by not moving the ghost runner on second base.

Finally, Blake Dunn hits a grounder that a drawn-in shortstop fires to the plate. Spencer Steer, our Swiss Army knife who can play first, second, third, as well as left and right field, scrambled home fast enough and dove head first under a catcher’s tag. “Reds win! Reds win!” Like a buzzer beater in basketball, there’s nothing but pure joy as an entire team gushes out of a dugout to celebrate like little boys. And I’m happy, too.

Sunday, once again, is postponed by rain, so that Saturday joy will have to sustain me.

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.

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 second. 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.

“Hello, Cleveland!”: WTF, Bullpen?

by William Meiners

I feel for Terry Francona. The Reds manager seems like a nice enough guy, a player’s coach, if you will, and I don’t know if he ever gets too riled up. Though he’s never lived in an apartment above me and I’ve spent more than a few years in basement apartments.

With the Reds elevator drop from the Central’s top to basement in less than three weeks of May, the team rolled into Cleveland for round one in the Battle of Ohio. Rivalry games are happening all over this weekend with Cubs vs. White Sox, Yankees vs. Mets, Phils vs. Pirates, etc.

Francona managed the Indians/Guardians for a decade. Maybe his young players might win one (or two or three) for the Tito. But like the absence of crying in baseball, there may be no bulletin board material either. There’s a saying about momentum being as good as the next day’s starter.

Coming off a 15-run awakening in the getaway game against the Nationals, the Reds put a good starter on the mound on Friday night. Andrew Abbott, feeling his old self as young as he is (born June 1, 1999), pitched well and got three runs of support from his teammates. Tito hands it over to the bullpen after Abbott surrenders a homer in the sixth. In the top of the eighth, the Reds pitch in with three runs, including a two-run homer from Matt McClain, who seems to be getting on track. Up 7-1, this should be a Friday night laugher.

I wonder if Francona sees patterns in the nature of 26 young men. Generally equally divided by pitchers and fielders, the lineups are rolled out like chess pieces, hoping for a winning combination. Among the throwers, you’ve got starters and relievers, including long men, stoppers, and closers. Of a baker’s dozen position players, too many to date still ain’t hitting their weight, including a Gold Glove third baseman. JJ Bleday, who did not make the club out of spring training, is providing solid offensive output from the outfield. Sal Stewart, who can play first or third, has slumped a bit in May after a fantastic April. Elly de la Cruz is a superstar, go ahead and trademark EDLC (and I think he’s already got an ice cream named after him).

In the bottom of the eighth, Graham Ashcraft threw 12 straight balls. If he’d been my Little Leaguer, I might have threatened to murder him. Enter the game with a three-run lead, and it’s like the Guardians are on a speed loop, racing around the bases without once swinging the bat. After loading the bases, Travis Bazzana, born long after “Bonanza” left the airways, singled home a run. Then the next pitcher, Brock Burke, walks in two runners and gives up a sacrifice fly. Tejay Antone gives up one more in the bottom of the ninth but earns the save. Reds squeak out a one-run win. But Jesus Christ, it’s enough to give Francona ulcers. And I think he had some health problems in his Cleveland days. Beyond the general discontent of living in Cleveland.

Saturday was a glorious day for yard work in Michigan. The Reds had a chance to win the late-afternoon start, but the relievers (with a bullpen like this, who needs victories?), give up 2, 2, and 1 in innings six, seven, and eight to secure the loss from a game the Reds led 4-2 going to the sixth. Four relievers, all generous with at least one free pass, made the final score (7-4) look a little more lopsided than it was.

Sunday went “ugly early,” same advice they put on Harry’s t-shirts at Purdue. Brady Singer, in a second straight start, gave up three homers in four innings. Three relievers in red stockings gave up one each in another blowout loss (10-3). Cincinnati dropped back to just one game over .500. And it’s starting to look like a long season.

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.

Ramblin’ Man

by Justin C. Staley

We learn to walk anywhere between 11-13 months, and if we’re lucky, we spend the rest of our lives doing it. We walk for exercise. To cool off. To think. Because the dog has the zoomies. Because Uber is doing surge pricing.

Say the average person walks 7,500 steps per day. That’s 2,737,500 steps in a year. The average life expectancy is 79 years. That means that average person walks 216, 262,500 steps in their life. If it takes about 2,000 steps to walk a mile, we’ll walk about 108,000 miles in our lives. One foot in front of the next, step after step, nearly four and a half times around the Earth.

Once we decide to walk it’s almost as involuntary as a heartbeat. Maybe we think. Maybe we try not to think. Maybe we observe or try to solve a problem. Walking can be meditative, philosophical, spiritual, even. Aristotle walked around teaching philosophy for his Peripatetic School. Nietzsche ambled. Kierkegaard wandered. So did Socrates, Kant, Heidegger. Rosseau wrote a book called Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Henry David Thoreau was a walker, of course. So were Elizabeth Carter and Virgina Woolf. Einstein. Keats. Beethoven. Samuel Coleridge and Williams Wordsworth and Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy who might’ve outwalked them both. Dickens. Nan Shepherd. De Quincy. One foot in front of the next, step after step, every one of them.

Michael McColly, author of the book, Walking Chicago’s Coast: A 63 Mile Journey to the Indiana Dunes, has no shortage of reasons he walks: anxiety, curiosity, to break loose, to discover, to get to know places, to stay in touch with them.

He first began walking when he was in the Peace Corps in Senegal in the early 1980s. Walking was an escape, something therapeutic. It turned into a way to inhabit the world. He writes, “to assuage a physical hunger if not a psychological need to feel [his] body over open landscapes.”

McColly, freshly home in Chicago from a walking trip in the UK in 2016, felt the need to move again. He couldn’t stop walking. He decided — practically out of nowhere — to walk along the lakefront. To where? He wasn’t sure. Then he envisioned walking clear to the Indiana Dunes, a few hours from where he grew up in Marion, Indiana. Within a couple days he was walking. It was only 63 short miles away on foot.

His book is an intriguing blend of travelogue, personal essay, historical and environmental reportage, and phenomenological exploration. McColly is curious about how we interact with our surroundings, what places mean to us, what meanings we give them. He explores time, memories, alienation, and more, taking us from his home in Rogers Park, alongside DuSable Lakeshore Drive, through the Loop, then the “other half” of Chicago, this “polyglot metropolis of ever-widening social, economic, and environmental divides”: through the South Side, South Chicago, the Calumet River, then into Indiana and through its forgotten neighborhoods and cities, including the most famous forgotten city of all: Gary. Along the way McColly wrestles with his memories, with the winners and losers of history, and the relationship between urban landscapes and the natural world. There are victories against development but failures to protect the most vulnerable; there is isolation and community; beautiful beaches and shorelines filled with smokestacks and oil refineries and toxic waste leeching into communities literally and spiritually; there are ancient lakes and abandoned casinos; the ethos of labor and its graveyards; there are lost cities ravaged by racial, economic, and environmental injustices, and there are vibrant communities and hopes for a future.

I meet McColly on a chilly, ludicrously windy morning in early March at the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary on Chicago’s North Side. We walk the path and discuss birds. Once you’re in your 40s you’re required to download the Merlin bird app and buy a pair of binoculars to start identifying birds in your neighborhood. Everyone can agree on birds; birds could heal the world. As McColly writes in his book: “I have found in birds what my dog once was for me — a reconnection to the living world around me. In them I recognize the ephemeral nature of life, in their vulnerability I feel my own. For what is fate to the kingbird or the robin? They weather the winter storms with resilience. They survive despite our stupidity, possessing a will to make do with the world as they find it.”

I hear the cardinal’s perfect metronomic whistles, the angry, twirling calls of red-winged blackbirds, the abrupt squeaks of grackles, the ceaseless chirping of sparrows, and plenty more I can’t recognize. I ask McColly about his mental preparation to make his journey. “The idea of setting an intention was really interesting psychologically. Because I knew I was doing something different,” he said. “I was traveling in the city, and my perception changed. Because I’m saying I’m doing this, everything is changing.”

I’m reminded of quantum physicists, philosophers, neuroscientists, and self-help authors alike, who, for varying (yet cohesive) reasons, insist that the nature of the attention we give to the world changes the way we see it. McColly finds individual histories on painted rocks, truths under white-washed histories of heroes, personal and collective memories embedded into an entire coast. On a 63-mile walk, you have no choice but to pay attention.

Along his two-day summer sojourn, when McColly removes his shoes and checks for blisters or rubs his swelling feet, you can practically feel the aches, but you also feel the relief when he walks on grass, or finds an air-conditioned building, or goes for a swim in the lake and dries in the sun.

We emerge from the sanctuary and walk the fishing pier, the wind nearing violence. Fishermen with their buckets and tackle boxes line the path. The smell of cigarettes appears and disappears just as quickly. To the south is that famous skyline. Beyond that, the rest of McColly’s journey along the Third Coast all the way to the Dunes.

“I wish I would’ve had the time to talk to people,” McColly declares as we double back along the pier. We get glimpses of plenty of people, though, even if he doesn’t talk to them: fishermen, beachcombers, swimmers, gleaners; kayakers, preachers, cab drivers, gamblers, chess players; landscape painters, joggers, cyclists, street vendors, shop owners. There’s a loneliness to this book, as there is in all good stories, but there’s recognition, and recognition tells us we belong.

In the book the lake looms like the sun itself, both place and living thing. McColly reminisces about being in complete awe of it the first time he saw it as a kid growing up in Indiana and goes for a swim in it multiple times to cool down. The lake is baptism, ablution, rejuvenation.

Then there’s the destination: the Indiana Dunes. “That was a story I wanted people to know,” he tells me. With his arrival at the Dunes, there’s no giant revelation, but in this refuge where he feels home, he understands that for all the shaping of the world we do, the places we visit and call home shape us, too, only in much more subtle ways. The Dunes, with its mosaic of ecosystems shaped for thousands of years by the lake and the wind and the seasons, its history just another chapter in the fight to preserve natural spaces, is the perfect place for the collision between the past and the present, between the certainty of a natural order and the uncertainty of our short lives. It’s a place for memory and imagination. In the book’s last few pages, McColly goes for a swim in the lake. And then he starts walking again.

McColly and I double back along the outer edge of the bird sanctuary and Montrose Beach Natural Dunes Area. The Chicago Park District stopped tending to the area in 2001 and it’s since become a protected area for native and endangered plants, and an important natural area for foraging, nesting, and migrating birds.

When we get to the border between the Dunes and Montrose Beach a woman stops us. “Hi. Walk all the way down and turn around.” We’re quiet. “Are you here for the owl?” she asks.

Apparently there’s a snowy owl who’s taken refuge in the dunes. “Okay, let’s go,” McColly says, and I nod.

We trek along the sand and push against the wind. There are several groups of people watching. The wind is something fierce and McColly and I stop talking. We take turns snapping photos and looking at the snowy owl through his binoculars. The owl sits imperturbable, stoically bearing it all.

After some time we head back to the sanctuary and sit on a fence at one of its entrances and wind down our talk. For the first time all morning the wind calms. We walk back through the sanctuary, and after we emerge we shake hands and walk in opposite directions, he back to his apartment, me to my car. I climb in and wish I hadn’t driven.

Justin C. Staley is a burger aficionado who teaches at DePaul University in Chicago and enjoys freelance writing when he can find the time. His stories and essays have been published in Helicon, Crack the Spine, Big Muddy, Cola, and Sports Illustrated’s “The Cauldron.” His essay, “A Giants Fan Walks into a Bar,” was published in Sport Literate‘s “30th Anniversary” issue in 2025. He lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife, twin sons, dog Odin, and cats Bilbo and Frodo.

 

 

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A band of misfits, a forest full of chains, and a lesson in how to be human.

by Scott Bandremer

Bzzzzz. Bzzz Bzzz.
I peeled open my eyes, slowly turning towards my phone. Six-thirty a.m. A Sunday morning my wife and I had sworn to sleep in after a long, chaotic week, to pretend adulthood occasionally came with rest.
I could feel it. She was already awake, peering at me over the satin berm like an artillery scout awaiting bombardment.
Bzzzzz. Bzzz Bzzz.
“It’s the Douchebags again,” she muttered with resignation.
Of course, she was right. It was always the Douchebags.

The Secret Society of Throwers

I’m part of a club — part sport, part therapy, part traveling circus — called disc golf.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. It’s that thing hippies do in public parks, right? The poor man’s golf. The stoner’s excuse to loiter. The weird cousin of ultimate frisbee.

Fine. You’re not wrong. But you’re not right either.

Disc golf is a bona fide sport — legit, growing fast, and quietly taking over the world’s green spaces. Nearly four million players. Sixteen thousand courses. There’s a pro tour with true international championships; sponsorships; even million-dollar endorsement deals — like Paul McBeth’s ten-year, ten-million-dollar pact with Discraft.

Watch a PDGA event on YouTube — perhaps featuring Calvin Heimburg, Paige Pierce or Kristin Lätt — and tell me it’s not beautiful. Those discs cut through the air like poetry. It’s golf without the pretense, yoga with a scoreboard.

The world can be a painful, difficult place at times. Not on the course. Here, it’s about your next perfect throw. Here, the world drops away, and you’re along for the ride.

Enter the Douchebags

The Douchebags of Skylands. That’s our club.

About 20 of us scattered through New York and New Jersey — a mix of lifers, rookies, philosophers, and degenerates who’ve somehow turned irony into identity. It began innocently enough, a couple of old timers hurling typical R-rated ribs in all directions as we played. When — POP — it struck us together, a lightning bolt of stupidity – we’d stumbled on a name for our growing band of players.

It took on a life of its own from there. People wanted in, wanted to be counted amongst the Douchebags of Skylands. There’s a group chat that never sleeps, a library of inside jokes, and a Sunday ritual that borders on religion.

By the third hole, something happens. The game envelops you as the noise of the week fades. The trees become cathedral columns. The fairway turns sacred. It all fuses into a kind of moving meditation. We become a roving band of Douchebags, synchronized and serene, navigating trees, ponds, and the ever-looming threat of OB – out of bounds.

The outside world fades. The course becomes sanctuary, an oasis for us all (and in fact, one of our favorite courses in Warwick goes by the name of Oasis).

You aim, you throw, you breathe. You curse. You laugh. Someone yells “nice!” while someone else’s disc ricochets deep into the woods. And just like that, the world makes sense again.

When the round ends, we linger in the parking lot – dusty, happy, slightly sunburned, ready to exchange our club tags with each other based on our scores. The stress has evaporated. For a few hours, we’ve been exactly where we belong.

The Cast of Douchebags

Every Douchebag member is unique, with quirks we’ve come to roast and to love.

There’s Roach, a beer-guzzling, seventy-something legend of ball busting, who’s been playing longer than some of our members have been alive. A club co-founder, he swears he’ll someday die mid-putt, right there on the green, and no one doubts it.

JByrd, a co-founder, once steered a corporate ship at a Big Four firm before sailing off for calmer waters. Known for his “aarghs” and “ayes,” this patchless-pirate maneuvers through our courses with reckless abandon. You’ll know him by his baby jogger disc carrier rolling down the fairways.

Donnie Douchebag, a rural mountain-man rebel philosopher who teaches the rest of us (especially city folk like your author) about camping, venison, and the Zen of hitting trees. His least expected special gift is remembering everyone’s birthday as my Aunt Annette was known for, which makes him both terrifying and indispensable.

Then there’s Big Mike, RAK, Sings, MJB, Rev, a couple of Jeffs, and Alicia the Champ, a former world champion who still throws like she’s chasing the crown. The roster is long, and the stories longer.

We play everywhere – Orange, Sussex, Morris, and Westchester counties. Forests, ridges, lakesides. No greens fees, no dress code, no starter telling you to tuck in your shirt.

Just trees, chains, and the faint smell of bug spray and coffee.

Not Your Typical Douchebags

Despite the name, we’re not actual douchebags. (Except maybe Brian, but that’s another story.) Our moniker is satire — a badge of ironic honor.

We are, in truth, a microcosm of inclusivity — a melting pot of age, gender, and background — teachers, welders, deli guys, entrepreneurs, retirees, a cannabis grower or two. Seventies playing alongside twenties. Trump voters and Bernie bros sharing the same beer cooler.

And the miracle? None of it matters.

Politics, religion, whatever — gone. It’s just about the game, and the flight of the disc.

When’s the last time you saw that? People who’d normally clash online laughing together in the woods? That’s what this is about. The game’s the excuse. The connection is the point. Genuine, hard-earned, and human. Beyond the throws and the laughs, the club has become something sacred: a refuge where we can share what brings us joy and what weighs us down.

There’s safety in Douchebags.

Some of us are nursing heartbreaks or layoffs or health scares. Some just need to be outside. But every week throughout the year we show up – in 95 degrees of heat, or ten below in a foot of snow. We throw. We roast each other mercilessly. We listen. And somehow, that’s enough. I live for it. I’ve been playing for decades and have no plans to stop. Screw old age.

The course is the confessional. The Douchebags are the congregation.

The Theology of Throwing Plastic

So what does a bunch of multi-aged weirdos flinging frisbees have to do with anything larger?

In an era when “community” means arguing in the comments section, this is the antidote. The Douchebags of Skylands are proof of what’s possible when we choose connection over conflict.

For a few hours, we share one goal: make the disc fly true.

And that simple focus — 20people watching a piece of plastic spin toward a metal basket — becomes its own quiet life lesson.

You throw, you miss, you adjust. You try again. Someone laughs, someone swears, someone hits the chains. You high-five, you move on.

It’s life distilled to its cleanest form: failure, recovery, grace.

If enough of us practiced that, maybe the rest of the world would start to level out too.

Toward a Kinder Brand of Douchebaggery

I’m not saying the United Nations should settle disputes over a doubles round – though I’d pay to watch Putin miss a 10-footer — but the Douchebags of Skylands have tapped into something the world’s forgotten.

Connection — it’s real and at times, it’s spectacular.

No algorithms. No talking points. Just the shared pursuit of a stubborn little disc that refuses to go straight.

And when the last putt drops, the world feels a little less broken. Not perfect. Just better.

So when you hear that early-morning bzzzz — your phone lighting up with a text from friends who refuse to let you sleep in — don’t roll over. Answer it.

It might not be a summons to play, but rather, a call to action to be a little better to each other today. Will disc golf save the planet? Probably not, but it’s rocking the world of my knucklehead friends, and that’s a good starting point.

And if nothing else, a reminder that real human connection still exists. That joy can be small, round, and airborne. And that somewhere, in a forest at sunrise, a group of Douchebags is already throwing.

Because deep down, we all have a little Douchebag waiting to get out — and the truth is, the world could use a few more of us.

Scott Bandremer is a writer and lifelong disc golfer based in the New York/New Jersey metro area. He’s still trying to make par on hole 18.