Will the Reds Ever Return to Glory?

Let's get this out of the way first:  The Cincinnati Reds are my favorite baseball team.  

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of my (nearly) 40 years on this planet, the Cincinnati Reds have been a bad baseball team.  I was born in 1982 which is super unfortunate for someone who is a Reds fan since it was the 1970s that were the Reds' finest years.  In many ways, you could equate me to former Reds' great Mario Soto.

Even more so than myself, Soto missed out on the very best of the Reds.  He made his big league debut in 1977 but didn't really start much for the Reds until 1980.  By then, the "Big Red Machine" had crumbled apart and wouldn't do much of anything for the entire 12 years of Soto's career.  If my personal life matches Soto's baseball career, then the Reds will probably win the World Series once I die...much like after Soto's retirement in 1988 the Reds went on to win the World Series in 1990 (the only World Series win the Reds have in my lifetime).

So, just how bad has my favorite team been during my life?  Well, I decided to look it up and needless to say, it's depressing:

The Reds haven't won a playoff game since 2012.  They haven't won a playoff series since 1995.  In that time, the team has hardly any player awards - a couple of MVPs, a pair of ROYs, and a Cy Young (Bauer, last year, who promptly left for the much greener acres of Dodger land).  

Even worse, the last several years have been some of the all-time worst Reds' years yet.  From 2013 on, the Reds haven't finished above third...and even though they technically made the playoffs last year (thanks to the expanded playoffs), they got shutout in back-to-back games so it pretty much feels like they didn't get in.  

*sigh*

Oh, and I did I mention back in 1994 the Reds were a first place team when the playoffs ended up getting cancelled due to the strike?  

Yeah, it's rough being a Reds' fan, that's for sure.

That brings us to today.  The Opening Day of MLB...and the opening day of the Reds' 140th season.  As of the start of play today, the Reds' all-time win/loss record is 10,630-10,422 (good for a .505 winning percentage).  

Is this the year that the Reds can finally finish above third place?  Well, if you listen to the majority of the pundits, no.  The NL Central as a whole did almost nothing this off season.  In fact, if it weren't for St. Louis fleecing the Rockies out of Nolan Arenado, the entire Central division would probably go down as one of the all-time least active divisions in an offseason.  Even with virtually every other team basically saying "we don't care about the year 2021," the Reds' ownership couldn't find it in them to actually try for back-to-back seasons (to their credit, the Reds did try to win in 2020 prior to the pandemic screwing everything up).  

And so here we are.  Hours away from the first pitch between the Reds and their rivals the Cardinals.  It'd be nice if the Reds could beat St. Louis on day 1 and start off on the right foot.  I fear an early losing streak would be about the worst possible thing for this particular Reds team.  On the bright side, the Reds do currently hold a two game Opening Day winning streak...only seven more to go before they tie their own MLB record for most consecutive Opening Day wins!

Play ball (and please let the Reds win)!