On the Reds Caravan and Big Mac Stealing Aroldis Chapman's Thunder

The annual Reds Winter Caravan is coming to town near you very soon (if you live near Cincinnati). Just one more thing to get you excited for baseball. 

Some people don’t care for the Caravan; others, like myself, do. Some say it’s just a big autograph session. Others, myself still included, say, “Awesome!” Some folks my age think autographs are for kids. I, on the other hand, get as excited as a little kid when I get one. That counts, doesn’t it?

Needless to say, I will be at the Huntington stop standing in line for a few hours to meet Eric Davis and the Cowboy. Can’t wait.

I hope nobody minds, but it’s unlikely that I will be able to post anything in the forseeable future without mentioning Aroldis Chapman. So I’m going to go ahead and change the subject...now.

Chapman is awesome. We all know that by now. Some of you may be thinking, “How can you talk about how great he is when nobody knows that much about him?” That’s a great and valid question, which leads directly into my point.

Mark McGwire: not awesome. He could have been, but, sadly, he isn’t.

Not only because he cheated his way through baseball’s record books and is a lying tool bag, but also because he completely stole the thunder from the Chapman signing.

So after the Reds made this huge deal, I’m hoping to hear some expert analysis on him from the Baseball Tonight crew and MLB Network, but there is little of it to be found. Instead, they’re covering this Mark McGwire admission like it’s a Presidential election: 24-hour comprehensive news coverage of something we already knew about in the first place.

When they say comprehensive news coverage, that just means they run the same stock footage of McGwire home runs and re-air segments of the Bob Costas interview ad nauseam. Maybe they should play it backwards to see if McGwire admits to using HGH and is actually sorry.

In addition to all of those things, you can expect to hear phone interviews with every current and former player who is still alive and hear what they have to say. I don’t want to ruin anything for you, but they all say the same thing.

On a side note, does anyone know how many times Bud Selig has declared the end of the steroids era? It seems to me that every time someone either gets caught or fesses up to using, he says the steroids era is finally over. I’m not sure if it’s ever occurred to Mr. Selig, but when you have players in the game today being busted for 'roids (i.e. Manny Ramirez), the era isn’t over.

So by the time this dead horse has been beaten beyond recognition, the news about Chapman will be ancient history.

I was really hoping to be lazy on this one and let the information come to me, but it’s just not going to happen. Ah, the life of a Reds fan.

See you at the Caravan.