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April 5, 1973 - Opening Day, Part One - What a way to begin!

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A crowd of 51,579 packed into Riverfront Stadium as the Cincinnati Reds hosted the first game of the 1973 season against the San Francisco Giants on April 5, 1973. The Reds sent Don Gullett (9-10, 3.94 in '72) to the mound, while the Giants countered with Juan Marichal (6-16, 3.71 in '72). Cincinnati began 1973 as the defending National League Champion, having lost the World Series in seven games to the Oakland A's. The Reds compiled a 95-59 record in 1972 and featured the reigning N.L. Most Valuable Player in catcher Johnny Bench, whose 40 home runs and 125 RBIs led the league and captured two-thirds of the batting triple crown. San Francisco finished twenty-six and a half games behind Cincinnati, posting a 69-86 record. They had traded a declining Willie Mays to the Mets in May, and their roster, featuring young talent in Bobby Bonds, Garry Maddox, Chris Speier, and pitcher Ron Bryant alongside veterans like Marichal and Willie McCovey, didn't come together in a way t
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Introducing 1973 - Where it all began (for me)

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I never got to see Roberto Clemente play. We missed each other by a day. His tragic death in a plane crash on December 31, 1972 was the end of an era, a simpler time in baseball that preceded free agency, the designated hitter, and a time when the sportswriters protected the players from themselves. Many of these changes were in motion throughout the late 1960's, but the death of Clemente on New Year's Eve 1972 was the punctuation mark on the baseball game my father grew up watching and the one I've watched for the last fifty-one years. I was born on January 1, 1973, in the proverbial shadow of Yankee Stadium and my father's boyhood hero, Mickey Mantle. I grew up watching another Oklahoma kid, Bobby Murcer, on my not-yet-absentee father's knee. My earliest baseball heroes were Catfish Hunter (the spitting image of my Uncle Eddie), Lou Piniella (because it sounds like vanilla), Thurman Munson (one tough S.O.B., according to my dad), and Reggie Jackson (larger than li
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