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Cincinnati Reds Cincy is retooled and reenergized, if still a few parts short of a Big Red Machine By Jeff Pearlman On July 31, 1995, Dmitri Young, then an outfielder for the Double A Arkansas Travelers of the St. Louis Cardinals' farm system, was walking off the field after his team's win over the Wichita Wranglers when he heard a handful of hecklers in the stands calling out to him. "Hey, pork chop!" yelled a man. Young, simmering, kept walking. "Hey, nigger! Hey, nigger!" Young says someone then shouted. Throughout the game, Young, a congenial, soft-spoken type, had ignored the insults, many of which he says were racial epithets. But this was too much. "It was beyond what anyone should have to take," Young recalls. "So I went into the stands. I said, 'What did you say?' Then I socked him -- hard." The Texas League suspended Young for 30 days. It was, he says, the worst moment of the worst year of his life. When the Cardinals made the switch-hitting Young their No. 1 pick in the 1991 draft, they envisioned him becoming the organization's next great slugger -- Jack Clark with a higher average. And now ... this? "When all of that happened, I didn't know which way my career was going," says Young, who, after falling short of St. Louis's high expectations, was traded to the Reds in November 1997 for reliever Jeff Brantley. "But situations like that make you focus and grow up. It was miserable, but I'm a little tougher than I used to be. I can take anything." This is good news for Cincinnati. In 1998, his first full year in the bigs, Young showed plenty of, uh, punch, batting .310 with 14 home runs, 83 RBIs and 48 doubles (three shy of Pete Rose's major league record for a switch-hitter). Following that breakout campaign, the expectations for the 25-year-old, 6'2", 235-pound rightfielder are once again huge. "Dmitri has that experience now, and experience is essential,'' says Reds manager Jack McKeon.
Young also has 50-home-run man Greg Vaughn hitting in front of him now, and that is essential to the suddenly revived Reds' postseason hopes. The addition of the 33-year-old Vaughn, who was obtained in the blockbuster off-season trade that sent injury-prone outfielder Reggie Sanders and two minor leaguers to San Diego, gives Cincinnati some much-needed sock. Last year, Reds cleanup hitters had a major league-worst 14 homers, and no Cincinnati player has driven in 100 runs since Eric Davis knocked in 101 in 1989. "If the bats in the middle of our lineup come through," says McKeon, "we'll be something." Along with Vaughn and Young, those bats include always dependable shortstop Barry Larkin (.340 after the All-Star break last year), catcher Eddie Taubensee (.307 with runners in scoring position over the last five seasons) and 24-year-old first baseman Sean Casey (52 RBIs in only 302 at bats in '98). It isn't the world's greatest lineup, but it should be better than last year's group, especially if newcomer Michael Tucker continues to display the stroke he did in last year's postseason with Atlanta (two game-winning homers) and if Jeffrey Hammonds avoids the injuries that have dogged him in each of his six big league seasons. The pitching staff is similarly improved. For the last few seasons the Reds' front office has relied largely on retreads and washouts to patch together a rotation. This season Cincinnati has assembled what could be one of the National League's deadliest collections of arms. Denny Neagle, a 20-game winner in 1997 who was picked up from Atlanta (along with Tucker) in exchange for second baseman Bret Boone, may have been the fourth starter on the Braves, but with the Reds he's the ace. After missing most of 1997 while battling depression, Pete Harnisch came back to win a team-high 14 games last year. Number 3 starter Brett Tomko, who turns 26 on April 7, appears on the brink of becoming a consistent 15-to-18-game winner.
Don Gullett, the Reds' respected pitching coach, has a history of helping resuscitate seemingly dead careers. He worked wonders with Harnisch and former Reds hurler Pete Schourek. During spring training, Gullett had Avery scrap the sidearm motion he developed last season in Boston in favor of his old overhand delivery. He told Bere, who says he feels healthy for the first time in four years, to simply let it rip. The pair's strong spring performances were the talk of the Reds' camp. "I don't see why they can't make it all the way back," says Gullett. "Both guys know how to win at this level. They've done it before, they can do it again." Who knows? Maybe the Reds can too. Issue date: March 29, 1999 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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