Brooks, Griffey..........

Ahmad Brooks has always been a very talented football player. What concerns me is what lies directly in between his ears. I don't care if he is the most gifted athlete to ever walk the face of the earth. He has been accused of punching a woman in the face. If he did this, my hope is that he would be off the team so fast it would make his head spin. Any man who has ever hit a woman is a coward. There has NEVER been a reason for a man to lay his hands on a woman for ANY reason. I hope this never happened, but rest assured, Bengals will know soon enough.

The Keith Rivers drafting makes me feel a whole lot better about the team.

Ken Griffey Jr. When I was 12 years old, I still lived in Cincinnati. My father had season tickets to the Reds at the time, and I was lucky enough to attend Game 1 of the 1990 World Series. To this day, it is still the most amazing thing I have ever been a part of with sports. I have always been a Reds fan, and always a Ken Griffey Jr fan. The only reason I could see a person not being a fan of Jr, was if they were a fierce rival. He was the best player in baseball in the 90's. One of the greatest centerfielders to ever step foot on the field. And he was one of the few superstars to never be linked to steroids.

Fast forward to Feb 10, 2000.

One of my all time favorite players traded to my team, in the prime of his career. He has a solid year in 2000, with 40 homers and 100+ rbis. Injury after injury for the next 6 years. He is now a shell of his former self athletically. But he still has the same swing. And, if you watched the game yesterday, he still has the talent to take away an extra base hit from someone else every now and then.

And now, he wants to be on a contender. He wants what his dad has. He wants what he grew up seeing in Cincy as a young kid. He wants to win a championship. He would love for it to be in the Queen City. He also knows that this is likely his last year as a Red. If the Reds don't turn around this season in the next couple of weeks, he deserves a chance to win a championship. It certainly doesn't appear to be happening in Cincy. We've got a passionate owner, who wants the Reds to win just as bad as we do. So he hires the best guys he knows of, in Dusty Baker and Walt Jocketty.

I hope the Reds get the ball rolling soon. If we don't improve this month, Griffey and Dunn may be gone. And while I like Jocketty, Krivsky was an amazing young talent evaluator. Reds fans will always thank him for getting us players like Brandon Phillips and Edison Volquez. I'd probably be a little more comfortable with upcoming trades if Krivsky were still here.

Hopefully we can land a young stud catcher and a young shortstop that could start in Cincy within a couple of years between trades and the draft. We need to get better up the middle. And we need to figure out what is wrong with Arroyo.

If you want to read a really good blog, click my link to C.Trent Rosecrans blog. He's a very funny, talented writer.

Maltzy