Cincinnati Redlegs at Crosley Field - Midwestern Ohio Memories

This is a guest blog by an anonymous Fish Report reader as part of a series of periodic posts that will focus on fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s.


Cincinnati Redlegs at Crosley Field

This well written article by Sonny Fulks in PressPros Magazine about meeting Wally Post back in 1962 brought back similar memories for me. It was three years later in 1967 that I took my 9 year old brother for his birthday to a Redlegs game at old Crosley Field (in 1953, the Reds were renamed Redlegs to avoid any association with communism and the USSR). Coincidently, it was Johnny Bench’s rookie season. We arrived early and went to our seats in the right field bleachers shown on the photo. Notice the elevated terrace (darker shaded grass) instead of the conventional warning track. Pete Rose was taking batting practice and Bench was shagging flies with his catchers mitt in right field on the terrace just in front of the bleachers. We yelled down to Johnny for a ball and at that moment, Rose hit a line drive right at Bench, who perfectly deflected the ball off the heal of his catcher mitt right over the fence into my hands. So naturally I handed the ball to my brother for his birthday.

Fast forward 20 years, my employer, Ford Motor Company, hired Johnny Bench to do a series of car ads and fortunately I had an opportunity to meet him, so I contacted my brother in advance to have him send the ball so I could share the story with Johnny and ask him to autograph it. My brother said that was impossible because he and a neighbor boy were playing ball years earlier and had used the Bench ball after losing their first ball in the cornfield. Needless to say, they also lost that keepsake ball in the cornfield! Here’s what I told my brother, “You &%#@ ?^%~$#”.