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At Least Reds Can't Erase Sarasota Memories

Associated Press photo

The lights shine on Ed Smith Stadium as the Cincinnati Reds play the Boston Red Sox in a spring training baseball game in Sarasota, Thursday, March 19, 2009.

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By JOE HENDERSON

jhenderson@tampatrib.com

Published: March 27, 2009

Updated: 03/27/2009 01:40 am

SARASOTA - When a baseball team leaves one city for another, it's personal. Jobs are lost, lives are changed, and memories become more precious because that's all that gets left behind. So it is for the Cincinnati Reds, who next week will conclude their final spring training here before moving to Arizona.

The Reds have been a Bay area fixture since 1946, when they began a 41-year stay in Tampa, followed by 11 more in Plant City before moving to Sarasota in 1998. A trip to Sarasota in the spring was like a little slice of Cincinnati; you could even get a Skyline Chili coney. Will that taste the same in Arizona? Will anything be the same?

Gene Egan has been a groundskeeper at Ed Smith Stadium since 1996, but it has been more than a job. He doesn't know what the future holds after the Reds leave town, but that's not the most important thing right now. He did more than line the fields, cut the grass and prepare the infield in this job. He made friends.

"You can't print what I'm thinking right now," he said. "If they had just kept the politics out of

it ..."

The blame game has been ongoing since the Reds signed a deal with Goodyear, Ariz., after voters rejected a $54 million referendum in November that would have paid for renovations to the stadium and other projects.

The arguments - who was right, who was wrong - seem kind of hollow now anyway. The Reds are moving to a new home they'll share with the Cleveland Indians, who fled Winter Haven. Nothing will stop that now.

"It's real melancholy for me," Reds Hall of Fame radio announcer Marty Brennaman said. "For my money, this is the best place in baseball to train. It's just really sad the way this whole thing went down. I just love this place."

Brennaman joined the Reds in 1974, when they trained in Tampa. You think about the great players who came through here since then - the stalwarts of the Big Red Machine like Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan and Pete Rose. Later stars like Eric Davis, or the Nasty Boys who made up Lou Piniella's World Series-winning bullpen in 1990.

The same story of broken memories and moving vans has played out in too many Florida cities - in Winter Haven, Vero Beach, Haines City, Port Charlotte (where the Rangers left before the Rays took over) and now, for a second time, in Sarasota. The Reds moved there after the White Sox left. Next year, Florida and Arizona will have 15 teams each.

They can take the team. They can't take Gene Egan's memories of players like Sean Casey, perhaps the nicest human ever to wear baseball cleats. Or of current player Joey Votto, who, Egan says, "could fit in Sean Casey's shoes."

He shook his head.

"You know what's the saddest part?" he said. "Once they move out of here next week, I'll never get to see them again."

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