Pre-Season Review (March 24, 2022)
By Marc Brafman
Welcome back, everyone, to the softball blog. It’s been a tough offseason for all of us with the deaths of our close friends and players, Ron Rose and Jason “The Mad Hungarian” Faust. This year we will dedicate the season to both of them. I’ll be sharing stories and memories throughout the year for both guys once the season starts.
Since we haven’t had a blog in a while, grab some coffee, sit back and relax
You know the season is getting off to a great start when last night at the new player practice we realized no one had a bat with them to take BP with. Lucky for us, Stu Solomon was about to get one from his car. But for a while it looked like the new guys would be hitting with one of Mike “Flash” Creemer’s Blue Jays bats…
Our condolences go out to Alan Lessure who lost his mom this off season and Jeff Weisbrot who lost both of his in-laws.
Not all the news was bad as Riley “the Big Man” Able, Jacob “orthodontist to the stars” Stadiem and Mr. Sunshine, Zach Mayer all welcomed babies to their households. Congrats, guys!
Speaking of kids, Ben “Weezy” Lefton’s kids are both playing sports in college. One baseball and the other lacrosse.
As much as it pains me to say this, a late congrats goes out to Scott “why Can’t we Be” Friend on UGA winning the national title over my Crimson Tide. As I gave Scott a ride home from the game, I give him credit for not rubbing it in too much, although he couldn’t hide the smile from his face the entire trip home.
A lot of us made it out to some Bengals playoff games or even the SB. Shorty, The Lefton’s and I’m sure more that I missed. But no one enjoyed the games like the brothers Kamrass who were in the high-cotton suite seats for at least the Raiders game and maybe more. I heard they used the line “Hey, we made it to our own title game with Eppy as our pitcher so our run is more impressive than yours”
Speaking of the Lefton’s since this is the 45th anniversary year of when the Ohio River froze, they shared some pretty cool pictures of them walking across it as kids earlier this winter. Lucky for all of us they didn’t fall in.
If you happened to watch any UC basketball games this year you may have noticed that Rookie of the Year Cam Kirzner was always sitting front and center in the student section and always seemed to find his way onto TV. Maybe it’s because he took the Skyline Chili costume that my office gave him to wear at College Game Day and never gave it back. He will tell you it’s a good way to meet girls. But when it comes to his job as a Rally Cat at UC, don’t ask him to play music on his portable speaker since he seems to have a problem with remembering to charge it before events.
Bryce Anslinger celebrated his dad making the Miamsburg school hall of fame. A very cool story that I’m sure he will be happy to share with you this summer
Another guy celebrating this year so far is Tyler “Big Bad” Wolf and his company, Urban Blooms. If you haven’t seen his work at the new Madtree inspired restaurant in OTR, check it out. It’s amazing!
If you would like to help out David “BP” Snyder and his family please consider donating to their meal train at this link: https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/yvg7ze/updates/ David’s son was diagnosed with cancer so please help if you can.
Also, the Hillel at UC is doing a fundraiser to help out former player Justin Berg and his wife, Lauren. https://www.cincinnatihillel.org/campussuperstar-tickets
If you want a fun way to live vicariously through someone, check out Brooke Fogel’s blog as she travels through Italy. Oh, to be 21 and in college again.
And if you want to know what’s going on around Cincy, make sure to read Doc’s Morning Line Blog each Thursday. That is when our own David “Slim Shady” Wertheim writes a blog post each week on what is going on around town. He also has started a blog or podcast talking about the 4-5 best college football teams in the country, OSU , which I’m sure is great if you want to learn more about the 4th or 5th best team in the country.
If you are like me, and I hope you aren’t, every once in a while you look someone up on Linked in or Facebook and realize they know someone in the league. That was the case with a future client of mine who was linked in with Danny Grefer. So being the good salesmen I try to be, I reached out to Danny to ask how he knew her and if they keep in touch. His answer to this day still makes me smile. His exact words to me where “Wow, I haven’t through of her in a while. I didn’t know her that well, but I did used to sleep with her roommate in college.”
No blog post of mine would be complete without a Reds update. No need to rehash the offseason or all the moves they are making that make zero sense to anyone other than maybe the Big Man in the front office and Nick Krall. But one guy who did want to get his two cents in was Scott “Dire” Wolf who got into a Twitter battle with the newest Red hoping to be the next Eddie Milner, Jake Fraley (one of the stiffs we got for Jessie Winker). Keep up the good work, Scott, as I am sure that both Griff and Mark Tenenholtz are going to have much better seasons than that guy. By the way, only the Reds can trade away two All Stars and get back a guy who hit .200 a pitcher who MIGHT be a 3-4 starter and another pitcher who they knew had a bad arm. How in the world do you trade for a pitcher who you knew had a bad arm?
Finally, if all goes well this weekend Roger will be selling WE ARE 69! t-shirts for XU winning the NIT. That is after he sells his soul for the return of Sean Miller.
Hopefully mother nature will cooperate, and we will be out at Triple Creek next week.
Marc