STORY AND PHOTOS BY BOB WOODIWISS

During the scoreless, hitless, lifeless 6th, 7th and 8th innings, I mercifully drifted off to dreamland, travelling to this beach in Mexico where I'd vacationed a few years ago. I awoke in a cold sweat when a Speedo-clad Joe Nuxhall entered my dream asking me to rub sunblock on his back.

Not terribly long ago, I was quite the baseball fan. I went to 15, 20 Reds games a year, smug in the knowledge that, rather than lazing at home on my ass drinking cheap beer watching ESPN like some loser, I was placid on my ass drinking costly beer in a place from where ESPN typically broadcast events for such losers.

During those game-attending years, I, unlike so many of my fellow Cincinnatians, was no fair-weather fan. Unh-unh. I schlepped myself down to Riverfront Stadium regardless of the home team's position in the standings.

In fact, if the Reds were on a sucking streak, I simply made a different kind of fun: peppering the hapless Boy Millionaires of Summer with playful, catchy barbs like, "Morgana's tits swing harder than you" and "We want a pitcher, not a palace eunuch of Imperial Dynastic China, circa the 16th Century." Sweet.

Then came 1994. And my enthusiasm faded. Collapsed. Died. I stopped going to games. Completely.

And while, yes, it's true that that was the famed "Strike Year," my reasons for abandoning the game were far more complex than the fact that I couldn't decide if it was preferable for the new collective bargaining agreement to entitle a .220 hitting utility infielder to make more money in a year than Nelson Mandela has made in his life or, conversely, if it should grant the owners "mineral rights" to all rookies and thereby permit them to drain and sip the young athletes' robust bodily fluids from solid gold chalices.

To be honest, a huge part of my crisis of enthusiasm came when I lost my connection to the boffo blue field-level, 10-rows-behind-the-dugout-right-on-third-base box seats I'd grown accustomed to. This loss drove me out into the far-from-the-action, declasse red seats, amongst the less genteel fans.

And while it was undeniably entertaining to see some drunk, bloated, shirtless asshole plunge, headlong, from loge to plaza level, it didn't, I'm afraid, happen with enough regularity to keep me coming back.

I also found that baseball wasn't keeping up with who I was. By the mid-1990s, I'd evolved into a man who wanted, nay, ached, to stretch in the fifth inning; baseball insisted on withholding that activity until the seventh.

Additionally, despite MLB's "modernization" efforts (shrinking the strike zone, adding wild card teams to the playoffs, increasing minority participation in front office management by persuading the courts to legally declare billionaires a minority, etc.) Commissioner Bud Selig adamantly refused to update his nickname to, say, Trey or Puff Buddy.

I must confess, though, that the final wedge between baseball and me was my lingering, festering resentment over the whole Pete Rose/gambling mess. My God, I remember thinking, if the all-time hits leader doesn't get to be in the Hall of Fame, what's next? The presidential candidate who wins the popular vote doesn't get to be president?

Bringing us to the now. To 2002. Eight baseball-less years later.

I snagged this autograph from one of the Reds during batting practice. Unfortunately, since the vast majority of the names and faces on the current roster are completely unknown to me, I have no idea who this is.

Over that time, my life has been largely transformed. Not long after losing interest in baseball, I also lost interest in football, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, soccer, boxing, lacrosse, the Olympics, the Pan-Am Games, the Goodwill Games, motor sports, fencing, curling, horseracing, polo, rodeos, professional wrestling, Greco-Roman wrestling, sumo wrestling, arm wrestling, thumb wrestling, croquet, cliff diving and LeRoy Nieman, respectively. (I do still occasionally attend Bosnian Minefield Rugby but, I confess, mainly for the explosions.) Am I better off for being less of a sports fanatic? I think so, if only because it's given me the time and opportunity to sex it up with the "sports widows" of several friends.

Of course, not living in a vacuum, I'm aware that the Reds have changed, too. For instance, they now allow players to wear facial hair, affording them the same rights as prep boy athletes and Eastern European female soccer teams; switched managing partners (out with the wealthy, unlikable old woman, in with the wealthy, unlikable old man); employed the entire Boone family; inducted Johnny Bench's ego into the Reds Hall of Fame; and not only renamed their stadium (paying overdue tribute to 1940 World Series hero Mel Cinergy) but stand ready, next season, to move into a new one.

Which is why I'm here, actually. At the beginning of the 2002 season, the Reds began a marketing campaign suggesting that fans come to Cinergy Field and relive their fond memories.

At first, I thought this was rather disingenuous considering they'd pretty much blackmailed the city and its citizens into building the new one and were therefore one of the parties responsible for Cinergy's obsolescence. Soon, though, as wistful memories of piss-warm Hudepohl and crapping-on-the-Astroturf St. Bernards filled my head, I softened. I knew I had to say goodbye.

So on a recent Sunday afternoon I went once again -- and quite possibly for the last time -- to take in a game at the old ball yard. But this time I took my camera and notebook. To capture my impressions. For posterity. For old times' sake.

And for the extra dough one gets from CityBeat for doing a piece with both copy and art.

	Whenever I go to a game, I always like to keep score. For some reason, though, I never score the game I'm actually watching. This one, conscientiously filled out during the Reds' 7-1 loss to the Braves, is for a 14-3 shellacking of the Orioles by the Indians that occurred in July 2000.

Throughout the stands, many fans, in addition to watching the game, listen to Marty and Joe do the play-by-play on the radio. After some initial thoughts along the "adding insult to injury" line, I finally figured out that these fans had devised an ingenious system to defeat mind-numbing tedium with life-affirming pain. I immediately began to think of ways I could incorporate this system into my own life. For instance, this is me taking an economy class transatlantic flight with my feet in a tank full of piranhas.

There are stands inside and outside the park where, if you want to teach your child the meaning of the word "squander" or simply announce to the world "I have a low IQ," baseball merchandise can be purchased. For major items, like player jerseys and team caps, instant, on-the-spot home equity loans can be arranged; for smaller items, like logo'd pocket lint or an Official Cincinnati Reds Glue Stick, you'll simply be shaken upside-down by your ankles by a couple of goons until all the money you have falls out of your pockets.

	Reds management has really tightened security this season. This officer, for instance, has orders to "subdue and detain" any radical agitator seeking to menace society with inflammatory speech about how Junior is dogging it and isn't earning his big money.

In the top of the 5th, this ball was lined hard into the stands. At the time, my attention was focused not on the field but on the oh-so-rare triple-nut peanut I'd come across in my bag of salted-in-the-shells. Thus distracted, the ball caromed off my head. The Reds, obviously concerned, dispatched their team doctor to examine me, whereupon I was immediately declared 100 percent fit to sign a release relieving the Reds of all liability for any injury or related medical bills. The doctor also diagnosed me as having hyperflatulence as well as a serious infestation of head lice.

	The nearby construction of Great American Ball Park necessitated the removal of Cinergy's perpetually empty centerfield seats. Tradition-loving Cincinnatians, however, immediately pitched in and made the adjustment, staying away from games in large enough numbers so that right field could become the perpetually empty section of the stadium.

Fairly or unfairly, baseball umpires have always been the most maligned officials in all of sport. Here, just before the start of the game, the blind, evil bastards got together to discuss their plot to cheat senior citizens out of their life savings with a telemarketing scheme, then use the money to finance their distribution of free heroin in high schools as a means to lure teen-agers into Satan worship.

	This fan told me that for 30 years, from 1970 to 2000, his back was covered with synthetic AstroFur. Last year, however, he replaced the artificial thatch with "natural back hair" in order to cut down on injuries to his ponytail.

	To any Cincinnatian who feared Third Reich-memorabilia-collector Marge Schott was forced out of the front office before she could win the allegiance of sports-loving skinheads, you can relax now.

With his banana empire in the crapper, Chiquita CEO and Reds Managing Partner Carl Lindner has converted many of his Guatemalan plantations to the production of these highly profitable giant mutant ballpark pretzels. While the exact "recipe" is a closely guarded secret, anonymous refreshment stand sources tell me the major "ingredients" of each doughy unit are one Rold Gold Tiny Twist Pretzel, massive doses of radiation and a dehydrated, granularized Guatemalan peasant sprinkled on top. One taste tells you Carl's on to something here.

	Pink cotton candy. Pink ice balls. Pink lemonade. Suddenly, my "craving a hot dog" seemed less like a normal ballpark hunger than an indicator of latent tendencies.

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