Sermons from Second: Just one game?

::I came back and appropriately added the title to the post::

The Reds lost yesterday.  Everyone says the same thing.  "It's just one game."  I have to respectfully disagree.

It's a lot more than just one game.

I remember 1990.  I remember sitting on the edge of my bed watching nightly as the Reds beat the Oakland Athletics to win the World Series.  I remember how excited I was.  I remember cheering in happiness and waking my mom up.  Mostly I remember how my 12-year old self felt.  I felt that it was time.  I was going to be enjoying a Reds dynasty.  I was going to see the Reds the next year and every year thereafter in the World Series.  We had made it.  I went to school the next day and told all of my friends (and enemies...and anyone who would listen) that the Reds were going to win again the next year.  While I enjoyed them winning the World Series, I was looking more at the long term.  With Larkin, Davis, Rijo, Hatcher, and the rest...the Reds would be  in the World Series for years.

I don't really remember 1995.  I don't know why.  I just don't remember any of the games or that same feeling.  It wasn't the strike...I actually sided with the players and felt (and still do) they deserve their money.  Why should the owners get rich and not share with the people who actually MAKE them the money?

1999 was a blip.  I was also starting to fall head-over-heels for Jennifer, that the Reds had taken a bit more of a back seat.  I was also surrounded by friends who didn't care in the slightest.

I remember complaining about the Scott Rolen trade.  Josh Roenicke and Zach Stewart were too high of a price.  I remember Redsfest and Spring Training...and April.  Throughout the whole time, I said the same thing.  I love the Reds.  I want to see them win it all.  I just thought it was a year early.  We were built to win from 2011-2014 or so...not for 2010.  At 32 I enjoyed from Redsfest through the first half of the season celebrating 1990 again...after all, it was really all I had to remember in that way.

I got home just in time to see the Reds clinch and watched the whole celebration in tears.  I won't lie, throughout the whole season I teared up anytime I thought of Reds and Playoffs in the same sentence.  I still do.

Last night I saw the Reds in the playoffs.  They lost.  They lost in spectacular and historical fashion.  However, it's not just one game.  The Reds are in the playoffs.  This isn't guaranteed for any teams, no matter how it may seem like it.  (Even the Yankees and Red Sox have missed the playoffs occasionally in the past few years.

I'd love nothing more than for the Reds to win it all.  I want to see the World Series trophy in Cincinnati.  I want to be at a celebration downtown for the Reds.  This is just my fifth year as a season ticket holder, but I have been a Reds fan my whole life.  I have suffered like the rest if the Reds fans at the misery of the past decade.

I've suffered enough to know that last night was so much more than just one game.  It was the Reds actually playing in the playoffs, and I'll celebrate that, no matter how bad it is.  After ten years, having even one game means so much, that the word "just" just isn't enough.