In the past few days the movement of two former Cincinnati Reds– Jay Bruce and Todd Frazier– surfaced. One retired. The other, it seemed, had been retired. Although Jay is probably even now lifting in preparation for the 2022 MLB.com analyst combine, Todd was clinging to a minor league contract with the Pirates.
Both of their trades from Cincinnati were at the time demoralizing. Both were integral in the baseball memory formation of Gen Z fans. For those of us who were around for the 1990 and 1999 runs, these two represent rare skyrockets of definable, specific moments when we didn’t have our head buried in our hands.