If you loved Joey Votto’s baseball career, it’s easy to trace the origin of said love back to the 2010 season. Fans of the Cincinnati Reds had been in a dismal, dismal place for quite some time, with the loss to the New York Mets in the 1999 tiebreaker the most recent semblance of ‘good vibes’ they’d experienced since the 1995 season.
Votto had emerged for good in 2008, his runner-up performance in the Rookie of the Year voting the first of several times he’d be robbed of a trophy that should now reside in his case. By 2010, the rest of the Reds had seemingly risen to join him, with a youthful wave of Jay Bruce, Drew Stubbs, Johnny Cueto, Mike Leake, Homer Bailey, and Travis Wood stepping up to pair with veterans like Scott Rolen, Orlando Cabrera, Bronson Arroyo, Aaron Harang, and Coco Cordero.