Dear Reds Fans:
I have a simple request: Stop the wooing.
You can boo. You can cheer. You can clap. You can stomp your feet. You can do a little "Hey, batter, batter!" You can call the pitcher a belly itcher.
But please stop the wooing.
I'll admit I was unaware of how bad it was until recently. Well, until this morning, in fact.
I didn't watch much of Tuesday night's game. I was out. When I got home, I flipped on, saw the score and flipped it off.
But Wednesday morning, I watched Tuesday night's episode of The Americans through the miracle of DVR. The television was still on FSO and they were showing a rerun of the game. I decided to watch a bit of it. It was the seventh inning. Robert Stephenson was in a jam, and the wooers were in full throat.
It was so loud and obnoxious that I couldn't watch with the sound on. I've covered a lot of games when the wooing is prevalent, but you don't get the full effect from the press box. On Fox Sports Ohio's feed, it came through loud and ear-piercingly clear.
I cannot imagine sitting next to a wooer. I'd ask him or her to cease and desist.
So I'm asking you nicely, Mr. and Ms. Reds Fan: Please stop.
Tuesday's game was the type of game at which you get the wooing. The Reds were out of it late in the game, the crowd was sparse to begin with and thinned out late.
A couple of wooers can make it miserable for everyone.
The players don't like it.
"Annoying," shortstop Zack Cozart said. "It's always late when the crowd is small. You don't hear in any other ballpark, except Pittsburgh."
The broadcasters don't like it.
"I think it's stupid," radio man Marty Brennaman said. "I put that in the same category as the wave. That's dumb as hell and so is the woo. I sit up in the radio booth and think there's some guy down on a first-time date and he's trying to impress her with the woo."
I'm guessing the date isn't impressed.
To Cozart's point, the woo can be traced to Pittsburgh. The first time it started at Great American Ball Park was late in a 14-inning game with the Pirates on Sept. 10, 2012.
They had been doing in Pittsburgh before that. I recall some of the Pirate fans at the aforementioned game began the wooing while Aroldis Chapman walked the bases loaded in the 10th.
Sadly, the woo has been with us since. "Sorry about that," a member of the Pirates traveling party told me Wednesday. You wouldn't wave a Terrible Towel, would you? So why woo?
Reds message sites have tried to eradicate it unsuccessfully, so it just isn't old-guy sports writers like me who hate it.
So, again, I'm asking: Please, stop.
