THE BROO VIEW with Ken Broo

Good Monday Morning!

Countdown to the MLB Trade deadline is on. 4pm Friday is the appointed hour. Do you now who your Cincinnati Reds will be by then?

Alright, it’s over. It’s been over for awhile, it’s just been too hard to let go. Like a bad marriage or a bad job hire, it’s time to admit this Reds team had no chance to compete this season. 7 games out of first place with four teams ahead of them, all incidentally getting better, the Reds are officially DOA today. Pull the plug. Wait ‘til next year. That’s the game we play the best here in Cincinnati.

Pitching, speed and defense doesn’t happen over night to a team that was built for the power game. And it certainly doesn’t happen to a team that carries a $75 million payroll and a farm system that hasn’t been spitting out can’t miss prospects.

What logical reason is there to believe this team has any life left in it? The front office will tell you it does. But then again, it has to sell tickets to 36 more home games this season. The fact is, when the decision was made not to pursue offense this past winter, there was little reason to believe this year would be anything more than last year, or the year before that. Or pick one since 1995.

That’s the ‘rub’ the Reds are facing. They’ve got little equity in the market anymore. Opening Day is a big deal. Whenever there’s a bobble-head to be handed out it’s a big deal. But to paraphrase what was said about the long dead sports entrepreneur Harry Wismer, when the Astros and Pirates roll into town for mid-week games later this year, most of the fans will go to Great American Ball Park disguised as empty seats.

There’s one thing that sells tickets to a sporting event on a consistent basis. And it’s not bobble heads, fireworks or all your can shove into your pie-hole for $30 seats. It’s winning. And this franchise, under several owners and too many general managers since 1995, hasn’t given us a lot of winning.

Marge Scott gave us dollar hot dogs, Kevin Mitchell and Deion Sanders. But she also viewed anything that happened in the Reds minor league system with disdain. You remember the line: all scouts do is go to baseball games.

Carl Lindner gave us Ken Griffey, Junior. He got bullied by a lot of people, including a lot of us in the media, to signing Barry Larkin to an ill-advised three year, $27 million contract extension. And that was it. The rest of his tenure as owner was peppered with the Joey Hamiltons and Jeff Austins of the world. Carl was booed so lustily one Opening Day, he had business cards printed up in time for game two that season, inscribed with a quote from Abraham Lincoln, in essence where Lincoln told his detractors to stick it. I know this because Carl gave me one.

Bob Castellini gave us Wayne Krivsky, now Walt Jocketty. He gave Jerry Narron a mid season contract extension in 2006, then launched him mid-season 2007 and gave us Dusty Baker in 2008. Like Lindner with Junior, Castellini gave us Francisco Cordero. As Lindner froze after that, so now has Castellini.

That’s the way it goes with baseball in our town anymore. We now add another year to the lost generation of baseball fans in Cincinnati. Maybe you’re a part of that. Maybe your kids are. A generation is generally defined as 25 years. If you were born in 1985 or thereafter, chances are you can’t remember the last great Reds team. You want to know the real reason why it’s tough selling tickets to Reds games? That you go. Winning trumps bobble heads and fireworks.

But when did it get to be this way around here? When did we become Pittsburgh-West? Is it because of the economy, the fact that the minor league system went into atrophy under Schott? Was it because Jim Bowden couldn’t find pitching with a map, compass and a picture of Nolan Ryan? Is it because Castellini lost too much money last year in the bogus tainted tomato scare?

How is it, that St. Louis can trade for Julio Lugo, Mark DeRosa and Matt Holliday and the best the Reds can do is call up somebody named Drew Sutton?

Jocketty told Chris Welsh the other day that the price the Cardinals paid for Holliday was too high. The Cardinals sent some of their best prospects to Oakland, renting free agent to be Holliday for the rest of the season. Soon, I’m sure, we’ll hear the same thing about the team that trades for pitcher Roy Halladay. Maybe someone in the city that Bronson Arroyo or Aaron Harang is traded to this week will scream the same thing.

But wouldn’t it be refreshing, just for once, to hear someone complain around here that the price the Reds paid for a mid season pickup was too steep, mortgaged the future too much?

The Reds, Jocketty and company, say they value their top minor league players too much to trade them away. They refuse to mortgage the future for a chance to win now. Maybe that’s the way you have to go in this day and age, with a payroll as tight as the Reds have, with a minor league system that only now is beginning to dig itself out of the Schott-Bowden years. But the road to major league baseball is littered with can’t miss prospects, the Brandon Larson, Ty Howington, Austin Kearns of the world.

I hope Chris Heisey is the real deal. I want Drew Stubbs to be the next Gold Glove outfielder in Reds history. I want to believe that Todd Frazier, Juan Francisco and Yonder Alonso will be the core of a great Reds team in 2011. But history tells me all of that won’t happen.

The Cardinals will win the division this year. They’ll replace the prospects they traded away this month with players just as good, or better. History tells me they will.

The Cubs will contend, the Astros too. History tells me that as well.

But here’s something history hasn’t been able to fill us in on: exactly when does next year come for your Cincinnati Reds?