WORLD SERIES / CINCINNATI REDS vs. OAKLAND ATHLETICS : This Team Should Be Red-Faced

The God-given gift of child-bearing is exclusive to women. As a man, about all I can do is try to be there for a woman at the time she is having our baby, same way I was there at the time we created it.

Thank goodness I do not pitch for the Cincinnati Reds.

When it comes to being in labor, the Reds have their own peculiar priorities. They place the manual labor of their baseball players and the winning of a World Series game as being more urgent and more necessary than being with one’s wife during parturition, as we discovered Wednesday night.

And the Reds are owned by Marge Schott, a woman.

With Game 2 against the Oakland Athletics in progress, Cincinnati pitcher Tom Browning was notified that his wife, Debbie, had gone into labor. Because Browning is scheduled to start today’s Game 3 at Oakland, the Reds did not expect to need him Wednesday. He took his wife to the hospital.

When the score became tied later in the game, however, the Reds suddenly became so panicked--imagine, they became panicked--that they were not going to have enough pitchers that they asked their radio voice, Marty Brennaman, to broadcast a message to Browning that if Tom was out there listening, he should hurry back to the stadium immediately.

Now, think about this for a minute. A man whose wife is in a potentially life-threatening situation, is told that there is something far more important he must attend to, that being the final score of a baseball game being played someplace downtown.

Shame on the Reds and on anybody who participated in this lunacy. Even if Tom and Mom Browning are extremely understanding, the fact remains that no World Series game bears anything remotely close to the importance of bearing a child, and this is not the 19th Century, where you just sat back and waited for your woman to do all the work.

Do you know how many pitchers Cincinnati had used Wednesday when this earth-shattering emergency of theirs came up?

Five.

And that’s how many the Reds used in the entire game, which lasted 10 innings. Not 15 innings. Not 20. It lasted 10 innings, with pitchers Rick Mahler and Randy Myers remaining in the bullpen, unused.

You can be as sympathetic to the Reds’ management as you like, reasoning how the poor dears had to plan in advance for the possibility of the game dragging on and on, but there was no call for them pulling apart Tom Browning’s already unsteady emotions like a wishbone, just because Manager Lou Piniella misused his available pitchers or didn’t leave himself a large enough supply on the roster.

We seem to have a “the game is the important thing” mentality this time of year that precludes any other outside event, including earthquakes.

Yes, Tom Browning did not have to be beside his wife when she was having their baby. He was not doing the actual delivery. She was not stuck inside some barn with a midwife and a kerosene lantern.

But there is real life and then there is baseball. Having a baby is more than just a Kodak moment and a pocketful of cigars. There is pain and need and fear. Complications can occur. Debbie Browning didn’t need Tom there to help her pick out a dress. She needed Tom there because she was giving birth to their child.

Tom is 30 years old and an adult. He can make up his own mind about such things. Who knows? Maybe he would have hurried back to pitch because Debbie “would have wanted it that way.”

Just be glad that the Reds won the game when they did. Heaven forbid the manager should ask Norm Charlton to pitch more than one inning, or Rob Dibble more than two, or Mahler or Myers to do a little extra. Heaven forbid Tom Browning not be there when the game moved into the 18th inning and the clock struck midnight.

Somebody undoubtedly will try to tell me that Daddy could not have given a sweeter birthday present to baby Browning than to have gone back and won the big ballgame. A rainstorm was headed Cincinnati’s way. Browning could have grabbed a cab and told the driver: “Riverfront Stadium and step on it! I got a game to pitch!” Real Hollywood stuff.

Maybe he could have pitched it in a hospital gown.

Maybe he could have named the baby Lou, or Marge, or Red.

Maybe he would have been so excited, he’d have pitched with the wrong hand, or run to the wrong dugout, or forgot to wear his socks, something like that.

All I can say is, Marge Schott wouldn’t have sent her dog out on a night like this.

And even if she would have, she wouldn’t have asked her to come back.