Reds fans have endured while waiting for another playoff appearance

It has been 141 years since the Cincinnati Red Stockings became America’s first professional baseball team. It only seems that long since the Reds last appeared in the playoffs.

On Wednesday, the Reds play their first postseason game since 1995, when the Montreal Expos existed but the Tampa Bay Rays did not. For the good fans of Cincinnati, the wait has been long and painful.

They outlasted owner Marge Schott, who fired manager Davey Johnson after he lived with his fiancee before marriage and who wondered why she should pay scouts because “all they ever do is watch baseball games.”

They stood behind franchise icon Pete Rose, who admitted to betting on baseball 15 years after he was banished from the sport for doing so. They agonized with favorite son Ken Griffey Jr., who asked to be traded to Cincinnati but whose injuries so limited him that he never played 150 games in any of his nine seasons there.

They suffered when ESPN and Major League Baseball decided the traditional season opener — on a Monday afternoon in Cincinnati — was no longer good enough for a prime-time world. They endured nine consecutive seasons without even a .500 record — until this year, when the Reds won the National League Central.

The Reds open the playoffs Wednesday in Philadelphia, against a Phillies team favored to become the first NL club in 66 years to reach the World Series in three consecutive years. The St. Louis Cardinals played in the World Series from 1942 to 1944, when the NL consisted of eight teams and neither the division series nor the league championship series had been invented.

The American League playoffs also open Wednesday, with the Rays facing the Texas Rangers and the New York Yankees facing the Minnesota Twins. The other NL series, with the San Francisco Giants opposing the Atlanta Braves, starts Thursday.

The October story lines include:

•After the Phillies won the World Series in 2008 — their first since 1980 — general manager Pat Gillick retired. The Phillies promoted his assistant, Ruben Amaro. Within a span of one year and one day, Amaro traded for Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt. The Phillies’ top three pitchers — Halladay, Oswalt and Cole Hamels — make them the best bet in the eight-team playoff field.

•Halladay will make his postseason debut by starting Game 1. He has started 320 regular-season games, the most among active pitchers without a playoff appearance. Texas infielder Michael Young will make his postseason debut after 1,508 regular-season games, second-most among active players without a playoff appearance. The leader? Outfielder Randy Winn (1,717 games), whom the Yankees signed last winter but released in May.

•The Rangers started life as the Washington Senators, in 1961. They have never won a postseason series. Their lone playoff victory: Oct. 1, 1996, on a complete game by John Burkett, against a Yankees team that batted rookie shortstop Derek Jeter ninth.

•The Yankees have 27 World Series championships. Victory this fall could be bittersweet, after the July death of owner George Steinbrenner. The last time the Yankees won without Steinbrenner in charge: 1962.

• Barry Zito, signed for $126 million in free agency, is not expected to start for the Giants, at least in the first round. The Giants got their other four starters through the draft: Matt Cain (first round, 2002), Tim Lincecum (first round, 2006), Madison Bumgarner (first round, 2007) and Jonathan Sanchez (27th round, 2004).

•If the Twins and Reds meet in the World Series, perhaps Tommy John can throw out the ceremonial first pitch. The Game 1 starters for Minnesota and Cincinnati each came back from Tommy John surgery — Francisco Liriano for the Twins and Edinson Volquez for the Reds.

•The Rays won the AL East for the second time in three seasons. No excuses, Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays.

•The Yankees and Phillies are the only teams that opened this season with a $100-million player payroll and made the playoffs. Six teams — the Angels, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers and New York Mets — started the season with a nine-figure payroll but failed to qualify for the playoffs.

•In his final season, the Braves’ Bobby Cox makes his record 16th postseason appearance. Cox has won one World Series, tied for 23rd on the all-time list with — among others — Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Mike Scioscia and Pants Rowland.

•Forecast high Wednesday at Target Field, where the Twins will play their first outdoor postseason home game since 1970: 72 degrees.

Forecast high in Los Angeles, where neither the Dodgers nor Angels will be in the playoffs for the first time since 2003: 68 degrees.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com