On Saturday we celebrated America’s birthday, a day of reflection and pride. That day and baseball have always gone together so well.

Baseball, hot dogs and fireworks: That’s us, baby.

It’s kind of a measuring stick day for Major League Baseball, too. If your team is still in the hunt on the Fourth of July, then the rest of the summer will be a lot more fun.

Well, get ready for some fun.

Despite a pile of injuries, the Cincinnati Reds are in the race in the National League Central. While only hovering around .500, the Reds have remained in the thick of things because of pitching. The Reds are no longer the dud in the package of fireworks.

Now the summer gets interesting.

Instead of trying to figure out what to do with overpriced players, the Reds are buyers in the trade market. They need a bat to maybe push them over the top and into the playoffs for the first time since 1995.

Twenty years before that may have well been baseball’s crescendo.

Baseball is a different game these days than it was back in 1975 when the Big Red Machine and the Boston Red Sox staged the greatest World Series ever. Who can forget Carlton Fisk frantically waving his home run fair and into the foul pole in the epic Game 6? It’s a snapshot in time, much like Christian Laettner’s dagger of a jumper that sunk Kentucky in the 1992 college basketball classic that we’re forced to watch over and over and over again.

There were happy endings in both occasions. The Reds went on to win Game 7, coming from behind once again, to become world champions. Kentucky’s loss to Duke lit the fuse for Rick Pitino’s amazing run that included three Final Four appearances in the next five years.

When the Reds won the World Series in ‘75 and repeated in ‘76 with the four-game sweep of the Yankees, all seemed right with baseball.

There was no talk of steroids, which has destroyed the record book and stained the purity of the game. No sir, we talked baseball back then. And if you lived anywhere near here, you talked Reds’ baseball – Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez. Those were our American Idols.

It was a great time to be immersed in the sport that, at that time, was America’s pastime. The Reds-Red Sox World Series was more like the Super Bowl is today. Everybody was watching and everybody cared.

Baseball has lost many of its diehard fans since for many reasons, steroid abuse being one of them and the ill-fated 1994 strike that took away the postseason being another. Five of the 11 top home run hitters have asterisks by their names (or at least they should). They’ve done irreparable damage to a

sport that was built around its records. Pitchers are guilty, too, so don’t call it just a hitter’s problem.

For those who have followed baseball for a lifetime, watching the records we revered get wiped away by the steroid users is like biting into a rotten piece of fruit. There’s nothing sweet about it.

Even worse, the new generation of baseball fan just shrugs about the steroid issues. Bigger is better, right? That’s how they like their athletes, bigger and stronger.

Baseball will survive the Steroid Era, but may not ever be the same. The innocence is gone forever. It will never be as big as it was in 1975.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. And if you’re following along with the Reds, you have the absolute right to feel energized, even giddy, about what lies ahead for the rest of the 2009 season. They have made it past the holiday hurdle as a contender instead of a pretender.

MARK MAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2648.