Paul Daugherty

pdaugherty@enquirer.com

Short and tart today, Mobsters. I’m feeling like somebody beat me with a wet rug.

The bad news is, D. Mesoraco will miss the rest of the year. That’s almost two full seasons in his prime, lost. Not only was he proving to have a solid major-league power bat, he was showing himself to be a solid guy, generally. Before last season, some of us had him and T. Frazier pegged to fill the clubhouse leadership void.

Now?

Another long rehab. Another year torn from the calendar. He’ll be 29 next June. Not old, especially given the time he will have missed. But no longer young, especially for a catcher.

You think about the average baseball career and compare it to yours or mine. This is as if someone had said to me, you won’t be able to write for the next 10 or 15 years.

(I know, wiseguys. Wouldn’t that be great?)

Nothing to say about it but it’s a damned shame.

The good news is. . . is. . .

REDS TICKETS ARE ON THE CHEAP if you get them from brokers. Had a guy tell me the other day he’s getting good tickets for 20 cents on the dollar.

FC CINCY DOESN’T MISS A TRICK. . . The local futbol club has recruited Bengals for its Saturday game v. Pittsburgh. From the paper:

FC Cincinnati has invited several Cincinnati Bengals players to serve as honorary captains for Saturday's 4 p.m. game against Pittsburgh Riverhounds. The list of Bengals to be introduced pregame Saturday includes Giovani Bernard, Vontaze Burfict, Jeremy Hill, Kevin Huber, Adam Jones, Dre Kirkpatrick and Domata Peko.

BTW, ckout the photo of The Men in the story. Try as he might, D. Peko can’t look hard. LOL. He’s too nice a guy.

I’M FASCINATED BY BRYCE HARPER. . . The Cubs walked him five times the other day. That says some about DC’s lack of a credible cleanup guy, but much more about Harper. He’s become the face of the game.

Do you like him?

I’m trying to.

The danger in becoming an OG on this job is, you stop embracing the new. You become sort of a media Goose Gossage, which is really awful. Get Offa My Lawn Guy is not very appealing, or readable.

In recent times, I’ve made a conscious effort not to look at everything and everyone through the OG prism. Including Harper.

My knee-jerk is, stop being such a brat with umpires. Then I remember: George Brett.

Stop acting so entitled. Then I remember: Junior Griffey.

Stop saying the game is boring. Then I remember: Deion Sanders, who said the same thing to me in about 1995.

The more things change. . .

I happen to agree with Harper re the personal celebration stuff. Old-liners love their old-line unwritten rules about what constitutes Showing Someone Up. Most are silly. Baseball does need entertainers. That’s a reason I appreciated Brandon Phillips, who is entertaining without showing anyone up. Who actually smiles while working.

I’m OK with the Act Like You’ve Been There Before crowd, too. In fact, to me the coolest way to celebrate a home run is a head-down trot. Period. Done it before, gonna do it again.

But I’m OK with Harper. Gotta change with the times, go with the flow.

What do you think?

Meantime, stay the hell off my grass.

BECAUSE WE CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH NFL, CAN WE? ESPN.com’s Power Rankings have The Men at No. 7, and say this:

What a draft. Tyler Boyd in the second, Andrew Billings in the fourth, Cody Core in the sixth. April is one of the 11 months out of the year when the Bengals look like they're doing this whole thing as well as any other team.

NATS BEWARE. . . Great stuff, as usual, from Tom Verducci:

Big news item: The Nationals are betting $175 million that the rebuilt elbow of Stephen Strasburg, a pitcher with risky mechanics, will hold up for 13 years post-surgery as he ages to 35 years old.

Much smaller news item (apparently, especially in Washington): Last week was a very, very bad one for erstwhile great pitchers who are barely into their 30s.

Wednesday: Felix Hernandez, 30, allowed eight runs in four innings with a 90.5-mph fastball, down two mph from last year and four from five years ago. He has obtained one swing and miss on 117 fastballs over his past three games (though he did get an uptick in velocity Monday).

Thursday: Matt Cain, 31, gave up eight runs in four innings, pushing his ERA to 7.84. John Danks, 31, with a 4.92 ERA the past five years, was cut by the White Sox.

Friday: Tim Lincecum, 31, who didn’t touch 92 with any of his 1,323 pitches last year and has a 4.68 ERA over the past four years, held an open tryout to see if anybody wanted him. Yovani Gallardo, 30, remained shut down, three weeks after Baltimore put him on the disabled list with a bum shoulder. Max Scherzer, 31, gave up four homers and seven runs in a game for the first time in his career, swelling his ERA to 4.60 this year and 4.06 over his past 24 starts.

Saturday: David Price, 30, gave up six runs in less than five innings, bloating his ERA to 6.75. His four-seam fastball averaged 92.9 mph, down two mph from last year and down three from five years ago. He threw 37 fastballs and managed only one swing and miss.

By the end of the 2013 season, Lincecum, Hernandez, Price, Scherzer and Justin Verlander (who had just turned 30 and was the oldest of the bunch) had already won a combined six Cy Young Awards. Now all of them are fighting a fear among pitchers that is second in anxiety only to injury: the Cliff Year. What is a Cliff Year? It’s the time when a pitcher’s premier stuff falls off, never to be seen again.

MORE VERDUCCI. . . Haven’t read this yet, but I will. He’s one of the few guys at SI now whose writing draws me to the magazine. I can’t imagine this piece will be anything but fabulous.

GET WELL, MATT DUNN. . . From Mobster Stephen Wood:

I am part of an online community that supports the Redlegs on a website called Reddit. We are avid Reds fans and are a tight-knit bunch. One of our regular members, a fella by the name of Matt Dunn ( username /u/MacaroniNJesus ), had open-heart surgery on Sunday and is currently in recovery. Our community is banding together to send cards and various support to him.

We all follow the various media outlets for Reds news and I know that he does the same. My request is that you could send him a shout out over Twitter or something similar.

That’s it, that’s all. The creeping crud is on the march. Covers over me haid time.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . .Betcha never heard o’ this guy. Me, neither until I heard this tune. I’m a fan now.