Zach Buchanan

zbuchanan@enquirer.com

GOODYEAR, Ariz. – As each day goes by during spring training, more and more red T-shirts are found hanging in a locker in the Cincinnati Reds’ clubhouse.

They belong to the initiated, those inquiring minds among the team’s position players who cannot help but strive for more knowledge. They are the prizes for solving hitting coach Don Long’s riddle – WIN2483.

The meaning of those seven cryptic characters promises the key to Long’s hitting philosophy. He can’t say unlocking its secret will make anyone a good hitter, but it will at least make them better.

And Long wants it to stick.

“I wanted to have the meaning, but do it in kind of an abstract way so they’d really have to think to come up with the answer,” he said. “Then it’s cemented even more in their mind, potentially. Any time you’re really forced to think your way through something, it’s going to make more sense to you. You have a chance to hold on to it better.”

The 53-year-old Long first posed the riddle before Cactus League games even started, while his hitters stretched in the outfield before a workout. Shortstop Zack Cozart solved it almost immediately, although Long kept that to himself.

The first to get a shirt was catcher Tucker Barnhart. It took him a couple weeks.

“The first day I saw it, I said, ‘What’s that mean?’” Barnhart said last week. “He said, ‘It’s a riddle.’ So I’ve been grinding over it trying to figure it out, and finally figured it out.”

Outfielders Jake Cave and Scott Schebler were the next to reach enlightenment. They cornered Long in the dugout after exiting a Cactus League game in the middle innings and peppered him with questions.

Each received five queries. Through feats of Holmes-ian reasoning, they earned their shirts.

Billy Hamilton returns to Cactus League action at DH

For a time they formed a triad of secret knowledge, the only ones with enough curiosity and obsessive tendencies. They protected the solution dearly.

“We’re the only three who have gotten it,” Barnhart said. “And I think we might be the only three who care to get it.”

He was wrong. Interest only increased, and more red shirts found their way to locker hooks. Third baseman Eric Jagielo put forth a theory behind the cage one day during batting practice. On another day, catcher Devin Mesoraco inadvertently spoiled the answer for an assembled group of catchers and outfielders, despite Long’s request to approach him privately with the solution.

Earlier in the week, Long hazarded that two-thirds of the team had reached the top of the mountain. More have followed since. Most of Long’s shirt supply is accounted for.

“We’re rolling now,” Long said.

The answer to the riddle isn’t earth-shaking. (The Enquirer figured it out, given the same courtesy of a few yes-or-no questions to Long. The Enquirer – which did not receive a shirt – is also not telling.) But it tugged on the strings of his players’ competitive fire.

“Guys kind of talked about it a little bit and then it’d kind of go on the backburner,” outfielder Jay Bruce said. “Then you’d see someone with a shirt, and it’s like, ‘Well, how did he get that shirt? I want a shirt.’ If you haven’t noticed, we’re a group of pretty competitive guys.”

Nothing motivates like a free shirt, although Bruce thinks Long could have saved himself a nice chunk of cash and still accomplished his goal.

No one wants to be the last guy to know, no matter what it gets you.

“It’s very surprising what motivates people,” Bruce said. “It’s just saying you got the t-shirt. It could be anything. It could be a piece of paper. It could be a piece of bubblegum.”

If you find yourself near a player though, don’t expect to be clued in. Those shirts are pretty slick.

“I told them I’d take it away if they gave up the goods," Long said.