Last year on May 4, after another blowout loss in the middle of the Cincinnati Reds’ 3–22 start to the season, a group of players sat around a table in the middle of the clubhouse in dead silence.
This was the low point for an era of Reds baseball. The Reds had just lost by 14 runs in the second game of that series against the Milwaukee Brewers, and no one knew what to say in the clubhouse after the game. Then, the day after that loss to the Brewers, the Reds had a COVID scare, and some of the team's best players had to travel back to Cincinnati on their own.