Reds Lose Seven in a Row After Team President Dared Fans to Abandon Them: ‘Where You Gonna Go?’

The Cincinnati Reds have lost seven straight games after team President Phil Castellini essentially dared fans to desert the team.

The Reds were downed by the San Diego Padres on Monday night, extending their losing streak to seven.

On April 12, he was asked on the Eddie and Rocky Show on WLW Cincinnati why fans should continue to have “faith” in the current ownership after 16 years of producing mostly mediocre and at times bad teams.

“So you have people who say, ‘Look, faith is earned. Fifteen years of ownership and they haven’t won to the extent that we would like, and so, you had my faith, but you’ve lost it,'” he was asked. “Why should that fan maintain trust in you?”

Phil Castellini doesn’t care what the fans think because you have no choice but to root for them. Or the team will be sold and moved. pic.twitter.com/FKGBV88TSg

— Wooooo™ (@WoooooTheReds) April 12, 2022

“Well, where you gonna go?” replied Castellini, whose father Bob Castellini leads the group that owns the Reds. “Let’s start there. Sell the team to who? That’s the other thing. I mean, do you wanna have this debate? You know, if you look at, what would you do with this team to have it be more profitable, make more money, compete more in the current economic system that this game exists? It would be to pick it up and move it somewhere else. And so, be careful what you ask for.”

Castellini added that he thinks ownership is doing the best it can “with the resources that we have.”

Not only did Castellini basically dare fans to leave the team, he suggested it would be more profitable for ownership to move the the Reds elsewhere.

When he made the comments the Reds were 2-2. Since then, they’ve dropped a two-game set to the Cleveland Guardians, were swept in a four-game series by the Los Angeles Dodgers, and lost to the Padres on Monday night.

The team’s abysmal performance early in the season and ownership’s apparent skepticism of the viability of an Ohio-based market calls to mind the 1989 film Major League. In that flick, Cleveland Indians owner Rachel Phelps assembles a ragtag group of big league misfits in the hope that they will perform so poorly, the league will give her permission to move the team to Miami.

Her scheme is thwarted after the team overachieves, sells out the stadium, and makes it to the World Series.

Unfortunately for the Reds, who have not been to a World Since since 199o, their 2022 season is not a work of fiction.