I took the Metro Red Line into downtown Los Angeles late in the afternoon on September 30, wearing a faded, cotton 1952 Cincinnati Reds jersey. I unbuttoned the Chuck Harmon throwback—a nod to the first Black player for the Reds, remembered by very few, even in Cincinnati—at Union Station to better show off the shirt beneath it which depicted the most iconic Red, Pete Rose standing with his hands in the air, having reached base safely, his nickname emblazoned on the black shirt in white lettering below the image: “Charlie Hustle.” On the Metro, I was the only one wearing Reds merch; the other passengers, also bound for the Dodger Stadium Express, hurried out of the subway station beneath the famous art-deco train depot, children clutching blue foam fingers and oversized foam headgear shaped like baseball caps. On the bus, I watched the cityscape slip by, the hills shimmering, the heat still holding even though fall had officially begun a week and a half before.…