Cincinnati Reds President Phil Castellini Apologizes After Insulting Fans

You never pick a fight with the fans because there’s simply no way to win. Cincinnati Reds President and COO Phil Castellini learned that the hard way Tuesday.

After basically telling his team’s loyal fans to take the club or leave it, he backtracked a few hours later, apologized, and was left with egg on his face.

“Well, where are you going to go?” said the team’s COO and son of Reds CEO Bob Castellini, the team’s main owner since January 2006. “Let’s start there. I mean, sell the team to who? That’s the other thing—you want to have this debate? If you want to 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. I think we’re doing the best we can do with the resources that we have. We’re no more pleased with the results than the fans. I’m not sitting here saying anybody should be happy. I’m not polishing trophies in the office right now, and that’s what we’re here to do. But the bottom line is—and I do think we’ve had to shift the discipline. We’ve tried a lot of things that didn’t work. And they came this close to working and didn’t. Nobody’s got to tell me it didn’t work. So I think we’ve learned from those things. And trust me, [general manager] Nick [Krall], he is a guy on a mission. And he is a bull in a china shop that has his way to do it and that way’s to grow your own and he’s doing just that.”

Yikes.

What makes it yikes-ier is that since 2006 Cincy has made the playoffs four times (NLDS losses in 2010, 2012; Wild Card losses 2013, 2020) and recorded a winning season on just five occasions.

Not even 24 hours later came the about face.

“I apologize to Reds fans and regret the comments that I made earlier today,” he said. “We love this city, we love this team, and we love our fans. I understand how our fans feel and I am sorry.”