Cincinnati: Official Opening Day holiday looks doomed

“I wanna be classified
I wanna be a statistic
I wanna be a clone
I want a suburban home”

A proposal to declare Opening Day a ceremonial holiday in Cincinnati - an idea supporters felt was a sure hit in the birthplace of professional baseball - appears unlikely to qualify for the November ballot.

With thousands of petition signatures having been thrown out, the chance of Cincinnatians voting this fall on the initiative looks about as promising as the 10-games-out-and-dropping-fast Reds making the playoffs.

Of 8,682 signatures reviewed by the Hamilton County Board of Elections as of Tuesday, 6,995 - 81 percent - have been ruled invalid because they came from outside the city. Many of the signatures have been collected at Reds games.

“We’re encouraged that we got so many signatures and that almost everyone likes the idea,” said Michael Schuster, the Downtown architect behind the plan. “What we didn’t fully appreciate going in is how difficult it is to get signatures only from the city of Cincinnati.”