During a baseball season, 40 games isn’t enough to tell the whole story, but it should be enough to get an idea where it’s going. Except when it isn’t — like with this season’s installment of the Cincinnati Reds.  

Andy Dalton jokes that he can now hold his head up and boss around the mere rookies that invaded the Bengals’ locker room this past week for a rookie minicamp. He, of course, is joking. It’s not his style to boss anyone around — more likely he’s showing his new teammates the ropes.   

Last week, former San Diego Charger and New England Patriot Junior Seau, a future Hall of Famer, committed suicide. Like former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson, the 42-year-old Seau shot himself in the chest. Last February, before shooting himself, Duerson sent a text to several family members.  

The Bengals did exactly what they were expected to do in the first round of the NFL draft on April 26 — take a cornerback and an offensive guard, even if the names were different than expected. Last Thursday, cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick of Alabama and Wisconsin guard Kevin Zeitler became the newest Bengals.  

One of the great beauties of baseball is that one pitch can mean everything and one game can mean nothing. The Reds are off to a slow start, winning seven of their first 16 games. It’s not ideal and wins in April count as much as wins in September, but it’s baseball — every team loses roughly one-third of its games.   

It seems every mock draft out there — and there are a ton — knows exactly what the Bengals will do with their two first-round picks on April 26: The team will take a guard and a cornerback. They seem to be the two glaring needs, even though the team addressed their depth at the positions in free agency.  

Nielsen says we’re the smallest market in Major League Baseball, but last week Bob Castellini sent the message that the Cincinnati Reds are no longer a small-market team, signing Joey Votto to a 10-year, $225 million extension that brings his contract to more than $250 million over the next 12 seasons.   

I know I will lose any claim to being an actual Cincinnatian with this statement, but I’m not really bothered that Major League Baseball’s first pitch of the season wasn’t thrown in our city. In case you missed it — and it’s very possible you did — the 2012 MLB season began on March 28 in Japan.  

Much of the offseason optimism for the Reds was dashed this weekend when it was announced that closer Ryan Madson would require Tommy John surgery on his right arm and miss the season. But it’s spring, the sun is out, every team (in the National League at least) is undefeated and now is not the time for doom. No, now is the time for optimism.   

For the first time in the history of the NCAA Tournament, four teams in the Sweet 16 — a qualified quarter — are from the state of Ohio, with Cincinnati, Xavier, Ohio and Ohio State moving on to make up 25 percent of the remaining teams fighting for a chance at basketball supremacy.