The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds

By Joe Posnanski

Award-winning sports columnist Joe Posnanski hits a grand slam with The Machine—a thrilling account of the magical 1975 season of the Cincinnati Reds, baseball’s legendary “Big Red Machine,” from spring training through the final game of the ’75 World Series. Featuring a Hall of Fame lineup of baseball superstars—including Johnny Bench, George Foster, Joe Morgan, Cesar Geronimo, and “Charlie Hustle” Pete Rose himself—The Machine is a wild ride with one of the greatest baseball teams in the history of the American Pastime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 27, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061901690

Joe Posnanski

Joe Posnanski is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Baseball 100, Paterno, and The Secret of Golf. He has written for The Athletic, Sports Illustrated, NBC Sports, and The Kansas City Star and currently writes at JoePosnanski.com. He has been named National Sportswriter of the Year by five different organizations and is the winner of two Emmy Awards. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his family.

Book preview

The Machine

A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds

Joe Posnanski

For Elizabeth and Katie

Contents

Prologue

October 22

A Show Like They Never Seen Before

February 1 to April 6

Marshall

April 7 to April 19

How About That Pete Rose?

April 20 to May 17

You Mark My Words

May 18 to June 16

Photographic Insert

Genius

June 17 to July 28

The Machine

July 30 to August 18

We Haven’t Won Anything

August 19 to October 7

The Series

October 10 to October 22

Sun City

February 2008

The Field of Dreams

March 2008

Afterword

Acknowledgments

A Note on Sources

Bibliography

Searchable Terms

About the Author

Other Books by Joe Posnanski

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

October 22, 1975

BOSTON

World Series Game 7

Losers. Pete Rose stomped the dirt off his cleats and marched through the dugout, a crazed look on his face. He stopped in front of each man, glared, his face a mask of rage, an angry drill sergeant, a harsh father, an unforgiving judge. In the moment, Rose hated every last one of these sons of bitches. He knew that, in the moment, they hated him too. But they did not hate him enough. They could not hate him enough. They could not hate him with the white-hot disgust that burned inside him right now. The Cincinnati Reds were going to lose. He could not believe it. Impossible. The Machine was going to lose. He already could feel the acid of defeat seething in his guts. He wanted to take a baseball bat to their heads. Yes, it was a problem. Nobody could hate quite as hard as Pete Rose.

Bunch of losers, Rose shouted. We can’t lose this game! We will not lose this game! His words echoed through the dugout, bounced out into Fenway Park, drowned in the roar. In the stands of Fenway Park, the fans shrieked and begged and hollered. In the Boston chill, their breath came out like smoke. But it wasn’t only these fans here cheering, no, it was all of Boston, all of Massachusetts, hell, it was the whole eastern seaboard—and it was more piercing than shrieking, louder than hollering, something closer to wailing. The Red Sox were about to win the World Series. This was Game 7, the sixth inning. The Red Sox led the Cincinnati Reds by three runs.

Two hundred years had gone by since Paul Revere rode from Boston to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Sam Adams that the British were coming. Fifty-seven years had gone by since the Boston Red Sox had won the World Series. Now fathers and mothers from Boston to Lexington, from Bangor to Providence, shook their sons and daughters awake—The Red Sox are coming! The Red Sox are coming!—and New England families stood together in front of televisions, bleary-eyed, tears welling, and they screamed too.

Pete Rose could see them all in his mind. This was his curse. Even in the midst of the biggest game of his life. Rose could see the big, stinking Boston tea party they would throw when the Red Sox won. He could float over the scene in his mind, a Goodyear blimp, and see a hundred thousand people crowding into Copley Square or Harvard Square or Kenmore Square or some damned square, all those Boston Red Sox fans, make it two hundred thousand of them, men and women and children topped by red and blue baseball caps, all of them screeching with the inflection of John Kennedy, all of them raising a pint to the Cincinnati Reds, the Big Red Machine, the Big Dead Machine, the team that blew it again.

Rose could see it all so clearly. He might have been an ignorant son of a gun from the West Side of Cincinnati. I’ve written more books than I’ve read, he blustered to those reporters who circled around his naked body after every game. But he could see.

This had been a World Series for the ages. Each of the first six games had something to mesmerize the nation—a hero, a goat, a moment of controversy, a dramatic and unexpected turn. The crescendo had crashed the night before, in Game 6. The improbable kept happening. Brilliant catches. Perfect throws. Far-fetched home runs. Comebacks. The air was heavy with tension. The Red Sox loaded the bases in the ninth, nobody out, and Boston’s phenom Fred Lynn lifted a shallow fly ball to left field. Pete’s lifelong Cincinnati friend Don Zimmer, Boston’s third-base coach, screamed, No! No! No! Denny Doyle, the runner at third base, heard Go! Go! Go! George Foster’s throw beat him to the plate, and Cincinnati catcher Johnny Bench slapped Doyle with the ball. The fans were spent. In the eleventh inning, Cincinnati’s second baseman Joe Morgan crushed a fly ball to right field, a home run for sure, but the ball died in the thick Boston air, and Boston’s Dwight Evans ran back, leaped, desperately stabbed his glove in the air. The ball hit his glove and stuck there. Exhaustion. Nobody could see straight. Rose saw. He babbled like a child hours past his bedtime.

Isn’t this great? he kept asking teammates, opponents, umpires, anyone. Isn’t this great? This is the best game I’ve ever played in. Isn’t this great? People will remember this game forever. Isn’t this great?

The Red Sox won the game in the twelfth inning. Carlton Fisk cracked a home run that bounced off the left-field foul pole. He elbowed his way around the bases through the frenzied and drunken crowd. They rang church bells in small New England towns. Sparky Anderson, the Cincinnati Reds manager, woke up in the middle of the night again and again in a cold sweat. Rose still felt good. He knew the Reds would damn well win the seventh and final game. He knew it with all the arrogance he had in his chest. The Reds would win Game 7. They were too good to lose it.

That was their World Series victory, he told teammates before the game. Now it’s time to get ours.

Everyone nodded, pumped their fists, smiled. But did they see it the way that Pete did? Well…no, apparently they did not. Here it was, the sixth inning of the game they could not lose, and the Reds were losing badly. They were playing dead. The offense had not scored a single run. They were about to blow the World Series.

How could we come all this way to play like a bunch of losers? Rose shouted. There were two outs in the inning. There should have been three. Pete kept the inning going. He was on first base, and his teammate, friend, business partner, nemesis Johnny Bench hit a routine ground ball—a double play, for sure. Only Rose would not allow a double play, he could not allow it, he barreled into second base with all the fury and violence he had been raised to unfurl. His beloved father, Big Pete, a savage sandlot football player well into his forties, taught Little Pete one lesson about fighting: hit first. Pete raced in with everything he had; he was ready to knock Denny Doyle into left field. Doyle managed to jump out of the way, but his throw soared too high to finish off the double play. Pete was out, but the inning was still alive.

What the hell is wrong with this team? Rose shouted, dusting off the dirt from his kamikaze slide. What the hell is wrong with you? He paced back and forth, choking in the dust of the dugout, a lion in his cage. He slapped the knees of players. He pumped his right fist. The din outside grew louder, the howls of those desperate and bundled-up Boston Red Sox fans. Fenway Park seemed to be dressed in black wool. And the noise sounded like a wave crashing over a junkyard—all roar and rattle and squeak.

We’re not going to lose this game, Rose shouted. No way. You hear me? We are not losing tonight. You know what people are going to say about us? We’re nothing. They’ll say we’re losers.

Pete walked up and down the bench and looked hard at each player’s face.

We’re not fucking losers, he shouted.

Joe Morgan played second base. He was Pete’s best friend. Every day, Pete and Joe would go at each other, mocking, testing, pushing the limits of that friendship. Joe would taunt Pete about his lack of power—Why don’t you just wear a dress to the plate, Rose? Pete would mock Joe’s five-foot-seven height—Don’t stand too close to the bat rack, Morgan, someone will pick you up by mistake. And it would go from there, back and forth, every day, nastier and uglier, gathering pent-up rage about race and strength and what it is to be a man. Of course, they didn’t mean any of it. And of course, they meant it all. Joe Morgan became the best baseball player in the world in 1975. Pete was on his ass every step of the way.

Dave Concepcion played shortstop, and he played it brilliantly. His father back in Venezuela had wanted him to be a doctor; Davey could not stand the sight of blood. But he did have those surgeon’s hands. He picked up ground balls to his left or his right with precision; on the field, he never bobbled the ball, never looked off-balance. Off the field, though, balance was harder. "I am a superstar," he would tell his teammates, challenging anyone to disagree.

Shut up, Bozo, Pete would say.

Yeah, shut up, Joe would say. There are four superstars on this team, and you’re not one of them.

The next day, Davey would again remind them all that he was a star.

George Foster, the left fielder, rarely spoke. It was easy to forget he was in the room; then, every now and again, he would offer up a surprisingly droll line, and he would deliver it in his high-pitched voice, and everyone would laugh. He hit long home runs. George said he got his massive power from the Lord, and he did not drink or smoke; he could be seen by his locker reading the Bible almost every day. The religion made Pete and the others a bit uncomfortable. But he hit long home runs.

At least George talked sometimes. Center fielder Cesar Geronimo was almost mute. His parents had sent him to the seminary in the Dominican Republic, and he had every intention of becoming a priest. But at night he would listen through the static to New York Yankees games on the radio. And during the day, he played softball and hoped that a miracle would happen. A miracle did. The New York Yankees thought he might make a good pitcher and signed him at a tryout camp. The Reds scouts watched him play and thought he could be a beautiful defensive outfielder. The players called him Chief. He played center field like a dream.

Right fielder Ken Griffey might have been the fastest player in the National League. The Reds’ first-base coach, George Scherger, used to say that when Griffey ran, you could not hear his feet touch the dirt. Griffey was always smiling, but he was not always happy. He had a lot on his mind, but he didn’t think that was anybody else’s business.

Johnny Bench, of course, stood at first base. They were the two icons of this team—Johnny and Pete. Johnny was probably the most famous baseball player in America in 1975. He hung out with comedian Bob Hope. He performed on television. Pete, being from Cincinnati, was the most beloved player on the Reds, the player everyone cheered. (In Cincinnati they often booed Bench.) Writers often flew into Cincinnati to do stories contrasting Johnny and Pete, and they usually came away with something about opposites. Bench was an Oklahoma farm boy, Rose a hard-edged city kid, Bench a round-faced power hitter, Rose an angular man who slashed singles, Bench a graceful and confident catcher, Rose a street hustler with no true defensive position. They managed to sound like friends in the papers, though teammates suspected they despised each other. They had gone into business together for a while—they owned a bowling alley together, they owned a car dealership, they shared the same agent—but they did not talk much. And when they did talk, when they joked around, their exchanges lacked the light touch of ballplayers mocking each other.

You look tired, Bench would say. Poor guy. Maybe you should try catching for a while. That’s real work.

Maybe you should try hitting, Rose would say. You can save your energy because when you hit .250 you don’t have to run the bases.

Look at you, Rose. Breathing heavy. You don’t know what hard work is like.

Well, Bench, I’ll tell you this. I probably would have gotten tired doing what you did last night.

The sportswriter Tom Callahan probably hit closest when he said that Pete owned Cincinnati and Johnny owned the country…and they each wanted what the other guy had. They had feuds. They turned on each other. They nearly came to blows. When Joe Morgan joined the team, he was told that he had to pick Rose or Bench—he could not be friends with both.

But it wasn’t simple. They were connected too. Pete was one of two players who showed up at Johnny’s wedding. And Johnny protected Pete. In 1973, during the last inning of a playoff game between the Reds and the New York Mets, all hell broke loose. The Shea Stadium crowd—fueled by alcohol, adrenaline, and leftover anger after Pete Rose had brawled with the Mets’ beloved shortstop Bud Harrelson—amassed around the field as if arranging a siege. Rose stood on first base, an open target. The fans wanted Rose. Bench saw blood in their eyes, and he pleaded with manager Sparky Anderson to get Rose the hell out of the game. Anderson refused. So Bench stood on the top of the dugout steps, bat over his shoulder, ready to rush the field and take them all on to save Pete Rose.

Then, finally, there was Tony Perez. He was standing at home plate, ready to hit. They called him the Big Dog, or Doggie for short. Doggie had grown up in Cuba, before Castro’s men came rushing down from the mountains. He had been raised to spend his life lugging bags of sugar at the refinery near his home. That’s what his father did, that’s what his brothers did, and when he turned fourteen that’s what he did too. He would never forget the way his body felt at the end of those days. He had always told his mother that he wanted something more: he wanted to play baseball in the United States under the bright lights. She told him to grow up and stop dreaming about nonsense.

You will work in the factory just like everyone else in this family, she told him. He signed with the Reds for $2.50, the price of a visa. While he played ball in America, Cuba fell to Castro. Doggie had not seen his mother in more than a decade.

What made Doggie different was hard to explain…it was a kind of peace. He never made anything too complicated. See the ball, hit the ball. That’s what he said. He knew when to joke with a teammate, and he knew when to lay down the law. He knew how to break tension. The sportswriters around, they liked Tony fine, for what that was worth, but they did not know him. The sportswriters were on deadlines, and they needed quick quotes and witty one-liners, and that was the realm of Pete and Johnny and Joe. Inside the clubhouse, though, everyone looked to Doggie. He seemed to have the answers.

Why you so worried about, Skip? Doggie had said to the manager, Sparky Anderson, just a moment before he went to hit. Anderson looked lost. He had indeed jolted awake in the middle of night, sweating, an unremembered dream still haunting him. He could not remember falling asleep, but he remembered waking up another dozen times with the uneasy feeling that the Reds had already lost this game. Anderson relied on hunches and premonitions. He had dropped out of high school and was so self-conscious about his lack of education that he would not write letters. I don’t spell too good, he used to say. The man had an almost infallible instinct about baseball and men.

What do you mean, Doggie? Anderson said. We’re losing three to nothing.

Ah, Perez said. Don’t worry. I hit a home run.

He pronounced hit like heat—I heat a home run—and Anderson, even in his state of panic, smiled. Doggie went to the bat rack, grabbed a bat. He watched Rose break up the double play and then heard him cursing and insulting and rousing players in the dugout. He stepped in to face Boston’s pitcher, Bill Lee.

Throw me that slow one, Perez muttered to himself. Earlier in the game, Lee had thrown his slow curve, a lollipop of a pitch that peaked at about ten feet off the ground and then dropped gently into the strike zone. Batters wait for fastballs—it is in their nature—and slow pitches shock the nervous system. Doggie was mesmerized, and he could not unleash his swing. Throw it again, he muttered now.

Pete turned from his yelling to watch Tony Perez hit. Bill Lee began his windup, and then he unleashed it one more time, his slow curveball, and Perez saw it, his eyes widened, and he did something funny in his swing. He buckled, like a car trying to jump into second gear.

Up in the Fenway Park press box, the dean of Cincinnati sportswriters, Si Burick, watched the pitch come in. Burick had been writing for the Dayton Daily News for fifty years. He was the son of a rabbi, and he started writing about sports in the paper when he was sixteen—four years before the stock market crashed in 1929. Burick saw the pitch floating in, and he watched Perez double-clutch. Before Doggie even swung the bat, Burick uttered two words he thought nobody else could hear.

He whispered: Home run.

A SHOW LIKE THEY NEVER SEEN BEFORE

February 1 to April 6

You’re no good, You’re no good,

You’re no good,

Baby, you’re no good.

—LINDA RONSTADT, YOU’RE NO GOOD

Nobody knew for certain where the name came from. Rose claimed to have invented it, of course. Well, that’s Pete for you. He had come up with this whole convoluted story, one about a 1934 Ford coupe he owned, an antique from those Depression days when you could get your Ford painted any color you wanted so long as it was black. Rose’s coupe was cherry red. Rose said he called his coupe the Little Red Machine. So naturally he called the team the Big Red Machine. Pete said that’s how the name came about, that’s how the Big Red Machine was born. No one believed the story. No one ever believed Pete.

Bob Howsam believed he inspired the name. Howsam ran the Cincinnati Reds, and he thought of himself as something of an innovator. Back in the 1950s, he owned a minor league baseball team, the Denver Bears, and he came up with so many gimmicks and promotions that some years the Bears drew more fans than teams in the major leagues. He would try anything. Once, he approached a chemist and asked if it was possible to concoct a spray that could make the ballpark smell like a bakery. He explained: everyone loves the smell of bakeries. The chemist explained: no, it is not possible.

When Howsam became general manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1967, he wanted his team to have an image based on an identity that separated them from the times—something altogether separate from the hippies, long-hairs, and bra-burners who danced to that sitar music in the Summer of Love. He wanted a baseball team that would not terrify the good and decent family folk of Cincinnati. He decreed that every Reds player would wear his hair short, his uniform would be wedding gown white, and his shoes tuxedo black. No one would wear a beard, of course. On the field, the pant legs of their uniforms would end just below the knee, and everyone would see the red of their socks. Off the field, they would wear ties and jackets. He wanted them to be, yes, a machine, a Big Red Machine, as powerful and inoffensive and coldly efficient as the big red Zamboni machine that polished the artificial turf field at Riverfront Stadium between innings. Howsam would believe until the end of his life that it was his Zamboni machine that inspired the name. It did not. The team was routinely called the Big Red Machine by 1970, when his Zamboni first swept the field.

A sportswriter in Los Angeles named Bob Hunter claimed to have coined the name back in August of ’69, just after the Reds scored nineteen runs in a game against Philadelphia. Hunter had quit law school to become a baseball writer, and he became somewhat known for his witty nicknames—his favorite being the time he called Bill Singer, a pitcher known for his endurance, the Singer Throwing Machine. Hunter always claimed that after the Reds scored all those runs in Philadelphia, they went to Los Angeles, and he felt like they deserved a nickname that fit their offensive majesty. He carefully considered the color of the uniform and their relentless run-scoring power and dubbed them the Big Red Machine. The trouble with his story is that the Reds did not go to Los Angeles for a month and a half after the Philadelphia stampede. And by then the name had been in papers all over the country.

The best bet is that Dave Bristol, the old Reds manager, came up with the name himself. Bristol was one of those men held in bondage by the game; he never quite received as much as he gave. Bristol was a good baseball player, but not quite good enough to play even a single game in the major leagues. He was a faithful manager, but baseball owners rarely felt the same faithfulness to him. Bristol would be hired and fired repeatedly in his life. As he said, in his Georgia drawl, he never took it personal. He had to be around baseball. He needed the game. And this is what happens when you need them more than they need you. Bristol’s destiny was to spend a lifetime managing losing baseball teams for vain millionaires like tycoon Ted Turner, who once fired Bristol so he could manage the Atlanta Braves himself. Turner’s experiment in self-reverence lasted one day—plenty of time to make Turner into a national laughingstock—and then the beleaguered Turner mercifully fired himself and rehired Bristol. At the end of the year, Turner fired Bristol again.

In 1968, though, Bristol was young and blissfully unaware of his tortured baseball destiny. That year, Bristol’s Reds suddenly and rather unexpectedly started hitting baseballs very hard. Bristol seemed as shocked by this turn as anyone—the two previous seasons his Reds had hardly scored any runs at all. The Reds scored more runs in 1968 than any other team. They scored more runs still in 1969. And sometime during that year—maybe it really was after that nineteen-run sonic boom in Philadelphia—a giddy Bristol began calling his team the Big Red Machine.

Bristol never claimed to have come up with the nickname on his own. Maybe someone mentioned it to him. He could not remember. And he did not care. His Reds were marvelous. Pete Rose banged 218 hits that summer when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Two sluggers, Tony Perez and Lee May, cracked long home runs. A twenty-one-year-old catcher named Johnny Bench burst into stardom. The Reds scored runs at will, and after happy games, Bristol would wander into his clubhouse and see his players sitting on stools, still in uniform, drenched in sweat, raising beer cans to each other. They toasted: How about the Machine? How about us? Nobody can stop the Big Red Machine! It was, Bristol would say, the best time of his life. Then it ended. The Reds scored many runs, but they finished third. Bristol was fired. Howsam decided Bristol had taken the Machine as far as he could.

Bob Howsam hired Sparky Anderson to manage the Reds in 1970. That shocked everybody. Sparky Who? was a headline in the next day’s paper. Sparky was like the other woman who shows up at the reading of the will and walks out with the house and the Rolls. He was thirty-five years old when he was hired—he was younger than any other manager in the game—but his hair was shock white. He kept a can of black hair dye with him, and he smeared that stuff through his hair constantly, but he could never quite paint over the white, and he could never quite convince people he was as young as his years.

He had one of the odder playing careers in baseball history. He played one full season in the big leagues. And that was all. That doesn’t happen much. Baseball seasons bleed into each other, players get called up and down, they get second chances. Not Sparky. He was George Anderson when he first began playing ball, Georgie to his friends. They began to call him Sparky because of his violent temper. He got thrown out of dozens of games. During one of his many umpire spats in the minor leagues, a local radio announcer shouted, Look at the sparks fly! That’s one sparky fella! Sparky became known throughout baseball for his uncontrollable rage, which was better than being known for his other flaw: he could not hit a lick. The Philadelphia Phillies liked his spirit and traded three players for him in late 1958, and they named him the starting second baseman for the 1959 season. On opening day, eighth inning, Sparky lined an RBI single off of an aging star, Don Newcombe. He played almost every day that summer when Explorer 6 sent back photographs of Earth and Hawaii became a state. And at the end of the season, the Phillies’ management still liked Sparky’s spirit, but they did not like his .218 batting average or his home run total. (He hit zero—Never even hit one off the wall, Sparky would say.) They sent him down, and Sparky would never play another game in the major leagues.

He did play in the minor leagues for a while longer, and he became a manager, but his temper still raged. One day, Sparky found that nobody in baseball wanted him around. He sold cars for a while, Ramblers, and he was pretty lousy at that too. He only made a living because his boss, Milt Blish, would throw some extra business his way. Yes, Milt Blish saved his life. He was quite a man. And whenever Sparky tried to thank him, Milt would wave him off and say: Real friendship means you don’t ever have to say thank you.

Yes, Milt told Sparky that he had to put away those unhelpful feelings. He put it bluntly: feelings are for chumps. When Sparky would try to sell cars, he would get angry when people tried to cheat him. He fell for sob stories. If a customer talked about how little money he had, Sparky would say: Look, I really don’t think you can afford this car. He kept doing that until he realized that he was going broke, and the wise Milt Blish said, George, don’t you realize those people are just going to another car dealership to buy a car they can’t afford?

So Sparky put away those feelings. When he got another chance to manage a minor league team, he was transformed. Sure, he still got angry with the umpires. Sure, he still raged against his players. But now he cut the rage with funny stories, scraps of wisdom he had run across…he became a character, a baseball manager right out of central casting. When he became the Reds manager, people said that Bob Howsam must have lost his mind. People wrote letters to the editor and called Sparky a small-time nobody. Everybody made fun of the way he talked, his mangling of grammar, his lack of education, the clothes he wore, the lingering gray in his hair. On a bus ride in that first year, Lee May, a massive first baseman from Alabama, grew tired of Anderson’s constant chirping. May said, Aw, what do you know? You’re just a minor league motherfucker. And that’s what the Reds called him.

Well, so what? Feelings? Nothing more than feelings? Who needed them? All Georgie Anderson wanted his whole life—all he ever wanted since he was a boy living in a two-room house in the heart of the neighborhood that became Watts—was to be around baseball. Then, against odds, against hope, he became manager of the Big Red Machine. Feelings? Forget it. He told friends, There ain’t no way I can lose. First year, he took those players of the Big Red Machine and he flattered them, whipped them, inspired them, insulted them, and guided them to the World Series. Yeah. First year. How did they like their minor league motherfucker now?

The Reds lost that World Series to Baltimore—the Orioles’ third baseman, Brooks Robinson, the human vacuum cleaner, made a series of superhuman defensive plays. Guy busted us up single-handed, Sparky muttered. Well, it was okay. I’ve still got the best team in baseball, he said. "I guarantee ya we’ll win it all in

Reviews for The Machine

[zissou54 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely adore this book. Now I must admit I am very biased when it comes to my beloved Cincinnati Reds, but I truly believe this is a very well written book that can be enjoyed by all baseball lovers. The book covers the famous Reds teams of the 1970s, "The Big Red Machine," focusing on the 1975 season in particular. That team, considered by many to be one of the greatest baseball teams of all time, consisted Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, Tony Perez, Ken Griffey Sr., Dave Concepcion, George Foster, and Cesar Geronimo, dubbed the "Great Eight." This team was also led by future hall of fame manager Sparky Anderson, which makes the case for the greatness of this ball club that much stronger. But in Posnanski's book he delves into the day to day operations of the team, which is filled with glorious moments and also some pretty ugly ones. This was a team of immense egos that was able to put their egos aside just long enough to come together and win the 1975 World Series over the Boston Red Sox. I cherish this book and propose that any fan of baseball, other than Red Sox fans maybe, will also approve of this books merit.

[jonwwil · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was born in 1977, so by the time I started getting into baseball in the mid-'80s, the Big Red Machine was gone. Some of the players were still hanging around, but they were approaching the finish lines of their careers. Still, I grew up a huge Reds fan, hearing stories about the Machine and about the larger-than-life characters that played on it. From that perspective, the book was great. I really liked reading the stories and anecdotes about these guys and the way they played the game. I also liked how Posnanski gave just a light dusting of historical context, just enough to give a sense of what was going on in the world at the time.So this was a great light, fun read...but I felt like it could have been a lot more. It brought up things like Griffey's frustration with his role, and hinted at personality clashes throughout the team, but never explored them. Posnanski kept mentioning Bench's shoulder injury, but never discussed how he dealt with it or managed to play through it at such a high level, or if he ever got over it or how it affected him after 1975. There was a disappointing lack of Marty Brennaman, and no mention of Joe Nuxhall at all. How you can have any book on the Reds without Joe is a little beyond me.But hey, it's January. With spring training still about a month and a half away, this was a decent way to turn my mind to baseball for a few days. And the bibliography in the back of the book will give me plenty of other books to check out the next time I need a Reds fix.

[thebentley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great fun and great nostalgia. The perfect light reading for spring training season.

[teddyballgame · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In The Machine, Joe Posnanski highlights the characters and events that shaped the 1975 Cincinnati Reds and led to the greatest World Series in the history of baseball.The book is very well written minus a typo or two. I really liked the brief insights into the state of the country during 1975. I thought they were appropriate and generally well done.My only wish was that the book was more in depth. It was a quick read and provided a great overview, but I really wanted more insight and detail. I think there are so many ways that this book could have gone. It could have provided a more in depth analysis of the formation of the team (trades, signings, minor league history, etc.). It could have provided deeper biographical data about the players. It also could have focused more on the fans of the Cincinnati Reds and their opinions and sentiments of the team.At the very least, it gave me more things to research and read about. I want to learn more about Sparky Anderson. He doesn't sound like a Hall of Fame manager in this book. He sounds like a moron who happened to be the manager of the greatest team of the last 50 years. He managed the pitching staff in a very modern way for the time, but it seemed like a product of his impatience with pitchers than some great strategic insight.I also found Ken Griffey to be a tragic figure in all of this. His abilities were completely taken for granted. This was probably due to Anderson. Great coaches and managers put their players in a position to succeed (i.e. Bill Belichick), but Anderson seemed to be a star struck manager who took all of his other players for granted. The Reds seemed to have won in spite of him, not because of him.Overall, a really good book. It just didn't have enough meat for me.

[mrtall_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've got nothing but props for Joe Posnanski, sportswriter and blogger extraordinaire, for this compelling portrait of my favorite baseball team, the 1975 Reds.Although the 'season in a bottle' approach Posnanski takes is not new, he exploits its limits and conventions to full effect. Those of us who read Pos regularly are amazed, day by day, by his prolific and insightful commentary on sports, athletes and pop culture. But here in The Machine it's Posnanski's restraint that's exemplary. A book like this can go off in so many directions, and include far too many anecdotes and game summaries, but Posnanski keeps his eye on the ball, focuses, and keeps his story moving forward at a smart pace. I came of age as a basefall fan cheering for this very team, but even if you didn't, spending some time with this book is time well spent indeed.

[gbev2009 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very well written (as usual) and insightful, but there's something missing that I can't quite put my finger on. I'll say this; Pete Rose is one of the most fascinating people I've ever read about. The last part of the book focusing on Rose in 2008 is probably the best part of the whole book and left me wanting to read even more about him.