Pete Rose roamed around the diamond during his 24 big-league seasons. Depending on when one saw him, the picture of Charlie Hustle with a glove on his hand varies. He was primarily a second baseman from 1963 through 1966. He shifted to the outfield in 1967, and played eight full seasons there through 1974 – even winning a pair of Gold Gloves in 1969 and 1970. During the final phase of his career, from 1979 through 1986, he was a first baseman.

Yet Rose also played third base in about 18 percent of his games – chiefly from 1975 through 1978. His move from left field to third base in early May 1975 often receives credit as a pivotal moment in the success of the 1975 Reds — and with good reason. The batting order became much more potent because Rose continued to set the table and George Foster soon took over left field. Also, keeping Rose’s bat in the lineup over light-hitting utility types John Vukovich, Doug Flynn, and Darrel Chaney did not come at a cost in defense. As Rose emphasized to sportswriter Joe Posnanski for a July 2009 article in Cincinnati magazine, “I wasn’t a great third baseman. But I worked my ass off. I don’t know if people realize how hard I worked.”1

And quite simply, the team began to win consistently. When Rose made his first start at the hot corner on May 3, 1975, Cincinnati was playing only .500 ball (12-12). The rest of the way, the Reds went 96-42 (.696).

There was a good bit of history behind the move. Third base had been an unsettled spot for Cincinnati during the mid-1960s. In fact, Rose had gotten a brief trial there at the beginning of the 1966 season, and it didn’t work out. From 1967 through 1971, Tony Pérez played at third, out of his natural position. That move as well was enabled by Rose’s switch from second base to left field. Pérez shifted to first base in 1972 after the blockbuster November 1971 trade with Houston, in which (among several other players) the Reds obtained infielder Denis Menke and dealt away slugging first baseman Lee May. Menke hit a combined .218 during his two seasons as the primary starter at third base, though, and so he was shipped back to the Astros for pitcher Pat Darcy.

In 1974 the team stuck Dan Driessen’s bat at third base. A natural first baseman, he was rocky with the glove at third (.915 fielding percentage at that position in 122 starts). Catcher Johnny Bench also started 30 games there, and various other players accounted for the remaining 10.

General manager Bob Howsam did not view Driessen as a viable ongoing option – in fact, he never appeared at third base again during his remaining 13 seasons in the majors. That December, The Sporting News ran an article called “Howsam Sees Safety in Numbers at Hot Sack.” The GM mentioned four players who could compete for the third-base job in 1975:

• Arturo DeFreites: This young Dominican eventually played 32 games for the Reds in 1978 and 1979. In that brief big-league career, he was mainly a pinch-hitter, playing a bit at first base and in the outfield – but not at third (his part-time position in the minors).
• Joel Youngblood: Cincinnati’s second-round draft pick in 1970, Youngblood went on to a 14-year career in the majors, mainly in the outfield. When the San Francisco Giants put him at third base regularly in 1984, his fielding percentage was an abysmal .887.
• Ray Knight: Knight, a tenth-round pick in 1970, was a very good true third baseman who had gotten his first major-league trial in 1974. He remained in the minors in 1975-76 but eventually took over at third base with Cincinnati in 1979 after Rose left the Reds via free agency. Knight later won a championship and was the World Series MVP with the New York Mets in 1986.
• John Vukovich: The Reds obtained this utilityman in an October 1974 trade. The article said, “While Vukovich has an outstanding glove, his bat is suspect.”2

Before spring training in 1975, according to Reds beat writer Earl Lawson, “listening to Howsam, one gathers that DeFreites rates as the No. 1 candidate among the youngsters.” Darrel Chaney, mainly a shortstop, was also in the mix.3 Sparky Anderson told Vukovich, “The third base job is wide open.”4 Vukovich got the opportunity, based largely on his defensive ability, and though there was talk of a platoon, he started most of the games at third base in April.

As had been feared, though – despite expressions of confidence from the brass in the off-season – Vukovich didn’t hit. In fact, as Joe Posnanski described at length in his 2009 book The Machine, Anderson hung the derisive nickname Balsa on him for his soft bat.5 Chaney and Flynn got some starts, but the three players were hitting a collective .157 (14 for 89) on May 2 when the exasperated Anderson felt he had to make a move to secure more offensive production from his lineup.

Posnanski also provided much colorful inside detail on various other aspects of the situation. There was how Anderson asserted his authority over the team, as seen in his handling of Vukovich. There was the flash of inspiration that spurred Sparky to try Rose at third. But above all, there was the psychology involved. When Cincinnati’s manager in 1966, Don Heffner, had moved Rose, it was an order. Anderson didn’t tell, he asked.6 Appealing to Rose’s desire to help the team made it happen (though when the Hit King was chasing Ty Cobb’s record as playing manager in 1985, another motive was visible).

Previous insight came from John Erardi and Greg Rhodes, who wrote The Big Red Dynasty (1997). They noted that Anderson also had to find playing time for his many well-qualified outfielders and Dan Driessen – and that preserving his own job was also a part of moving Rose. Howsam, who was away in Arizona, thought it was a mistake when he saw the box score of the May 3 game – and said “Oh my God” when he found out it was for real. Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman talked about Rose’s initial adventures in the field. The book also recounted how Rose’s teammates “were all over him”7 for his unpolished play.

As a United Press International feature described it that July, “Pete Rose plays third base like a mad bull. He barricades the ball, stomps after it, or hurls himself in its vicinity, whatever he feels it takes to catch, stop or somehow slow down the ball. … ‘Finesse!’ he shouts. ‘I don’t play with finesse. Aggressive. That’s what I am. That’s the way I play third base.’ ”8

Further quotes were entirely in character. “I love to play third. You know why? ’Cause I get to touch the ball after each out. … Third base is more fun than the outfield. I feel more a part of the game. Closer to it.” He made the same point that he did to Posnanski more than 30 years later: “Hard work. I work hard, that’s it. I think if you work hard enough you can do just about anything, or come close to it. I may not look too smooth out there, but I’m working, I’m getting the job done.”9

Rose committed just 13 errors in 349 chances at third in 1975, a respectable .963 fielding percentage. When asked that July if hitters were able to bunt on him, the reply was again as one would expect. “‘Yeah, three or four have tried it,’ says Rose with a hard, straight face. The subject is serious to him. ‘But I threw ’em out. No problem.’”10 Fielding in the postseason wasn’t a problem either, as he cleanly handled all the relatively few chances that came his way.

In his 2004 biography, Pete Rose: Baseball’s All-Time Hit King, author William Cook noted another important dimension of the move. “[Rose] remarked that the advantage it gave the Reds, other than getting the powerful bat of George Foster into the lineup, was that it gave the Reds a set lineup to play every day. Sparky Anderson agreed with that assessment, stating that after he moved Rose to third and inserted Foster in left he concerned himself mainly with the Reds’ pitching and hardly paid any attention to the starting eight for the rest of the season.”11

Rose started an average of 157 games a year at third with the Reds from 1976 through 1978. There was precious little time for his backups, first Bob Bailey and later Ray Knight. After the 1978 season, Rose signed with the Philadelphia Phillies. He shifted to first base for the Phillies – reflecting the presence of Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt at third. Rose returned to the outfield with some frequency in 1983 and again in 1984, by which time he was with Montreal. However, he played only five more games at third (all in 1979).

Nonetheless, Pete Rose’s years at the hot corner formed a vital chapter in his career. If this move hadn’t taken place, perhaps the Los Angeles Dodgers might have won the NL West – and the pennant – for five straight years. In that case, nobody would have written books about the Reds dynasty.

Notes

As the Cincinnati Reds prepared for the 1975 season, they had reason for cautious optimism. The club had plenty of talented players, including some of the biggest stars in the game, and they had been a strong team for several years. There were at least two reasons for the caution: The Reds, despite their great regular-season success, had been unable to finish the deal in the postseason—they had not won the World Series in 35 years; and the Los Angeles Dodgers, one of baseball’s stronger teams, were in their division (the NL West) and were the defending league champions.

The Reds had taken their big step forward in 1970, winning 102 games and reaching the World Series. That club developed some holes the very next year before being transformed after the 1971 season via a big trade with the Astros—bringing second baseman Joe Morgan, outfielder Cesar Geronimo, and pitcher Jack Billingham, among others, on board, and getting the team back on top. The 1972 club was led by five offensive stars: Morgan, MVP catcher Johnny Bench, first baseman Tony Perez, left fielder Pete Rose, and center fielder Bobby Tolan. The club had solid starting pitchers (Billingham, Ross Grimsley, Gary Nolan) and a great, flexible bullpen (led by Clay Carroll, Tom Hall, and Pedro Borbon). The club finished 95-59 in a strike-shortened season, winning the division by 10½ games before defeating the defending champion Pittsburgh Pirates in the NLCS. In the World Series they were heavy favorites against the upstart Oakland A’s, who had won 93 regular-season games and then lost their best player, Reggie Jackson, to a severe left leg hamstring injury in the deciding game of the ALCS. Instead, the A’s prevailed in a pitching-dominated World Series, scoring just 16 runs in seven games but winning four times—with each of their victories being by one run.

The 1973 club was largely unchanged, and rolled to a 99-63 record, the best in baseball. The Reds actually trailed the Dodgers by four games on August 30, but Los Angeles proceeded to lose nine consecutive games while the Reds began a 13-2 stretch. On September 16 the Reds were 6½ ahead, a stunning advance of 10½ games in 17 days. The Reds offense was marred by a terrible year from Tolan, who hit .206 and lost his starting outfield job, but was aided by the breakthrough of shortstop Dave Concepcion. Billingham (19 wins) and 22-year-old Don Gullett (18) led a deep pitching staff. The Reds were firing on all cylinders going into the NLCS, in which they faced the New York Mets, who had won just 82 games to barely capture the NL East, the worst first-place team in big-league history. Shockingly, the Reds were toppled three games to two, as for the second straight year they were shut down by a good pitching staff during a postseason series. The Reds hit .186 and scored just eight runs in the five game series.

In 1974 the Reds won their typical 98 games, the second highest total in baseball. This time, however, the Dodgers won 102 games and took the NL West, denying the Reds a postseason berth. The Reds were loaded with All-Stars having good seasons, but the Dodgers led wire-to-wire with their own collection of excellent players.

Heading into 1975, this latest Reds team appeared to be loaded again. Bench, still just 27, was the biggest star in the game, with two MVP awards, seven Gold Glove awards, and seven All-Star Games to his credit already. Perez at first base had averaged more than 103 RBIs per year over the previous eight seasons. Morgan had been electrifying in his three years with the club, hitting over .290 with surprising power, averaging more than 115 walks and 60 steals per year. At shortstop, Concepcion had hit over .280 the past two years, and had won his first Gold Glove in 1974. Left fielder Pete Rose, perhaps the most consistent star in baseball, had hit just .284 in 1974, his lowest in a decade, but still had set career highs with 106 walks and 45 doubles, and led the league in runs scored.

At the other three positions, manager Sparky Anderson had options. Cesar Geronimo was a tremendous defensive center fielder who would likely give way to George Foster against left-handed pitchers. The lightning-fast Ken Griffey was set to play right field, ably backed by Merv Rettenmund and Dan Driessen. Third base, a trouble spot the past couple of years, would be manned by the slick-fielding but weak-hitting John Vukovich, acquired in the offseason from the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Reds’ pitchers were often criticized for not carrying their weight, but this view was largely unfair. It was the offense, after all, that had failed in the 1972 and 1973 postseasons, and, looking ahead, Anderson seemed to have another deep and flexible staff. Billingham had won 19 games each of the previous two seasons, while Gullett, still just 24 years old, had won 18 and 17. Fred Norman, acquired in the middle of the 1973 season, and Clay Kirby, picked up before the 1974 season, were dependable third and fourth starters. For his remaining starter Anderson was hoping for a comeback from the 27-year old Gary Nolan, who had been 15-5 with a 1.99 ERA before getting hurt late in the 1972 season, and had pitched in just two games in the past two seasons. The return of Nolan would give Anderson one of the best rotations in the game.

One of the reasons Anderson’s starters remained under the radar was that he was quick to use his bullpen, a trait for which he earned the nickname Captain Hook. The Reds had finished third in the league in ERA in 1974 but Anderson used a five-man rotation and gave a lot of innings to his top relievers. Over the previous three years Pedro Borbon had averaged 10 wins, 127 innings, and a 2.87 ERA. Clay Carroll finished 12-5 with a 2.16 ERA over 100 innings in 1974, and he had been anchoring the Reds’ bullpen for seven years. Anderson also had Tom Hall and rookies Pat Darcy and Will McEnaney to hand the ball to, which he would certainly be doing.

Unfortunately, the Dodgers, defending NL champs, looked equally strong. Los Angeles also had a great offense, led by Jim Wynn, MVP Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, and Bill Buckner. The team’s excellent pitching staff included Don Sutton and Andy Messersmith, along with ace reliever Mike Marshall, who had won the Cy Young Award for his amazing season: 15-12 and a record-breaking 208⅓ innings in relief.

None of the other four teams in the NL West (Atlanta Braves, San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres, and Houston Astros) was expected to keep up with the Dodgers and Reds. In Street and Smith’s Official Yearbook, among the more respected baseball annuals of the day, Ross Newhan picked the Dodgers to repeat, citing the Reds’ age and the previous year’s failure, which was sure to weigh on the team.1 Zander Hollander’s The Complete Handbook of Baseball agreed,2 as did the annual Major League Baseball 1975.3 The Churchill Downs Sports Book in Las Vegas listed the Dodgers as 4-5 favorites to win the division.

But not everyone was ready to bury the Big Red Machine. “The Reds have devastating bats up and down their lineup,” wrote The Sporting News, “and their pitching will be better than adequate, especially if Gary Nolan succeeds in his comeback from shoulder trouble.”4 The Dodgers had their own comebacking hurler, Tommy John (recovering from his famous surgery), who did not appear to be ready.

“Everybody is picking the Dodgers to repeat,” opined Roy Blount, Jr. in Sports Illustrated, “but everybody may be wrong. The Reds look better.”5 The Reds season would begin on April 7, and seven of their first ten games would be against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

MARK ARMOUR is the founder and director of SABR’s Baseball Biography Project, and the author or editor of five books on baseball, including “Joe Cronin—A Life in Baseball” (University of Nebraska Press, 2010). He lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley with Jane, Maya, and Drew.

Notes

The 1975 NL West regular-season race, which was supposed to be a tight struggle between two great teams, turned out to be no race at all. Sitting with a 20-20 record on May 20, the Reds won seven in a row and never really let up. They took over first place on June 8, and five weeks later, at the All-Star break, they led by 12½ games. Their final margin, 20 games over the Los Angeles Dodgers, was the largest in baseball history. While there was little question that the Reds were baseball’s best team, there was still the matter of winning two postseason series. The Reds lost the 1972 World Series and the 1973 NLCS to teams considered their inferior by most observers, and neither Sparky Anderson nor his veteran stars were satisfied with what they had thus far accomplished.

In the best-of-five NLCS, the Reds faced the Pittsburgh Pirates, winners of their fifth NL East title in six years. Although Pittsburgh did not have the top-flight stars that the Reds had, their offense featured a well-balanced group, including right fielder Dave Parker (25 home runs, .308 average), first baseman Willie Stargell (22, .295), center fielder Al Oliver (18, .280), left fielder Richie Zisk (20, .290), and catcher Manny Sanguillen (.328). Their three scheduled playoff starters—Jerry Reuss (18-11, 2.54), Jim Rooker (13-11, 2.97), and 21-year-old rookie John Candelaria (8-6, 2.76)—matched up well with the Reds group. In the regular season, the clubs had split 12 games.

The clubs finished their seasons on Sunday, September 28, and opened their series in Cincinnati six days later, on Saturday, October 4, with Don Gullett matching up against Reuss. The Pittsburgh left-hander had won three of his four starts versus the Reds in 1975, along with a 2.40 ERA in those games. The Pirates got on the board first with two in the top of the second, but the lead was temporary. Down 2-1 in the bottom of the third, Joe Morgan led off with a walk and then stole second and third bases on consecutive pitches—he had earlier walked and stolen second in the first, but had been left stranded. This time, Reuss crumbled. He walked Johnny Bench, gave up a run-scoring single to Tony Perez, and, two outs later, a two-run double to Ken Griffey. Just like that, Reuss was out of the game and the Pirates never got back in it. To cap a four-run inning in the bottom of the fifth Gullett hit a two-run home run off Larry Demery, the first round-tripper of Gullett’s professional career. The Reds’ ace went the distance and prevailed, 8-3.

On Sunday the Reds again ran roughshod on Sanguillen, stealing seven bases in their easy 6-1 win. The Reds did not steal bases merely to move their baserunners along, they also did so to break down the psyche of the opposing pitcher. In the sixth inning Griffey led off with a single off reliever Kent Tekulve and quickly stole second base (his second swipe of the day) before Cesar Geronimo walked. After pinch-hitter Ed Armbrister missed a bunt, Sanguillen threw down to second, easily trapping Griffey off the base. Griffey raced instead for third, sliding in safely. After a change of pitchers, Griffey trotted home when Ken Brett balked attempting to pick Geronimo off first base. Perez’s first-inning home run, which had given the Reds a 2-0 lead, was forgotten after all the dramatic baserunning.

After an offday, the series resumed on Tuesday 300 miles to the Northeast), where the Pirates could win the pennant by capturing three straight games at Three Rivers Stadium. For most of the evening, the story was the pitching of the 6′ 7″ Candelaria, who through seven innings had surrendered just one hit, a second-inning home run by Concepcion, had struck out 12, and led 2-1. In the top of seventh he fanned Griffey and Geronimo, giving him 14 K’s, before he finally ran out of gas. After pinch-hitter Merv Rettenmund walked, Pete Rose homered to give the Reds the lead, Morgan doubled, and Candelaria was done. The Pirates did not go quietly, as they rallied to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth on a bases-loaded walk.

In the top of the tenth, the Reds won the game the way they had won the first two games—with their legs. Griffey reached on a bunt single, moved to second on a balk, to third on a groundball, and home on a fly ball. The Reds added an insurance run on another Morgan double after Rose had singled, and Pedro Borbon finished off the 5-3 win. The Reds had won their third pennant in six seasons.

That same day, the Boston Red Sox completed their ALCS sweep of the Oakland A’s, winners of the previous three World Series. The AL champs had been led by the dynamic rookie duo of Fred Lynn (21 home runs, .331) and Jim Rice (22 home runs, .309), along with catcher Carlton Fisk (.331, after missing the first half of the season with a broken arm during spring training). Unfortunately for the Red Sox, Rice suffered a broken hand when he was hit by a late-season pitch, and he missed the entire postseason. The Red Sox pitching staff was led by veteran Luis Tiant (18-14), who struggled most of the season before a strong September and a brilliant victory Game One of the ALCS. Bill Lee (17 wins) and Rick Wise (19) were their other big winners.

The Series began on October 11, a rainy Saturday afternoon at Boston’s Fenway Park. Going in to the Series, there had been much talk about the Reds’ running game and how it would affect Fisk and the Boston pitchers. “I guess if they steal 12 times on me,” lamented Fisk, “no matter whether it’s my fault or the pitchers or to the credit of great baserunners like Morgan and Concepcion, I’ll be the goat.”1 After Tiant retired the first ten Reds batters, Morgan singled to center field. Tiant threw over to first base three times before first-base umpire Nick Colosi called a balk, delighting Morgan and the Reds, who had spent the past few days claiming that Tiant’s move to first was illegal. That Colosi was a National League umpire, unfamiliar with Tiant, further enraged the pitcher and his manager, Darrell Johnson.

Morgan’s gamemanship was all too familiar to NL observers, who now sat back and waited for the inevitable onslaught. Instead, Tiant retired Bench and Perez to get out of the jam, and the game remained scoreless into the bottom of the seventh inning. Tiant led off with a single to start a six-run rally, and then retired the final six Reds batters. Far from being ruffled by the balk, Tiant pitched a masterful five-hit shutout. For a Reds club that had been beaten by great pitching in the 1972 World Series and the 1973 NLCS, this was an eerie beginning. “You open the door and they score runs,” lamented Bench in admiration.2

On Sunday the Reds were nearly shut down again, this time by Bill Lee. Through eight innings the Red Sox had scratched out a 2-1 lead and Lee had a four-hitter going. Bench led off the ninth inning with a double, and Lee was replaced by Dick Drago. After a groundball, a short fly ball out, a run-scoring infield single by Dave Concepcion, a stolen base, and a Griffey double, the Reds had a 3-2 lead, and Rawly Eastwick held it in the bottom of the ninth. Conceding that his team had its ugly moments, Sparky Anderson nonetheless declared, “Over the course of a year, you won’t see a better baseball team than the Cincinnati Reds.”3 The series was tied, and headed to Cincinnati.

After an off day, the Series resumed on Tuesday, October 14, when Rick Wise faced off against Gary Nolan. The Red Sox struck first on Fisk’s second-inning home run, but the Reds countered with a two-out two-run shot by Bench in the fourth and solo blasts from Concepcion and Geronimo to start the fifth. A triple by Rose chased Wise, and Rose soon scored on a fly ball, making the score 5-1 Cincinnati after five innings, a lead generally sufficient for Anderson’s great bullpen. But after Boston scratched out a run (without a hit) off Pat Darcy in the sixth, former Red Bernie Carbo launched a pinch-hit home run off Clay Carroll in the seventh, making the score 5-3.

Remarkably, in the top of the ninth Dwight Evans hit a dramatic two-run home run off Rawly Eastwick to make the score 5-5, where it remained into the bottom of the tenth. After Geronimo led off with a single, pinch-hitter Ed Armbrister had the most controversial plate appearance of the Series. When he tried to sacrifice, his bunt hit the artificial surface right in front of the plate and bounced straight up. Fisk reached out to field it but collided with Armbrister, who had been moving from the right-hand batter’s box toward first base but suddenly stopped in his tracks. After the collision Fisk managed to field the ball and then shoved Armbrister away with his glove hand, but his throw to second sailed into center field. The Reds now had runners on second and third with no one out. Fisk and the Red Sox claimed interference, but American League umpire Larry Barnett disagreed. After an intentional walk and a strikeout, Morgan singled to center off Roger Moret to end the game. “It’s a damn shame to lose a ballgame like that,” said Fisk later.4

For Game Four, Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson elected to bring back Tiant on three days’ rest, while Anderson went with Fred Norman. The Reds struck first, with long run-scoring doubles by Griffey and Bench in the first. The Red Sox chased Norman with five runs in the fourth, keyed by a game-tying triple to deep right by Evans. The Reds came right back with two in the bottom of the inning, and a triple by Geronimo made the score 5-4. Tiant had allowed six hits and four runs before getting out of the fourth, and he seemed completely spent. “When he walked Rose in the fifth inning,” said Fisk, his catcher, “his first two pitches were fastballs and I motioned to Johnson that he had nothing.”5 Remarkably, the proud Tiant forged on, and completed the game without allowing another run, despite several more baserunners and hard-hit balls. On the evening, the Reds had nine hits, four for extra bases, and walked four times. When Joe Morgan popped out with two on and two out in the ninth, Tiant had his 5-4 victory, on a staggering 163 pitches.

Heading into Game Five, the Reds had to feel fortunate to be even in the Series—with a couple of breaks the Red Sox might have won all four games. The Reds now put together their best game of the Series, with the strong pitching of Gullett and two home runs by Perez enough for a 6-2 victory. Perez had been 0-for-15 for the Series. “I have played this game too long to get down on myself,” he said later.6 Still, the Red Sox did not make it easy—Gullett was just one out away from a 6-1 two-hitter when he allowed two singles and a Fred Lynn double. With the tying run in the on-deck circle, Eastwick came on to strike out Rico Petrocelli, to put the Reds up three games to two.

After a travel day, Game Six was scheduled for Saturday the 18th at Fenway Park, but heavy rains postponed events for three days. What baseball fans eventually got, on Tuesday the 21st, was a game for the ages. Lynn put the Red Sox up with a three-run home run off Nolan in the first, forcing the Reds, once again, to try to break through against Tiant who was going for his third victory. This time they finally did, tying things with three runs in the fifth, keyed by Griffey’s two-run triple. After taking the lead on Foster’s two-run double in the seventh, they chased the valiant Tiant on Geronimo’s leadoff home run in the eighth. Heading into the bottom of the frame, the Reds had a 6-3 lead, six outs from winning the Series.

A single and a walk brought Anderson out to replace Borbon, but Eastwick struck out Evans and retired Rick Burleson. That brought up pinch-hitter Bernie Carbo, who had homered in Game Three in the same role. Anderson considered bringing in McEnaney to face the left-handed-swinging Carbo, but ultimately chose to stick with Eastwick. Remarkably, after looking very bad on a couple of two-strike foul balls, Carbo came through again, crushing a booming drive to the bleachers in straightaway center field, launching himself soaring around the bases and tying the score of this amazing game, six runs apiece.

After the Reds went down meekly against Drago in the top of the ninth, the Red Sox looked as though they would end things in the bottom half, loading the bases with none out. Facing McEnaney, Lynn flied out down the line in short left, and Foster gunned down Denny Doyle at home plate. Third-base coach Don Zimmer had tried to hold Doyle at third, but the runner misunderstood the instruction and was an easy out. A groundball ended the threat. In the tenth Drago retired the Reds again, while Darcy, the eighth Reds pitcher of the game, did the same with the Red Sox.

When Rose led off the top of the 11th, he turned to Fisk, squatting behind the plate, and raved, “This is some kind of game, isn’t it?”7 Drago hit Rose with a pitch, but Fisk fielded Griffey’s bunt and gunned Rose down at second—a play that he had not been able to make in the tenth inning of Game Three. With one out now, Morgan crushed a towering line drive to deep right field, a shot remarkably hauled down by a leaping Evans near the three and-a-half foot wall. Evans turned and threw the ball back towards first base, doubling Griffey off the bag. The game continued.

Darcy baffled the Red Sox again in the 11th, making it six batters in row. Wise relieved Drago in the 12th and allowed two singles but no more, striking out Geronimo to end the threat. Darcy, who had looked sharp in his two innings, came back out for the 12th. The first batter was Fisk, the great Red Sox leader. After taking the first pitch for a ball, the catcher then hit one of history’s most famous home runs down the left-field line where it struck the foul pole, finally winning this epic, historic battle. It was after midnight in Boston, more than four hours since the game had begun.

After all of that, the teams still had to go back out and play the seventh game, Gullett vs. Lee. This contest, under ordinary circumstances, would be remembered for its own remarkable moments, but it was not able to live up to the previous game. But really, how could it? The Red Sox struck first, getting three runs in the third on two singles and three walks. Lee made this lead stand up until the top of the sixth, when Perez hit a two-out two-run home run way over Fenway Park’s left-field screen to bring the Reds to within a run. A Rose single off Moret tied the score in the seventh, and this great Series remained knotted, appropriately, and headed to the ninth.

Rookie Jim Burton came on to pitch the top half for the Red Sox. After walking Griffey on a 3-2 pitch, Burton induced a sacrifice bunt and a groundball, moving Griffey to third with two outs. Burton pitched carefully to Rose, issuing another full count walk, which brought Morgan, baseball’s best player, to the plate. Burton got ahead 1-and-2, then threw a tailing fastball low and away that Morgan blooped into shallow center field for the 4-3 lead. “A couple of years ago I would have struck out on that pitch,” Morgan admitted after the game.8 In the bottom the ninth inning, McEnaney came on to retire two pinch-hitters before getting Carl Yastrzemski to fly out to Geronimo in left-center field. The Reds had won their first world championship in 35 years.

The 1975 Cincinnati Reds had demolished the NL West, and won the NLCS in a breeze. The Red Sox, comparatively young and inexperienced, gave them all they could handle, and joined with the Reds to give us all an epic seven games. “We’re the best team in baseball,” Anderson repeated after the seventh game in Boston. “But not by much.”9 But though both teams produced memorable moments, the Reds ultimately accomplished what they needed to accomplish. A case could be made that they had been the best team in the game for the past four years, but history is not always kind to teams that do not finish the job. This time, they finished it.

MARK ARMOUR is the founder and director of SABR’s Baseball Biography Project, and the author or editor of five books on baseball, including “Joe Cronin—A Life in Baseball” (University of Nebraska Press, 2010). He lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley with Jane, Maya, and Drew.

Notes

They were a ballclub well-known then and well-remembered today not just for their victories and championships, but also—indeed, more so—for the manner in which those victories and championships were achieved. The team presented a gallery of stars displaying exceptional breadth of athleticism and skill, who did not defeat opponents so much as overwhelm them. Observers were typically struck with not so much admiration as awe.

Yet for all this ballclub’s profound ability, there was for many seasons a sense of underachievement about them. Though reliably among the close contenders, multiple times the team fell short in crucial title-deciding confrontations. For year after frustrating year, the failure to win that final big one—that fourth “bad boy” victory during the World Series—rendered the sterling reputation slightly hollow.

Pundits at the time pointed to a structural explanation for this team’s inability to close the deal. Yes, their offense was an explosive brew of speed and power rarely sniffed in history. And yes, their team defense was extraordinary as well, presenting multiple fielders widely regarded as the best at their position. But the pitching staff never measured up.

The health and durability of their starters was a nagging issue, and the team struggled for years to develop a dominant ace, an anchor for the pitchers to be tethered around. As a result, the staff never seemed quite settled, and they relied on the bullpen to a degree unusual for winning teams of the era. Without elite-level starting pitching, they struggled to achieve in tight October contests what they had routinely done against lesser opponents over the long spring and summer schedules.

Thus when that ultimate champagne-popping moment finally arrived for this team, it represented more than just your garden-variety World Series victory. It brought with it a particularly keen sense of vindication, a sigh of relief along with the whoop of joy.

We are speaking, of course, of the Brooklyn Dodgers of 1949-1956, the charismatic and robustly talented ballclub christened “The Boys of Summer” by Roger Kahn in his 1972 iconic remembrance. You were expecting maybe, what, The Big Red Machine of 1970-76?

Perception of the similarity between these celebrated dynasties is hardly original, and hardly new. Bill James in the 1982 Baseball Abstract—the first nationally-distributed Abstract—put it this way:

“There is a parallel between the Cincinnati Reds of today and the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers of 20 years ago … which gives no hint of breaking …. The Dodgers won the National League pennant in 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, and 1959. The Reds won the National League West in 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, and 1979. Both teams had won one previous title, the Reds in 1970 and the Dodgers in 1949; both teams got progressively better, and progressively older, throughout the decade. The 1976 Reds had the oldest starting lineup of any National League champion since the 1956 Dodgers.”

“… Beyond the coincidental pattern of years, there are profound similarities in the two teams. Both the Dodgers of the midfifties and the Reds of the midseventies featured awesome 8-man lineups with adequate pitching. At many positions, they match up beautifully. There is probably no player in the history of the game as much like Johnny Bench as Roy Campanella. Both were superb catchers and RBI men, MVPs; both had the same strong on-year/off-year pattern throughout much of their careers. Was Tony Perez’s career a lot like Gil Hodges’s? Is Wyoming quite a bit like Montana? Joe Morgan and Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Dave Concepcion—these are very, very similar types of players. It is my opinion that the 1975-76 Reds had the greatest 8-man lineup ever assembled, but they weren’t much ahead of the Brooklyn 8.”1

These points are worth exploring in some detail.

Campy and Johnny

Of all the player parallels, this is the very strongest. It truly borders on the eerie: In terms of role and impact on the field of play—and what a phenomenal impact it was—Bench was essentially Campanella’s clone, with the amazing rifle arm, the free-swinging, dead-pulling right-handed power bat, and the vulnerability to the hitting slump.

And more than that: As personalities, as characters within the clubhouse drama, Campy and Johnny took comparable roles. Despite mastering the central responsibilities inherent in the catcher position, neither assumed primary leadership of the ballclub; that was handled by more veteran and more assertive stars. Campanella’s persona was genial, a bit playful, and Bench—who, lest we forget, was exceptionally young when he arrived in the majors—appeared content to retain his polite, slightly deferential public posture even as a multi-MVP-awarded superstar.

Gil and Doggie

Perez is in the Hall of Fame, and Hodges is not. The general consensus in the sabermetric community is that this inconsistency is an error: these two durable, dependable right-handed first basemen are so comparable in value that it is wrong for one to be enshrined in Cooperstown and the other not. That consensus, moreover, is that neither belongs; outstanding as both performers were, neither was a superstar, and they deserve prominent placement only in the Hall of Very Good.

They were not identical players. Hodges was a standout defensive first baseman, while Perez was just average with the glove, and Perez’s career was 25 percent longer. But they were remarkably similar nonetheless, steadily providing the RBIs, month after month and year after year, in a quietly determined, workmanlike manner.

It was in the quiet-but-strong force of personality that Gil and Doggie demonstrated the most striking similarity. Neither was a big talker or a rah-rah guy. Yet both, even early in their careers, were widely respected leaders, men’s men whom everyone in the clubhouse looked up to as models of professionalism, dignity, and strength. Nobody ever dared mess with either of these guys. Both would become major-league managers (though, to be sure, Hodges enjoyed far greater success in that role).

Jackie and Joe (and Pete)

James makes the unavoidable connection between Robinson and Morgan, two second basemen who delivered dazzling breadth of capability, all-time great ballplayers excelling in every conceivable phase of the game.

Yet there is an additional angle worth considering. Robinson, of course, was shifted away from the second-base position following the 1952 season, and he spent the remaining four years of his Dodger career playing mostly third base and left field, adaptively filling the team’s evolving needs as a supersub, while remaining an on-base machine. The Reds had a certain ballplayer named Pete Rose whom they shifted away from second base in mid-career, and moved him around from position to position, first in the outfield and then, significantly and decisively, to third base in early 1975: adaptively filling the team’s evolving needs as a moveable everyday starter, while remaining an on-base machine.

There might be a further parallel between Robinson and Rose. For very different reasons and in obviously different ways, Robinson and Rose were both outsized as national celebrities beyond their pure status as ballplayers. Each was the key focus of media attention on his ballclub, holding a status of public prominence shared by no teammate.

And in their ballfield manner, Robinson and Rose were interestingly alike. Both were aggressively big talkers and rah-rah guys (which of course, renders Robinson’s success at keeping himself bottled up in his first couple of years in the league all the more remarkable), loud and flashy and demonstrative, profoundly fearless, seeking and ruthlessly grabbing every possible tiny advantage, strutting around (in Rose’s case, sprinting around) the yard with an in-your-face what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it chip on the shoulder. Leo Durocher, as only he could, said in sheer admiration of Robinson, “He doesn’t just come to beat you. He comes to shove the fucking bat right up your ass.” Such was utterly true of Rose as well.

Pee Wee and Davey

The parallel between the shortstops is not perfect, but it is strong. Reese was the better player, but not dramatically so (he is deservedly in the Hall of Fame, and Concepcion deservedly not quite). Both were highly regarded fielders known especially for a strong and accurate arm. Both dependably put up a batting average between .270 and .300, with more pop than most shortstops, and both ran the bases extremely well.

In the off-field realm, they part ways. Concepcion, younger even than Bench and not a full-season regular until 1974, did not assume a leadership role on the ballclub until later in his career, after Perez, Rose, and Morgan had departed. Reese, in contrast, the first-string Brooklyn shortstop since 1940, was the elder statesman among Dodger regulars, older even than Robinson. Reese was the team captain, both officially and unofficially, in every sense. In Vin Scully’s velvet words, “He was the heart and soul of the Boys of Summer.”

Reese’s on-field gesture of walking over and putting his arm around Robinson during an ugly incident early in 1947 is recognized as one the most powerful demonstrations of team leadership in the history of sports. Reese’s model as a Southerner openly and unwaveringly accepting and supporting Robinson’s presence was crucial to the successful integration of the Dodgers, and baseball generally.

Okay, but …

The similarities between the ballclubs do not much extend to the outfield. It is the case that Carl Furillo and Cesar Geronimo were tremendous defensive stars, but the former was a strong-hitting right fielder, and the latter a so-so-hitting center fielder. Each outfield housed a prodigiously powerful middle-of-the-order slugger (well, for the Reds, only from 1975 forward), but beyond that there is not a lot in common between the left-handed-batting all-around superstar center fielder Duke Snider and the right-handed-batting walk-resistant left fielder George Foster. And the Dodgers did not have anyone to match up with speedy Reds outfielders Bobby Tolan and Ken Griffey.

Then there’s the pitching

As James put it, on the mound both teams were “adequate.” They shared a frustrating pattern of introducing impressive young pitchers (for the Dodgers, from the farm system, for the Reds, often via trade), only to see them struggle to one degree or another after promising beginnings, with sore arms a chronic, seemingly contagious complaint. In Brooklyn it was Rex Barney, Erv Palica, Ralph Branca, Billy Loes, and Karl Spooner, and in Cincinnati it was Wayne Simpson, Jim Merritt, Roger Nelson, Tom Hall, Tom Carroll, and Clay Kirby.

Even the best pitchers both organizations developed, the closest either team came to a top-tier ace—for the Dodgers, Carl Erskine and Don Newcombe, and for the Reds, Gary Nolan and Don Gullett—all grappled with recurrent issues of health, durability, and consistency.

Both teams adapted to the circumstance of an unreliable starting rotation by making groundbreaking liberal use of the bullpen, blazing staff-deployment trails others would soon follow. Neither team featured dominant relief stars, but Jim Hughes, Clem Labine, and Ed Roebuck for the Dodgers, and Wayne Granger, Clay Carroll, Pedro Borbon, Will McEnaney, and Rawly Eastwick for the Reds pulled heavy loads, and emerged among the more durable and reliably solid firemen of their day.

The first dance

The Boys of Summer coalesced as a unit in 1949, winning the pennant behind a monster offense that led the league in runs, home runs, total bases, and stolen bases. For the Reds, the analogous season was 1970, when their wire-to-wire division runaway brought national renown as “The Big Red Machine,” leading the league in home runs, total bases, and slugging, while stealing the most bases (115) of any Cincinnati ballclub since 1929. Both teams got spanked in five games in the World Series (Brooklyn by the Yankees, Cincinnati by the Orioles), and while that outcome was obviously disappointing, it was not heartbreaking, given that neither upstart had been expected to get to the Series.

The years in the desert

But following that, expectations were sensibly high, and the tension began to mount. The Dodgers fell achingly short of the National League pennant in both 1950 and 1951 (with the latter carrying the devastating double exclamation point of the huge blown lead and the Bobby Thomson home run to end the playoff. They succeeded in winning the pennant in both 1952 and 1953, but lost the World Series, again to the Yankees, both times (despite coming into the latter as the favorite with a blistering 105-49 runaway regular season). And in 1954 they fell back to second place, losing out again to the Giants.

That excruciating roller-coaster ride to nowhere was echoed by the Reds 20 years later. They slumped badly in 1971, then were defeated in an epic seven-game World Series battle with the Oakland A’s in 1972, then in 1973 suffered the humiliation of dropping the NLCS to a laughably inferior New York Mets outfit. In 1974 the Reds rolled out a 98-win season in predictably machine-like fashion, yet wound up second in the division behind an exceptionally strong Dodgers team.

The summit at last

It was in that year ending in “5” that both teams finally grasped the Holy Grail, a pleasure no doubt all the sweeter for its elusiveness. For both teams, to do so required prevailing in a close Game Seven, on the road, in memorable form. For the Dodgers, unheralded supporting players came up huge, as platoon left fielder Sandy Amoros turned in a sensational sixth-inning catch-and-throw double play to support just-turned-23-year-old southpaw Johnny Podres’ complete-game 2-0 shutout of the dreaded Yankees. The Reds methodically fought back from a three-run deficit in the late innings, and carefully manufactured (yes, just like a machine) the winning run in the top of the ninth with a walk to Griffey, a sacrifice bunt by Geronimo, a base-advancing groundball and a two-out dying-quail single by Morgan.

And yet there’s more

In that 1982 Abstract, James marveled at how the parallel pattern just would not quit:

“Both teams began to break apart in ’7, the Dodgers in 1957, and the Reds in 1977. Both won another flag in ’9, and in both cases they did so with unusually low winning percentages (.564, .559) for first-place teams. Both of those were titles won from weak races with teams in transition. The 1959 Dodgers won by combining the remnants of the great Brooklyn team (Duke Snider, Gil Hodges) with the core of their great speed-and-pitching teams of the sixties (Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, John Roseboro), a couple of players who spanned the gap (Jim Gilliam, Johnny Podres), and a few spare parts just rustled up for the occasion (Charlie Neal, Wally Moon, Don Demeter, Roger Craig).”

“What is intriguing about the parallel is wondering whether it will break before 1983, wondering if the 1979 Reds were, also, the parts of two champions. For it is quite apparent, if there is another champion in the making here, what the strength of that champion will be. The young pitching, while no one should be compared to Koufax or Drysdale … is imposing. Is there something inevitable about this form, some reason why a champion which is strong in every department except pitching should yield gradually to a champion which is based on pitching?”2

Alas, the parallel did indeed break before 1983, as the seemingly up-and-coming Reds team suffered a cringe-worthy face-plant by losing 101 games in 1982. Mario Soto would prove to be the real deal, but the rest of the potentially imposing young Cincinnati pitching staff never got it together. The long spell of similarity between the generation-apart franchises was cast away at last.

Actions and consequences

James did not seem entirely serious about his “is there something inevitable about the form?” pondering—two teams, no matter how similar, can hardly provide evidence for the inevitability of anything—but it remains genuinely intriguing that these two followed such a uniquely detailed path of development, decline, and rebuilding over such an extended period. While the dual transformation from hitting-centric to pitching-centric orientation is probably just a coincidence, perhaps there is something to the notion that both organizations, enduring season after season of pitching headaches, became particularly focused on identifying and developing superior young arms.

In any case, an attribute shared by both franchises was extremely sound management, from the top down. The Dodgers’ foundation had been laid, of course, by none other than Branch Rickey. By the time the Mahatma departed Brooklyn in late 1950, nearly all of the key Boys of Summer were already on the big-league roster, and moreover Rickey had put in place a state-of-the-art farm system and a unified organizational model of instruction and development. His successor as general manager, young Buzzie Bavasi, was a Rickey protégé promoted from within.

If it is fair to say that Bavasi’s challenge was to execute against Rickey’s master plan rather than design one himself, it is equally fair to say that Bavasi met that challenge with remarkable skill. Bavasi would remain in place as one of the sport’s mostly widely respected GMs through 1968, and the field manager he hired after the 1953 season—another rookie, promoted from within the system—was named Walt Alston, and he would remain in place for more than two decades (indeed, he was managing the Dodgers’ team that outplayed The Big Red Machine in the 1974 NL West), on his way to the Hall of Fame.

The designing architect of The Big Red Machine, GM Bob Howsam, was, you guessed it, also a protégé of Rickey, going back to the late 1950s, and continuing into the St. Louis Cardinals organization in the mid-1960s. That the team Howsam would eventually field in Cincinnati bore dramatic structural parallels with the Rickey/Bavasi Dodgers was likely coincidental, but that Howsam’s meticulously orchestrated organizational approach was reminiscent of the Dodgers was not.

Howsam had clear and strong ideas about what he wanted to accomplish, and there is no doubt he was inspired by the principles so successfully set down by Rickey and Bavasi. The field manager Howsam would hire in October 1969—a rookie, promoted from within the Reds’ system—was named Sparky Anderson, and he would remain a highly celebrated big-league manager for a quarter-century, on his way to the Hall of Fame. And, you guessed it: Anderson had spent the first six years of his playing career—his formative phase in professional baseball—in the 1950s Dodgers organization.

STEVE TREDER attended his first SABR meetings in 1985 and has been a frequent contributor and presenter in the decades since. He has been a writer for The Hardball Times since its founding in 2004.

Notes

The Big Red Machine reached its destiny when Cesar Geronimo closed his glove around Carl Yastrzemski’s fly ball on October 22, 1975 at Fenway Park to end the World Series. In that moment of ecstasy and exhaustion the Cincinnati Reds became world champions, finally grasping the ring that had eluded their reach in the first half of the decade. On a cold October night, in Yankee Stadium, nearly one year later, after another brilliant campaign, they successfully defended the title. But then it was over. And while the Reds Empire didn’t exactly fall in the second half of the 1970s, it did stumble. There are several reasons why the Reds failed to reach the summit again after 1976. First, the contenders for the crown were very powerful. Additionally, some the team’s old warriors were sent away or allowed to leave, while age and injury slowed the skills of some who remained. Finally, the Reds failed to modernize, allowing their opponents to strengthen their legions while the Cincinnatians grew weaker. So, despite six years of valiant battling, by 1982 the Reds dynasty lay in ruins, a victim of miscalculation and cruel fate.

Having built the Reds into champions, the team’s longtime general manager Bob Howsam looked to improve his world-champion squad. In an effort to give the team more vitality and versatility, after the 1975 season, Howsam dealt away former All-Star reliever Clay Carroll and starter Clay Kirby, along with bench players Darrel Chaney, Merv Rettenmund, and Terry Crowley, and replaced them with veterans and talented players from the Reds’ minor league organization. Bob Bailey and Mike Lum, who had played a combined 21 full major league seasons, were acquired to reinforce the bench, while Howsam turned to a pair of hard-throwing home-grown pitchers Pat Zachry and Santo Alcala to supplement the pitching staff. With these changes, the Reds management believed that they had improved an already great club. “Our front line is the best eight men in either league,” Howsam declared, “and our bench is now as good as anybody has in baseball.”1

For now, the changing economics of the game did not affect the Reds. Within a year, the players’ newly won right to become free agents if they played a season without a signed contract would overturn baseball’s hidebound economic structure, but Howsam and the Reds dealt with it well during the 1975-1976 offseason. Despite an owners’ lockout during spring training, by Opening Day the Reds had signed all of their players except one, although they had to give some, like Joe Morgan and Pete Rose, significant raises to do so. Only the headstrong Don Gullett, the team’s best starting pitcher, was playing with an unsigned contract. Reds management, it seemed, was willing to adapt to the game’s new economic uncertainties. After all, as Morgan summarized, “The players realized it long ago. It’s a business.”2

Though they entered the 1976 season as the overwhelming choice to defend their division title and were 2-to-1 favorites to repeat as world champions, the Reds were just 12-10 on May 6 and still trailed the Los Angeles Dodgers by 2½ games on May 23. Only a few players struggled with injuries in 1976, notably Johnny Bench, whose “strange spasms of pain” compromised his production, but the rest of the team’s hitters compensated for their catcher’s relative decline. As for the pitchers, injuries pushed Gullett’s first start back to April 25, but, like the team’s hitters, its pitchers also picked up the slack. By the All-Star break, the Reds were 53-33 and in front of the second-place Dodgers by six games.3

And no one in the NL West really challenged the Reds during the second half of the season. The Dodgers managed to sneak to within seven games of Cincinnati in early September, but the Reds then won seven of eight games to widen the lead back to 11 games and finished the campaign ten games in front of the Dodgers. They were an excellent team. In fact, it is arguable that the 1976 Reds, despite a poorer overall record and a lesser margin of victory in their division, were the equal of Cincinnati’s more celebrated 1975 squad. Unlike the 1975 team, the 1976 group never slipped below .500, and while the 1975 Reds padded their gaudy won-loss record by beating the league’s worst teams, the 1976 squad won a remarkable 61.1 percent of the time against the best teams in the National League.4

The 1976 Reds burnished their reputation with remarkable play during the NLCS and in the World Series. With Gullett and Zachry on the mound, the Reds dominated the 101-win Philadelphia Phillies in the first two games of the best-of-five NLCS and then rallied for three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game Three to complete the sweep and return to the World Series. There, the Reds dismantled the AL champion New York Yankees in all facets of the game, crushing them in a four-game sweep during an “utterly one-sided and almost passionless World Series.” Having won back-to-back titles and gone undefeated in the 1976 postseason, the Reds cemented their reputation as one of the better teams in baseball history. For Joe Morgan, the answer to the Reds place in history seemed obvious: “How can you have a much better team than this one?”5

But big changes were ahead for the Reds. For one, it was nearly certain that Gullett would opt to become a free agent and leave the team, which he did, less than a month later, by signing a six-year two-million dollar deal with the Yankees. Further, even as Howsam watched Tony Perez win Game Two of the World Series for the Reds with a ninth inning single off Catfish Hunter, he knew that the popular Cuban-born slugger would not be with the 1977 team. Faced with the dilemma of either turning first base over to Dan Driessen, one of the World Series batting heroes, or losing the young and promising player to free agency after the 1977 season, Howsam traded Perez and reliever Will McEnaney to the Montreal Expos for 37-year-old left-handed starter Woody Fryman, coming off a terrific bounce-back season, and hard-throwing 27-year-old reliever Dale Murray. In the years to come, as the Reds were unable to reach the heights they scaled in 1975 and 1976, Sparky Anderson, many of the team’s players, and even Howsam himself pointed to the loss of Perez’s clubhouse presence as the turning point in the team’s fortunes. And while that conclusion is debatable, it’s difficult to see how Howsam could have rationally opted to keep the 34-year-old Perez over the 26-year-old Driessen.6

Having won four of the last five NL West titles, including the two most recent campaigns by a combined 30 games over the second-place Dodgers, the Reds expected to continue their winning ways in 1977, even without Perez and Gullett. The Dodgers and their new manager, Tommy Lasorda, had other ideas. Under outgoing manager Walter Alston, the Dodgers had spent most of the first half of the 1970s as bridesmaids for the Reds, having finished in second place six times in the previous seven years. But Lasorda knew the Dodger squad well and they responded to his infectious positivism. “The players were ready, the pitchers were ready,” remembered veteran Dodgers pitcher Tommy John, “and we started off ’77 like a house afire. Boom.” Boom, indeed. Los Angeles leapt from the gate in 1977, winning 17 of its first 20 games and running-up a 13½-game lead on the Reds by May 27.7

Meanwhile, the Reds started slowly. So much so that at the end of May, the two-time defending champions were still a game under .500. Injuries slowed the team’s offense, while the Gullett-less rotation struggled so badly that one observer declared that there was “only one word for Reds’ hurlers – horrible.” The team offense stumbled too, failing to display the energy of previous seasons. It was obvious to all, including Sparky Anderson, that the Reds “weren’t the world champions [they] were supposed to be.”8

Still, the Reds were nothing if not resilient. They were tested, they were supremely confident, and they had little respect for the Dodgers’ staying power. “They just keep grinding it out,” noted a former teammate. So no one was terribly surprised when the Reds started gaining ground in early June. Facing “virtual elimination,” Cincinnati beat the Dodger aces, Don Sutton and Rick Rhoden, and then won 16 of 20 games to close to within 6½ games of the Dodgers on June 18. Bob Howsam, at least, believed that the Reds were poised to win the division again.9

So Howsam reconstituted the Reds in a flurry of moves at the June 15 trading deadline. First, he traded discontented ace reliever Rawly Eastwick and then dumped veteran pitchers Gary Nolan and Mike Caldwell while adding infielder Rick Auerbach. But those deals were all just a prelude to the biggest news of the trade deadline. Outbidding the Phillies, Howsam acquired ace starting pitcher Tom Seaver from the New York Mets for Zachry, slick infielder Doug Flynn, and two promising hitting prospects. Howsam realized that he had given up a lot for Seaver but was also aware that “you can’t give ashes for coal.” In making these deals, the Reds’ GM walked a difficult line between putting the best possible team on the field in 1977 and getting a return for players who, like Eastwick and Nolan, were determined to become free agents after the season.10

Seaver shut out the Expos in Montreal in his first start for the Reds, but that ultimately proved to be the team’s high-water mark. Six days later Seaver lost a 3-2 home contest to Tommy John and the Dodgers in what one close observer called the “biggest setback of the season.” And then things got much worse. Beginning on July 10, the Reds careened through a three-week losing skid that saw them drop 16 of 20 games, including eight games in a row, fall back under .500, and slip to 14 games behind Los Angeles. By the time Cincinnati rallied in late August to cut the Dodgers’ NL West lead to 8½ games, it was too little, and too late. The 1977 Reds won 88 games and even posted a winning record against the Dodgers, but still finished ten games behind Los Angeles.11

It was a team that prided itself on its group accomplishments but could only point to personal accolades in 1977. For example, Pete Rose and Johnny Bench each set records that year. No one, however, had a better year than George Foster. A “walking evangelist” who preached “brotherly love, clean living, and a love of God,” Foster wielded his ebony-stained bat (“The Black Death”) like an avenging angel that season, smiting NL pitchers with a .320 average, 52 home runs, and 149 runs batted in en route to the Most Valuable Player award.12

After finishing a season that left him feeling never “more disappointed in my life,” Bob Howsam turned over the general manager’s job to Dick Wagner, his longtime assistant and “hatchet man.” On principle, Wagner and the Reds eschewed free agency, the new way to accrue talent, and so turned to the trade market. He traded for sinkerballer Bill Bonham, purchased infielder Junior Kennedy, acquired speedy outfielder Dave Collins, and added relievers Doug Bair and Dave Tomlin. Then, for the second time in six months, the Reds shocked the game. Hoping to ensure that the Reds had the best pitching in baseball, Wagner dealt minor league first baseman Dave Revering and $1.75 million to the Oakland A’s for former Cy Young award winner Vida Blue, who was widely regarded as one of the better pitchers in the game. “People have said all we needed was pitching,” said Rose. “With Blue and Bill Bonham joining us, we got it now.”13

But just as they seemed to be back on top, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn dashed the Reds’ hopes by nullifying the Vida Blue trade on January 30, 1978. After a hearing that was “more like an inquisition than the fact-finding procedure,” Kuhn reaffirmed his earlier ruling that invalidated trades involving the exchange of more than $400,000. Reds president Howsam raged at Kuhn “kangaroo court” decision and Sparky Anderson declared, “If I hear [Kuhn] say just once more he’s doing something for the betterment of the baseball, I’m going to throw up.” Yet there was more than a touch of insincerity in Howsam’s position. After all, the Reds were one of a majority of owners that had urged Kuhn to cancel Oakland’s sales [of Blue, Joe Rudi, and Rollie Fingers] the previous year and Howsam had testified on Kuhn’s behalf in the subsequent court battle over the decision. It was evident to many at the time that Howsam’s fit was an illustration of the rule that the “only time an owner squeals is when his own ox is gored.”14

Another cloud also hung over the 1978 Reds. After an acrimonious negotiation with the team, Rose was playing on a two-year contract that allowed him to be a free agent after the season. Yet, if this was to be Rose’s last year with his hometown Reds, then he was determined to prove that he could still play. After becoming the player to accumulate 3,000 hits most quickly on May 5, Rose added to his lore in June and July. He was hitting just .267 on June 14, but grounded two singles into center field that day and then back in Cincinnati two days later, Rose doubled and singled in support of Tom Seaver’s only no-hitter. He had officially begun the longest hitting streak in NL history. By mid-July, Rose had hit in 30 consecutive games and was a national phenomenon. Good fortune allowed him to extend the streak on July 19, so that on July 25 he broke Tommy Holmes’ 23-year-old NL record and a week later tied Wee Willie Keeler’s 19th-century record by hitting in his 44th consecutive game. Just 12 games shy of Joe DiMaggio’s famed 56-game record, Rose’s streak ended the following evening when the Braves soft-tossers held him hitless.

The end of Rose’s streak began the Reds’ worst month of the 1978 season. Cincinnati had surged from the gate, winning seven of its first eight games, but the Dodgers and the surprising San Francisco Giants, their rotation augmented by a sanctioned trade for Vida Blue, remained in a dogfight with the Reds for most of the year. By August 1 Cincinnati trailed the front-running Giants by just a half-game, but they slumped through August and found themselves seven games behind the division-leading Dodgers by the beginning of September. For all intents and purposes, the Reds’ season was over. They righted the ship a bit in early September and finished the 1978 campaign just 2½ games behind Los Angeles, but that figure is highly misleading, since after the Dodgers clinched the division the Reds won their final six games while the Dodgers lost five of their last six meaningless contests. So the Reds were 20-8 down the stretch in 1978 but it was just “cosmetic improvement” and there was no pennant race in the final year of the Big Red Machine.15

November brought the final days of the Big Red Machine. After another protracted but this time fruitless contract negotiation with the Reds, Pete Rose filed for free agency after his record-setting 1978 season and signed with the powerhouse Phillies. Rose’s departure had been anticipated, if not expected, but the Reds’ firing of Sparky Anderson on November 28, 1978, shocked the baseball world. Rose’s stunned “What the hell’s going on?” was a typical reaction. While general manager Wagner had squabbled in the past with the fiercely loyal Anderson about the team’s coaching staff, he and Sparky were close friends and the general manager had given Anderson a resounding vote of confidence late in the season. “Sparky is in absolutely no jeopardy,” Wagner had said and then showed Anderson the article, proclaiming, “That is exactly the way I feel about you.” Further, Wagner had not suggested anything about a change during the rest of the season, nor on the Reds’ recently completed four-week tour of Japan. However, upon reflection Wagner decided that Sparky had not been stern enough at the helm, which led to the team’s not being “an aggressive ballclub in the field.” Believing that “the situation today calls for a new approach,” Wagner concluded that he couldn’t “just can’t sit back and let the ballclub go downhill.”16 Now, without Rose and Anderson, the Reds were the Big Red Machine only in metaphor.

However, the Reds did not fall apart after the departures of Rose and Anderson. Wagner’s Reds would eventually slide into irrelevance because of the team’s dogmatic refusal to partake in the modern economics of the game. Still, reinforced by a strong farm system, new manager John McNamara’s Reds performed quite well into the early 1980s. The Reds replaced Rose at third base with Ray Knight and put youngster Mike LaCoss into the rotation, but McNamara basically used the same squad that Anderson had fielded in 1978 and won the 1979 NL West title. After the Reds’ NLCS loss during a three-game sweep by the “We-Are-Family” Pirates, two more vital cogs of the Big Red Machine, Joe Morgan and Fred Norman, left the team as free agents. Scorning the free-agent market themselves, the Reds continued to fill holes from within, giving starting jobs to Dave Collins, Ron Oester, Mario Soto, Frank Pastore, and Joe Price. McNamara’s 1980 Reds started well, finished well and won 89 games, but ended the season in third place, 3½ games behind Morgan’s new team, the Houston Astros. Then Rose and the eventual world champion Phillies bested Morgan and the Astros during the NLCS in one of the baseball’s greatest playoff series. An aging Johnny Bench caught only seven games in 1981 and split time at first base with Dan Driessen during an injury-plagued season, but, powered by George Foster and Tom Seaver, the Reds played very well during both halves of the strike-ravaged campaign. In fact, the Reds compiled the best record in baseball that year, but missed the expanded postseason after finishing a half-game behind the Dodgers in the first part of the season and a game and a half behind the Astros during the season’s second act.

After the immense disappointments of 1981, Wagner dismantled the remnants of the old Big Red Machine by trading away Griffey and Foster. While Morgan, Rose, and Perez would play together again on the 1983 Phillies’ Wheeze Kids squad, only Bench, now playing an awkward third base to save his aching knees, and Dave Concepcion remained on the Reds. And both they and their Reds, who lost 101 games in 1982, cast but a faint shadow of the team’s faded glory.

ANTHONY GIACALONE is an independent historian specializing in 20th-century politics and popular culture. He has presented numerous research papers to SABR’s annual meetings and has contributed articles to Baseball Think Factory and The Hardball Times. He is currently writing a book on baseball in the 1960s and 1970s.

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