The Big Red Machine dominated major league baseball in the 1970s,
but the Cincinnati franchise began its climb to that pinnacle in
1961, when an unlikely collection of cast-offs and wannabes stunned
the baseball world by winning the National League pennant. Led by
revered manager Fred Hutchinson, the team featured rising stars
like Frank Robinson, Jim O'Toole, and Vada Pinson, fading stars
like Gus Bell and Wally Post, and a few castoffs who suddenly came
into their own, like Gene Freese and 20-game-winner Joey Jay. In
time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their pennant-winning
season, the amazing story of the "Ragamuffin Reds" is told from
start to finish in Before the Machine. Written by long-time Reds
Report editor Mark J. Schmetzer and featuring dozens of photos by
award-winning photographer Jerry Klumpe of the Cincinnati Post
& Times Star, this book surely will be a winner with every fan
in Reds country and coincides with an anniversary exhibit at the
Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum. Through interviews and
research, Before the Machine captures the excitement of a pennant
race for a team that had suffered losing seasons in 14 of the past
16 years. Schmetzer also beautifully evokes the time and place--a
muggy Midwestern summer during which, as the new song of the season
boasts, "the whole town's batty for that team in Cincinnati." Led
by regional talk-show star Ruth Lyons (the Midwest's "Oprah") fans
rallied around the Reds as never before. The year didn't begin well
for the team. Budding superstar Frank Robinson was arrested right
before spring training for carrying a concealed weapon, and
long-time owner Powel Crosley Jr., died suddenly just days before
the start of the season. Few experts--or fans--gave the Reds much
of a chance at first place anyway. With powerhouse teams in Los
Angeles, San Francisco, and Milwaukee, the National League pennant
was unlikely to fly over Cincinnati's Crosley Field. But manager
Hutchinson somehow galvanized his motley crew and led them to
victory after victory. Joey Jay, who had languished with the
Braves, mowed down hitters while his rotation mates O'Toole and
knuckleballer Bob Purkey did the same. The team also featured a
dynamic duo in the bullpen in Bill Henry and Jim Brosnan, whose
book about the season, Pennant Race, became a national bestseller
the following year. As the rest of the league kept waiting for the
Reds to fade, Hutch's boys kept winning--and finally grabbed the
pennant. Though they couldn't continue their magic in the World
Series against the Yankees, the previously moribund Reds franchise
did continue to their success throughout the decade, winning 98
games in 1962 and falling just short of another pennant in 1964.
They established a recipe for success that would lead, a few years
later, to the emergence of the Big Red Machine.
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