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

The 1970s Cincinnati Reds, remembered to history as the Big Red Machine, are a well-mined literary story. Besides the several books written in the aftermath of their 1975 and 1976 championships, and the many memoirs written by players and the manager, there is Greg Rhodes and John Erardi's wonderful Big Red Dynasty (Road West, 1997), and Daryl Smith's thorough Making the Big Red Machine (McFarland, 2009). The latter two in particular deal extensively with how the Reds evolved into one of history's greatest teams. One might wonder: what else is there to say?

Joe Posnanski tells us that he wrote The Machine so that he could "write about baseball from my childhood," about his favorite players and personalities from an era that feels "faded and distant" (276). An award-winning columnist for the Kansas City Star and Sports Illustrated, as well as the author of the Casey Award-winning The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America (William Morrow, 2007), Posnanski stands out among many of his newspaper peers for his embrace of sabermetrics and modern analysis, which has made him a favorite among many of the newer internet writers. In The Machine, Posnanski stays away from the heavy analysis and the story of the Reds' evolution, instead giving us a more traditional inside look at what it might have been like to be in the Reds' locker room and dugout in the summer of 1975. Posnanski's main sources were contemporary Cincinnati newspapers and his own interviews with the writers and players who were there.

What makes this an outstanding book is not only Posnanski's writing, which is typically first-rate, but the subject matter. The Reds were not only one of history's great teams, they were also a team filled with fascinating personalities, people who were household names then and are still well-known, foremost among them Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and manager Sparky Anderson. Posnanski tells the story of the season through the eyes of these men and their lesser teammates.

Posnanski writes of a speech Anderson made to his team that spring in Tampa. Sparky informed his charges that the club had two different types of players. On the one hand, there were the four superstars: Bench, Morgan, Rose, and Perez. If they needed to show up late or go play golf or go to the track, well, Sparky would wish them luck. "The rest of you," said Sparky, "are turds" (25). This approach would seem likely to backfire on most clubs, but with the Reds it worked—mainly because the four stars generally showed up every day and worked hard.

The rest of the Reds went along, though they had little choice. At one point Dave Concepcion, the team's fine shortstop, let Joe Morgan know that he felt he was now a star in his own right. "No, you're not," Morgan told him. "We're stars, you're not" (101). Ken Griffey still bears the resentment of his second-class status with the Reds. In particular, he felt that both Bench and Morgan were "asshole[s]" (210). Years later, the caste system had become more complex—at various celebrations commemorating the great club, the eight starting position players were honored, while the pitching staff was ignored.

Posnanski does not take us through the season game-by-game. Instead he describes the season's more interesting turning points and the postseason. There was no pennant race—the Reds ran away with the division and league championship before defeating the Red Sox in one of baseball's most fabled World Series. Posnanski keeps the reader interested with the way Anderson creatively solved problems with his lineup and pitching rotation, and how Anderson's own insecurities motivated him to keep...