Before the Machine: The Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Reds

by Mark J. Schmetzer, Greg Rhodes (Foreword by)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781578605842
Publisher:	Clerisy Press
Publication date:	07/01/2018
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	708,677
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Except for twenty-two months from 1989 into 1991, Mark Schmetzer has lived his entire life in Greater Cincinnati and spent most of that time following, rooting for, and writing about the Cincinnati Reds. In 2010, he co-authored The Comeback Kids (Clerisy Press) with Joe Jacobs. That season was the twenty-fifth out of the last twenty-seven in which the La Salle High School and University of Cincinnati graduate covered the Reds on a daily basis. He started in 1984, the Reds’ first season without an active Johnny Bench, writing for RedsVue, a paper that later became Reds Report. The 1961 Reds clinched the National League pennant on his sixth birthday. He lives in Forest Park, Ohio, with his wife, Sharon

Read an Excerpt

By the end of the 1960 season, the only person who’d been involved with the Cincinnati franchise longer than Gabe Paul was the owner, Powel Crosley Jr., but only by a couple of years.

Crosley had purchased the Reds in 1934 at the urging of flamboyant general manager Larry MacPhail. When MacPhail left in 1936 to take over the Brooklyn Dodgers, Crosley replaced him with Warren C. Giles, business manager of the Rochester Red Wings of the Triple-A International League. Giles brought Paul with him from New York.

Paul was only in his mid-twenties, but he already had a decade’s worth of education in how to run a baseball team. He started as a Red Wings batboy at the age of ten. Six years later, he was helping cover the team for a Rochester newspaper as well as for The Sporting News, already highly regarded as “The Bible of Baseball.” Paul was eighteen years old in 1928 when Giles named him the team’s publicity director and twenty-four in 1934 when he was promoted to road secretary.

Paul took over as Cincinnati’s publicity director when he and Giles moved from Rochester. After serving in the Army during World War II, he returned to his familiar role and remained in it until 1951, when Giles became National League president and Paul was promoted to general manager.

The Reds were unable to win a championship during Paul’s ten years as general manager. In fact, they managed just two winning seasons—1956, when they finished third with a 91–63 record and 1957, when they went 80–74 and finished fourth.

Paul was named Major League Executive of the Year in 1956, the season in which the Reds reached seven figures in attendance for the first time in franchise history, but his record in trades as general manager was mixed. His best acquisition was outfielder Gus Bell from the Pittsburgh Pirates for three toss-away players shortly after the 1952 season. Bell became one of Cincinnati’s most consistent and popular players throughout the decade.

Paul also traded for pitchers Bob Purkey and Jim Brosnan and infielder Eddie Kasko, all solid performers through the late 1950s, and the club signed prospects such as outfielders Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson and pitchers Jim O’Toole, Jim Maloney, and Ken Hunt. Purkey won seventeen games in two of his first three seasons with the Reds, 1958 and 1960, while Kasko was named the team’s Most Valuable Player in 1960 and Brosnan established himself as a dependable relief pitcher.

Table of Contents

Foreword Greg Rhodes vi

Introduction 1

1 Makeover 13

2 Taking Aim 45

3 The Scene 73

4 Fits and Starts 95

5 On Track 119

6 What's Up with the Cubs? 147

7 Robby and Hutch 173

8 Blowing the Lid Off 225

9 Bronx Bombed 257

10 Moving On 257

Acknowledgments 275

Bibliography 278

About the Author 280