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

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

Overview

The year was 1961.

The franchise had struggled since World War II, and long-time team owner Powel Crosley died just days before the season began. New general manager Bill DeWitt had made a few trades but the new players didn't offer much hope. Everything expected another dismal year.

Then, somehow, all of the pieces fell together in one remarkable season that kicked off a return to winning baseball in Cincinnati—a trend that lasted through the century. With young starting pitchers like Jim O'Toole and Joey Jay, a first-rate bullpen, a tough manager, and a lineup of sluggers led by Frank Robinson, the Reds defied the odds and experts to win the league championship.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of this stunning season, author Mark J. Schmetzer has written the definitive book on the 1961 Reds. Interviewing a number of the players, as well as the sports writers who covered them, Schmetzer provides a fascinating account of this unlikely group of misfits who won the pennant. With Dozens of photos by revered photographer Jack Klumpe and a foreword by Reds historian Greg Rhodes, Before the Machine gives fans a dramatic look at the first steps of a franchise destined to dominate the league in years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781578604630
Publisher:	Clerisy Press
Publication date:	04/01/2011
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,070,568
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(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