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

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

by Joe Posnanski (Goodreads Author)

4.06 · rating details · 249 ratings · 52 reviews

There are memorable teams in baseball--and then there are utterly unforgettable teams like the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. From 1972 to 1976, the franchise known as the Big Red Machine dominated the National League, winning four division crowns, three league pennants, and two World Series titles. But their 1975 season has become the stuff of sports legend.

In "The Machine

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Hardcover, 302 pages

Published September 1st 2009 by William Morrow & Company (first published 2009)

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Sep 04, 2011

Taylor rated it

I have been a student of baseball my entire life. Sometimes I think that's the curse of being not-athletic. Off the top of my head I can tell you that George Brett had 1,595 career RBIs. That said, I could have named the 1975 Reds lineup before cracking this book. I knew of the unrelenting drive that made Pete Rose 'Charlie Hustle', the brash ego and abrasive personality that made Joe Morgan so easily hated during his playing days -and later his announcing days, the cocky front and country b...moreI have been a student of baseball my entire life. Sometimes I think that's the curse of being not-athletic. Off the top of my head I can tell you that George Brett had 1,595 career RBIs. That said, I could have named the 1975 Reds lineup before cracking this book. I knew of the unrelenting drive that made Pete Rose 'Charlie Hustle', the brash ego and abrasive personality that made Joe Morgan so easily hated during his playing days -and later his announcing days, the cocky front and country boy heart of Johnny Bench and the supporting roles that were accepted by other members of the Machine (Perez, Griffey, Foster, Geronimo) for sake of the greater good.

I had two reasons for buying this book. Last Summer my beloved St. Louis Cardinals were in a bitter division race with the Cincinnati Reds. On a hot August night in Cincinnati, a war of words between Cards catcher Yadier Molina and Reds 2B Brandon Phillips engulfed into a pier six brawl that included not only players, but managers and coaches. I'm quite confident that broadcasters Marty Brenneman (Reds) and Mike Shannon (Cards) would have joined the fracus had they not been confined to their respective boothes. I thought maybe rehashing stories of the Big Red Machine and their arrogance would help stoke my internal hatred for the franchise. Also, I enjoyed reading author Joe Posnanski's columns during his time with my local Kansas City Star.

This book did not reveal anything new about this great team or its cast of characters. I can relate, however, to Posnanski who had a lifelong ambition of writing a book about the iconic team of his youth. I was born about the same time Tony Perez was traded away to Montreal, which began the disintegration of the dynasty. The baseball dynasty of my lifetime would presumably be the New York Yankees of 1996-2003. If that team is ever the subject of a book a quarter of a century from now it would be much tougher painting a colorful picture of a team so devoid of charisma. Although the team actually won six more games than the Machine -and included bonadide Hall of Famers Derek Jeter & Mariano Rivera -it would be hard to make the personalities of Scott Brosius, Chuck Knoblach, Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, Chad Curtis, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams seem sexy. Maybe Posnanski will be up for that task. (less)

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Aug 30, 2011

Don rated it

· review of another edition

I almost always enjoy books about baseball history. At first glance, the subject of this book--the 1975 season of the Cincinnati Reds, one of the great teams of baseball history--seems like a surefire winner. However, both the subject matter and the book itself have some real problems.

First, the team: This was not a particularly likeable group of guys. And while Posnanski is sympathetic, the portrait that emerges can't help but be somewhat off-putting with respect to most of the ke...moreI almost always enjoy books about baseball history. At first glance, the subject of this book--the 1975 season of the Cincinnati Reds, one of the great teams of baseball history--seems like a surefire winner. However, both the subject matter and the book itself have some real problems.

First, the team: This was not a particularly likeable group of guys. And while Posnanski is sympathetic, the portrait that emerges can't help but be somewhat off-putting with respect to most of the key members of the team. In addition, the 1975 season ultimately lacked drama; the Reds won their division by 20 games (a huge margin), so after a slow beginning, there was no excitement to the pennant race. The 1975 World Series against the Red Sox is generally credited as one of the most exciting Series ever, but that doesn't sustain the entire book.

Second, the book itself: It's just not well-written or done. Posnanski's prose is repetitive (nearly every double is "crushed") and often awkward. He doesn't describe how the elements of the team were built/put together, which would have really enhanced the story. His narrative of the regular season is pedestrian, and one gets little insight into the day-to-day play of the team. His portraits of the individual players (and manager) are for the most part flat and one-dimensional. One gets very little real insight into these guys.

Most annoyingly, for me at least, are Posnanski's sidebars to describe the non-baseball events of the day. Writers of baseball histories often do this in an attempt to place the sporting events of the book in the larger context of what was going on in the world. Generally, I think this is misguided, since the sporting events take place in a genuine bubble. Reading about contemporary political and other cultural events was a distraction and did not enrich the story. Nevertheless, Posnanski frequently breaks off for this purpose. There's even a several page long discourse on Evel Knievel which, of course, has nothing to do with the main story. I found myself skipping over these passages of the book.

I would also have liked to see a final section of the book which describes the subsequent careers (and even the current status) of many of the players. There is an all-too-brief section at the end which mentions the departures from the Reds of a couple of players, but this should really have been expanded to let the reader know more about the post-1975 careers of players. Surprisingly, although Posnanski interviewed Pete Rose extensively, and shows him in Las VEgas in recent years, he writes nothing about Rose's post-1975 career. Rose was a native son of Cincinatti and extremely popular there; why and when did he leave the Reds, for how long did he continue to play at "star" level, what about his tenure with the pennant-winning Phillies? Some real lost opportunities here.(less)

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Mar 24, 2011

Nathan rated it

· review of another edition

posnanski's one of the better sports writer's around. while i prefer his shorter pieces (although some of his shorter pieces can be quite long), this was still well worth the read. what's excellent about this book is that the author, for the most part, doesn't apply too much historical context. he's able to stay in the moment for the most part, so that as a reader, we're able to sort of experience the pennant race (even though we know what happens) and the players don't have the baggage they ...more

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Oct 27, 2010

John rated it

· review of another edition

I loved this book! as a child of the 70s, I knew all the players on the Reds; Johnny Bench was my favorite. This book is full of details on their 1975 season all the way through to the cliffhanger World Series with Boston. I have a new appreciation for Sparky Anderson ("Captain Hook") after reading this.

Impressive that Posnanski can describe the drama in a season they ended up 20 games ahead of the second place team. But, of course, Joe Posnanski is a great writer. If ...more

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Oct 20, 2009

Dan rated it

Awesome book. Not as good as Soul of Baseball, but that is probably because of the subject. I was a few years younger than Posnanski in '75, but I definitely remember these players.

Of course most of them had been reduced to caricatures by now. Bench was just the guy from the Baseball Bunch, Rose was the cheate and Joe just needed to be fired. This book made them real people.

I took a baseball road trip this summer and one of the stops was Cincinatti. I bought a shirt celeb...more

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Nov 12, 2009

Tom Gase rated it

Good book, and now I can't wait to read Joe Posnanski's book on Buck O' Neil. This was a quick read but it the author does a good job describing the mood of the 1975 Red's team on and off the field. Posnanski also does a good job reminding the reader what the world was like in 1975 with Jaws being a big hit at the movies, Springsteen releasing Born to Run, and Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon.

I decided to read this book now because I just finished reading Mark Frost's "Game Six."...more

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Nov 11, 2009

Luke rated it

Shelves: general-nonfiction

There's a pretty wide consensus that Joe Posnanski is the best sportswriter in America today, and I think that's probably right--more than that, though, he's just a plain good writer. No one else captures a poignant moment better; no one else dispatches with stupidity with more verve and grace; no one else offers his unique balance between cutting edge sabermetric geekery and deep historical appreciation, especially when it comes to baseball. And what I love best is when Posnanski writes about o...moreThere's a pretty wide consensus that Joe Posnanski is the best sportswriter in America today, and I think that's probably right--more than that, though, he's just a plain good writer. No one else captures a poignant moment better; no one else dispatches with stupidity with more verve and grace; no one else offers his unique balance between cutting edge sabermetric geekery and deep historical appreciation, especially when it comes to baseball. And what I love best is when Posnanski writes about old-time baseball ("old-time," to me, being anything before the late '80s, when I first got hooked on the sport), which is why reading The Machine was a particular treat.

Prior to reading the book, I knew next to nothing about the 1975 Reds--I knew Joe Morgan as the annoying baseball announcer who doesn't believe in stats (inspiring the popular website "Fire Joe Morgan"), and I knew Pete Rose as that bitter old guy who was banned from baseball for betting on his own team. I knew literally almost nothing about guys like Johnny Bench and Tony Perez. Posnanski doesn't shy away from the less palatable aspects to these players' personalities, evident even back then, but he does capture them at that time in their lives when they were at the height of their powers, before everything else transpired. When he's at his best, Posnanski paints scenes and brings a vivid cast of characters to life in a way that feels almost novelistic. I was definitely hooked.

The problem with the book (and the reason I'm only giving this 3 stars, though it's more of a 3 and a half) is that the story of the Reds is still just the story of a great baseball team--there isn't necessarily a strong narrative arc beyond that or any kind of compelling thematic underpinning. Posnanski was meticulous with his research, and he's compiled some great anecdotes about the team, but at the end of the day, much of the book feels like just that: a collection of anecdotes. What works really well in Poz's essay-length pieces is a bit harder to sustain over the full duration of a 260-page book. What Posnanski ended up doing to give some sense of a "big picture," is inserting, every couple of chapters, brief snippets of what else was going on in the world in 1975. Didn't really work for me.

Did all of this take away from my enjoyment of the book? Not really. But for those who aren't big-time baseball fans to begin with, The Soul of Baseball might be a better entree into Posnanski's work.(less)

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Dec 02, 2011

Josh Duggan rated it

I feel like I should set this entry up just a little by stating that before I go anywhere else on the internet I check my RSS tab on my browser to see if Joe Posnanski has written anything new. More often than not, he has. If there isn't a new entry in the feeder, I go to the blog anyway to make sure the RSS is up to speed. If the first step fails to turn up a fresh entry, the second step almost always does.

This is somewhat remarkable in that he is so prolific in his writing that one w...more

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Oct 06, 2009

Anders Gustafson rated it

Baseball seasons are long. Some detractors might say they're too long. But fan or not, there's no denying that encapsulating every part of a team's 162+ games is probably impossible, and certainly undesirable. From that standpoint, I really enjoyed "The Machine". I was born in 1985, ten years after Pete, Johnny, Big Dog and the rest of 1975 Reds demolished the competition for the better part of their long season. While there's no substitute for experiencing such brilliance firsthand, r...more

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Jan 19, 2010

Brooks rated it

Shelves: books-read-2010

I will start by saying that I don’t care about the 1975 Reds. They had played and retired by the time I was old enough to follow baseball, and I’ve only ever known Pete Rose as a gambler, and Joe Morgan as an announcer. For that reason I wasn't sure I would find this as enjoyable as Joe Posnanski's other writings. I needn't have worried. As you read, you feel like you’re on Joe Poz’s shoulder as he interviews these players for the book. It definitely reads like a memoir, not a documentary –...more

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Oct 13, 2009

Michael "Mick Dawg" Joseph rated it

Recommends it for: Baseball fans

Posnanski's recap of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds is a must-read for any baseball fan. Posnanski tells the story of the '75 Reds as it unfolds, and sprinkles pop culture references along the way. The book is loaded with fantastic stories, and great analysis of a team that struggled to get over the hump of actually winning the World Series. It provides a unique view of Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Ken Griffey, and all the 'turds' of the 1975 Reds. The book changed my view on Joe M...more

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Aug 04, 2011

Larry Johnson added it

I've read several baseball books and other sports books, but I believe this one is the best one of all of them. Any Reds fan and most baseball fans will enjoy reading this as it follows the Reds through the 1975 season. I was only 5 and just remember a few of the events so I found it to bring a fresh respective on one of my favorite teams. It also shows how this team would change the face of baseball to what it is today...be that good or bad. Posnanski takes you back to glory days of baseball a...more

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Jan 01, 2010

James rated it

I should read more sports books.

My interest in sports has waxed and waned over the years, but the times when I read, have generally been in the sports' troughs. I managed to get Bill Veeck's bio in there, and a few years later Moneyball, and I just finished McPhee's Bill Bradley book....but as best I can remember, this is only sports book number 4.

Wreck was great, but Moneyball is pretty untouchable. Sense of Where You Are is tremendous, but not in sports ways - I don't...more

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Aug 24, 2010

John rated it

Joe Posnanski is one of my favorite contemporary baseball writers. His columns are always thoughtful, emotional, witty and well-written. So I was curious what he could do with a longer format. This book tells the story of The Big Red Machine's amazing 1975 season in roughly chronological order. I didn't know as much about the Reds as I probably should have, but this book captures their spirit very well.

Looking at the stats, this team was good, but you wouldn't say they were the best...more

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Nov 21, 2009

Rob O'd rated it

Joe Posnanski is one of my favorite baseball/sports writers, but this book was pretty disappointing. He did not do a very good job developing the main character's back stories with any sort of depth. It was a lot of "Joe yelled at Pete. Pete made fun of Tony. Sparky's stomach was upset." The book followed the Reds' schedule, and did not really waver from that. The only person of interest whose background that was really explored was Pete Rose, but most of it was already public kn...more

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Jan 27, 2010

Nancy rated it

Shelves: 2010, non-fiction

A bit repetitive--a few of the stories are told more than once--but Posnanski has a distinct authorial voice that I really like. I wished the book was longer, and I was hoping for more off-the-field stuff, but this was a good time from start to finish. It makes me want to pick up The Long Ball (by Tom Adelman) again, which is about the entirety of the 1975 season, to see how things fit together.

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Mar 07, 2010

THOMAS rated it

I might've given this one more star, except that right as I was about to start reading it I put two and two together and it dawned on me: 1975...Fisk waving the homerun fair in game 6...

Fuck.

The climax of this book is the Red Sox losing the World Series in game 7.

So even though it was cool to read about Pete Rose and Johnny Bench, etc., it kind of ended with a brutal crotch-kick.

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Jun 14, 2011

Scott rated it

may be more than a little biased being a cincinnati native who was born in 1975,but i found the narrative to be welcoming,you really got a feel for this team and why cincinnati baseball is such a grand tradition. The people in this book are a thing to be written about in fiction, except they were real which makes it that much more of a brilliant tale....

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Nov 27, 2011

Benjamin Shay rated it

As a big fan of Posnanski, I was a little disappointed by this book. Most events in the book just sort of happen; there isn't very much back story to anything. I would have preferred to read much more about the characters and, if the trade needs to be made, less about random instances of Joe Morgan and Pete Rose getting on each other.

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Dec 23, 2010

Jeff rated it

I loved this book. I loved the insight it gave to a team and a season that meant so much to me as a kid. It's a well-written account that brought back so many great memories -- of a time when baseball wasn't ruled by money, when you knew from one season to the next who was starting on your team, and when Cincinnati was the true Big Red Machine.

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Sep 20, 2010

David rated it

Although I think Posnanski is probably the best sportswriter working today I was just a little disappointed with this effort but maybe only because I was expecting it to be as good as his first book, The Soul of Baseball.

BTW, I think I'm done reading about the 1975 World Series now. Enough already.

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Apr 13, 2010

Jeremy rated it

Joe Posnanski wrote the greatest baseball book ever: "The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America." This book is well-researched and entertaining; the characterization of Pete Rose is outstanding. It's just not quite as moving as the Buck O'Neill book. Read that one first.

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Jan 04, 2010

Sam Bauman rated it

It wasn't nearly as good as the soul of baseball. There was also a lot of repetition, I don't know if that was on purpose or just as filler. I guess maybe you wouldn't notice if you don't read it all in one sitting. Joe's a great writer, but this one wasn't as good.

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Sep 04, 2010

Polly rated it

If anyone loves baseball, you know this is the best team ever. You also know pete rose should be in the hall of fame but that is another subject. A great, great story following the magical year of the Big Red Machine.

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Aug 28, 2010

Kevin Movius rated it

Very good story of the best baseball time of all time and the personalities that made up the team. How Sparky Anderson got the players to perform their best, and how he earned the name Captain Hook.

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Nov 22, 2010

David rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: baseball

I couldn't put it down. Great team, heroes and storylines, compellingly told. (Disclosure: I'm a Cincy native whose first -- and sweetest -- baseball memories were of this team.)

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Sep 01, 2010

Robert rated it

Awesome baseball book! This does a really good job depicting one of the greatest MLB teams of All-Time - The 1975 Cincinnati Reds. I love how some of these players thought the same way about Joe Morgan as many do today, meaning a self-promoting nut. The sidestory of Griffey sacrificing his stats for Morgan's stats was an eye-opener. The book puts Rose in a good light, too. It is fair to say that he deserved it though because he was one of the Cicinnati Stars who also switched positions earl...more

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Oct 30, 2011

Jack rated it

Disappointing. I generally like Posnanski, but this book was kind of lazy, and uninformed by the kind of sharp sabrmetrical insight he usually brings to bear.

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Feb 28, 2010

Ty rated it

Great time, great writer, fair book. Posnanski is the best baseball journalist around, but it didn't come together here. I'll read the next one, though.

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Aug 02, 2011

Brandon Steenson rated it

I liked The Soul of Baseball a heck of lot more, but the subject was a bit more engaging. Still, another first-rate work by Poz...

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About Joe Posnanski

Joe Posnanski is sports columnist for The Kansas City Star and Sports Illustrated. He has twice been named the best sports columnist in America by The Associated Press Sports Editors.

He has written two books, “The Good Stuff,” a collection of columns, and “The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America,” which won the Casey Award as best baseball book of 2007. Hi...more

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title link	preview: The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-Stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds
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