a lot more enthusiasm than skill, Pete attacked the ball like a commando trying to throw himself on a hand grenade. (Reds announcer Marty Brennaman said that in his first game at third Rose “looked like a monkey playing with a football.”) Black and blue from the pounding he’d taken—wearing a heavily padded jockstrap because of it—within a week Rose told Sparky he loved playing third because it put him right in the middle of the action. He took relentless ribbing from his teammates for his Cro-Magnon fielding style—that infield already included three smooth, perennial Gold Glovers in Bench, Morgan, and shortstop Dave Concepcion—but Rose was an all-world trash talker who always gave as good as he got, and all their provocation did was make him work even harder. Penciling Rose in at third solved Sparky’s other problem by opening up left field for twenty-six-year-old George Foster, a prodigious bat and decent fielder with a powerful but erratic throwing arm who’d always seemed slightly out of his depth in right or center. Putting Foster in left allowed Sparky to install twenty-four-year-old second-year man Ken Griffey, a phenomenal athlete and former football star who was still relatively new to baseball, as his everyday right fielder.
And with that, voilà: Particularly on the artificial turf of their home field, Riverfront Stadium, adding Griffey’s speed near the top of the lineup, between Rose and Morgan—and Foster’s power in the sixth spot, after Bench and first baseman Perez—revitalized the Reds’ dormant offense, and the Big Red Machine kicked into overdrive. They won forty-one of their next fifty games; by the All-Starbreak Cincinnati led the National League’s West Division by twelve and a half games. Winning 96 of their final 138 games, the Reds clinched their division by 20 during the first week of September, then marched right on to dust the powerful Pittsburgh Pirates in a three-game sweep of the National League Championship, to reach their third World Series in six years.
And Pete Rose, just as he’d predicted when he switched positions, made the 1975 National League All-Star team and would spend most of the rest of his career at third base.
All the experts in the national press had picked these rampaging Reds to walk all over the underdog Red Sox in this World Series, but with unexpected grit Boston had pushed them hard into this sixth game and shocked everyone in the sport, with the possible exception of George Anderson, who never took anything about his team’s prospects, or anything in baseball for that matter, for granted.
After nearly seven years in the minors, Anderson saw his own baseball dreams crash and burn after a single mediocre season in 1959 playing second base for the bottom-dwelling Philadelphia Phillies. The only record he established was hardly one to brag about: most games ever played by a player who only spent one year in the major leagues. He hung around for four more years playing for Toronto in Triple-A, the top tier of the minors, hoping for another chance, but Sparky never made it back to the Show, picking up odd jobs to make ends meet in the off-season back home in California. Turning thirty and facing facts, but determined to stay in baseball, and without an education to provide for his young family in any other arena, Anderson decided that managing in the game he knew so thoroughly represented his best and only chance. He received crucial advice and encouragement from the last man he’d played for in the minors, Charlie Dressen, who’d managed the sensational Brooklyn Dodgers in the early 1950s. Once he was given the chance, Sparky’s instincts, energy, and aptitude manifested with stunning immediacy; working his way up through the sport’s rural backwaters, the minor-league teams he managed won four consecutive pennants in four different leagues, culminating in a championship for Cincinnati’s Double-A affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina. That
And with that, voilà: Particularly on the artificial turf of their home field, Riverfront Stadium, adding Griffey’s speed near the top of the lineup, between Rose and Morgan—and Foster’s power in the sixth spot, after Bench and first baseman Perez—revitalized the Reds’ dormant offense, and the Big Red Machine kicked into overdrive. They won forty-one of their next fifty games; by the All-Starbreak Cincinnati led the National League’s West Division by twelve and a half games. Winning 96 of their final 138 games, the Reds clinched their division by 20 during the first week of September, then marched right on to dust the powerful Pittsburgh Pirates in a three-game sweep of the National League Championship, to reach their third World Series in six years.
And Pete Rose, just as he’d predicted when he switched positions, made the 1975 National League All-Star team and would spend most of the rest of his career at third base.
All the experts in the national press had picked these rampaging Reds to walk all over the underdog Red Sox in this World Series, but with unexpected grit Boston had pushed them hard into this sixth game and shocked everyone in the sport, with the possible exception of George Anderson, who never took anything about his team’s prospects, or anything in baseball for that matter, for granted.
After nearly seven years in the minors, Anderson saw his own baseball dreams crash and burn after a single mediocre season in 1959 playing second base for the bottom-dwelling Philadelphia Phillies. The only record he established was hardly one to brag about: most games ever played by a player who only spent one year in the major leagues. He hung around for four more years playing for Toronto in Triple-A, the top tier of the minors, hoping for another chance, but Sparky never made it back to the Show, picking up odd jobs to make ends meet in the off-season back home in California. Turning thirty and facing facts, but determined to stay in baseball, and without an education to provide for his young family in any other arena, Anderson decided that managing in the game he knew so thoroughly represented his best and only chance. He received crucial advice and encouragement from the last man he’d played for in the minors, Charlie Dressen, who’d managed the sensational Brooklyn Dodgers in the early 1950s. Once he was given the chance, Sparky’s instincts, energy, and aptitude manifested with stunning immediacy; working his way up through the sport’s rural backwaters, the minor-league teams he managed won four consecutive pennants in four different leagues, culminating in a championship for Cincinnati’s Double-A affiliate in Asheville, North Carolina. That
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