The Machine

by Joe Posnanski

  Fired. He said it. Sparky stared at the guy for a moment and felt something building inside him, but that something would not fully form until late that night. In the moment, he sputtered through some kind of answer. Sparky said that he wasn’t worried about his job, he was worried about this team, and he felt like he had done a good job. That night, though, while trying to get some sleep at the Holiday Inn, it hit him: he had just managed the greatest team in baseball history. He had coaxed the veterans through their ego problems, soothed the worries of the younger players, reinvented the way a manager uses a pitching staff. Sparky had led his team to 108 victories. And some reporter asked if he was worried about getting fired.

  That’s it, he would remember thinking. I’m not talking to those damn reporters anymore. They twist everything around. I’m not talking. Let them find their own stories.

  And he fell off into a fitful and short sleep.

  October 4, 1975

  CINCINNATI

  REDS VS. PIRATES

  Playoff Game 1

  The Ali-Frazier fight played in movie theaters all over America. They were calling it, simply, “The Superfight.” Ali, as usual, described it better: “It was the closest thing to dying that I know of.” Ali had pummeled Frazier in the early rounds. Then Frazier, with that big fighting heart of his, ravaged Ali’s body in the middle rounds. The final rounds, though, belonged to Ali. “The fight’s over, Joe,” Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, said as he refused to let his man go out for the fifteenth round. It was savage and terrible and, the sportswriters were writing, the very essence of sports.

  At the same time, Major League Baseball held a bubble-blowing competition for players leading up to the World Series. The playoffs began in Cincinnati, where the Pirates played the Reds, and in Boston, where the defending World Champion A’s played the Boston Red Sox. But in the shadow of the Thrilla, baseball to many seemed so tame, passé even. “Baseball’s still the national pastime,” Pete Rose insisted.

  Joe Morgan had told everyone about the perfect run. It went like so: Joe would walk to get on first base. He would steal second base. He would steal third base. And then he would score on a sacrifice fly hit by Johnny or Doggie or whoever. That was perfection, a run scored without a single batter getting a hit, without anyone padding their statistics, a silent and deadly run, a James Bond run. “It messes with the pitcher’s mind,” Joe would say.

  In the third inning of the first playoff game, with the scored tied, Joe walked against Pittsburgh’s starter, Jerry Reuss. Joe had specifically asked Sparky Anderson to move him from the third spot in the lineup to the second spot. It was a matter of responsibility. In the third spot, Joe felt like he had to be more of a power hitter, he had to drive in runs, he had to carry his teammates. But from the second spot in the lineup, Joe felt free. He could steal bases, score runs, destroy pitchers’ psyches. He thought that his speed was exactly what the Reds needed to beat Pittsburgh. The Pirates’ catcher was an affable man from Panama named Manny Sanguillen who could hit any pitch you threw him—he became famous for swatting line drives on pitches that were a foot above his head or heading for the dirt—but he did not have much of an arm. Joe knew Sanguillen could not throw him out stealing.

  Sparky agreed. He shifted the entire lineup around. He moved Joe to the second spot, Johnny to the third, Doggie to the fourth, and George Foster to the fifth. And in the third inning, after Joe walked, he stole second. Then he stole third. Reuss looked uncomfortable. He walked Johnny and gave up a single to Doggie, which allowed Joe to score the almost perfect run. Reuss’s mind was suitably messed up. He gave up a double to Ken Griffey that scored two more runs.

  “Everything worked out like Sparky and I planned it,” Joe crowed when the game ended, and it did work. The Reds scored four more runs in the fifth inning, the big hit a long home run by Reds pitcher Don Gullett. The Machine rolled to an easy 8–2 victory. Joe did not have a single hit, but he felt like the hero. He happily told reporters about messing with Reuss’s head.

  A few lockers down, Ken Griffey smiled. Yes, everyone was happy…except that, by toying around with the lineup, Sparky had moved Ken Griffey down to the seventh spot in the lineup. Ken knew he did not deserve that. He had hit .300 all season. He had been the perfect number-two hitter—he had given up his speed game to keep Joe comfortable, he had slapped all those infield hits, he had done whatever they asked. He did not deserve to be moved to the seventh spot. But he smiled just the same. As always, his feelings were his own.

  October 5, 1975

  CINCINNATI

  REDS VS. PIRATES

  Playoff Game 2

  Well, if there was one thing Ken Griffey knew, it was this: if Joe and Sparky were going to move him back to seventh in the lineup, he would damn well steal some bases. All year, he had held back—Ken liked to see himself as a team player, a helpful guy, a man willing to put away his own ego for the good of everyone—but he was not going to hold back now. He could have stolen seventy bases in 1975 if they had let him, maybe eighty. He was faster than Joe Morgan (who had stolen sixty-seven). But they did not want that, and Ken felt pretty sure he knew why: they did not want Ken to become a star. The Machine already had its stars—Johnny, Pete, Joe, and, to a lesser extent, Doggie—and there were no vacancies. Davey had wanted to be called a star for years, and they laughed at him. George hit the ball harder than any of them, but he could not quite break in. And Ken knew, absolutely knew, that if given the freedom, if asked to be his best, he could be a star too. Nobody was asking, though.

  Well, now he was hitting seventh in the lineup, and he would show them all. The Reds led by three runs in the sixth inning of Game 2, and Ken led off against Pittsburgh reliever Kent Tekulve. He sliced a single to left field. And then he danced off first base, danced and danced, and he saw Tekulve’s shoulders tighten. Ken took off. He stole second base. It was easy. Poor Manny Sanguillen did not even have a chance to throw him out. He danced off second base, danced and danced, and again he saw Tekulve’s shoulders tighten. Ken took off. He stole third base. It was easy.

  This was what Ken could be, if they would let him. Pittsburgh manager Danny Murtaugh called to the bullpen, brought in left-handed pitcher Ken Brett. Griffey danced off third base. He was invincible. He was unstoppable. Brett looked nervous. He flinched. The umpire pointed at him…balk. The umpire pointed Griffey toward home. The Reds won again, won easily, 6–1 this time. The Pirates were helpless.

  Years later, Ken Griffey sat in a leather seat in a hotel lobby in Tampa, Florida. “I’m going to be honest with you,” Ken was saying. “Johnny Bench, to me, was an asshole. The last four or five years, he’s gotten better. He’s totally a different person. You can sit and talk to him now. He’s just totally changed. Back then, he would look right through you.”

  He smiled and kept looking straight ahead. “Joe was an asshole too. Joe was like that too. He talked down to certain people. He didn’t talk at all to me or George. I guess we weren’t on his list of good people or something. That’s just how it was, you know?”

  Griffey had stayed in baseball. He coached for a while, and then he became a scout. He was in Florida scouting a minor league baseball game for the Reds. He said he still loved being around the game.

  “I could have been a whole hell of a lot different player,” he said. “I could have been a very selfish player. I could have been like a Joe Morgan…. Joe knew that he couldn’t run with me. I could have stolen just as many bases as he did. I could have stolen more bases. Back in 1973, I was the best there was at stealing bases. The best there was.

  “But that wasn’t my story, you know? Sparky told me I couldn’t steal bases because it bothered Joe’s hitting. And after ’75, I kind of lost my ability to steal bases. I sacrificed for the team. I always sacrificed for the team.”

  Ken Griffey went on to a very good career in the major leagues. He made three All-Star teams. He accumulated more than two thousand hits. And he played long enough that he was actually a tea
mmate of his son, Ken Jr., on the Seattle Mariners. Junior went on to even more fame and more success. Junior hit more than six hundred home runs, and people often said that he had been born to play baseball. Ken Sr. never believed that. He remembered those days when he had to put Junior to sleep in a dresser drawer to keep him above the rats.

  “Junior had the opportunity to do the things I didn’t do,” Ken says. “He had the opportunity to be himself. I didn’t get that chance. They didn’t let me be myself.

  “Here’s the thing: most of the guys in the major leagues at that time were selfish players. You had to be selfish then. It was about money. And it wasn’t a lot of money, but you had to put up numbers to get paid. That’s just how it was then. When I went to negotiate with Dick Wagner, he told me to sign or he would send my ass to Triple A. And I had hit .305.”

  He shrugged. Those clubhouse rips that seemed fun in 1975, maybe they stayed with him through the years. Those slights he smiled through in 1975, maybe they still cut him just a bit. A man does not talk about these things. But they still come out.

  “It was fun, you know?” Ken said. “I mean, we were a great team. It was fun to be part of that team. We had fun. But it’s still true. I sacrificed. I sacrificed more than anybody. I could have been a different player. I could have put up numbers. They played all these mind games with me. But I didn’t let any of that bother me. Shit, I came from a little housing project in Pennsylvania, they couldn’t get me with those mind games. I knew. That’s the thing. I always knew. I was no fool.”

  October 6, 1975

  CINCINNATI

  Travel day

  Tony Perez slept soundly. He usually slept pretty well, but he always slept beautifully after a good game. Doggie had banged three hits and a home run in Game 2 of the playoffs against Pittsburgh. How about that? Joe Morgan, as always, had been ripping him about his age.

  “Hey, Doggie, how old are you really?” Joe asked. “Because we all know you aren’t thirty-three. Hell, I’m thirty-two, and you’re old enough to be my father. I think my father remembers seeing you play.”

  “Hey, Joe,” Doggie said. “You steal all those bases, but I don’t see you steal home. We still have to drive you home. If you try to steal home, Sanguillen will jump on you and punch you in the nose.”

  “Dog, we’re going to use you up this year, then send you to the American League.”

  “I will go,” Doggie said. “I make a lot of money over there.”

  And so on. Doggie loved it. They could talk about how old he was, but he felt young as childhood. He had bagged three hits and a homer against the Pirates. After the game, Tony was dead asleep and dreaming happy dreams.

  His wife, Pituka, though, could not sleep at all. She had rushed out to pick up the morning paper so she could read a few stories about her husband, the baseball hero. Pituka was everything that Doggie was not…flame to his ice, passion to his calm. She was a leader too, a leader of the wives, but she led in a very different way. Pituka spoke her mind. She was direct. She offered advice. And she expected to be treated with respect. With Pituka, right was right, and wrong was not something to be tolerated.

  And she could not believe what she saw when she opened the paper. There was hardly anything in it about Tony. He had been the star of the game—he hit a home run, he drove in three runs—and yet there was a story about the Reds’ ability to steal bases, another about how Bob Howsam built the team, another about the comeback of Gary Nolan. Where was her Doggie? Where was the respect? This team had wanted to trade him away. They did not pay him as much as they paid Johnny and Joe and Pete. And now this? Pituka was enraged. She wandered over to the bed to wake up Doggie, then decided to leave him alone, then decided to wake him, then waited again. She wrestled with herself for as long as she could. Finally, she could not wait.

  “Don’t read this,” she said as she woke him up.

  “What?” Tony mumbled.

  “Don’t read this,” she said, and she showed him the paper. “You look at it, and you don’t even know you played.”

  Tony looked at his wife for a moment. There was deep love between them. Baseball marriages were not built for distance, but Tony and Pituka knew that they belonged together. Johnny and Vickie had hoped for a fairy-tale marriage, but Tony and Pituka lived in the real world. She protected him, and he was strong for her. Tony looked at his wife, and Pituka looked back. Her eyes were red with rage.

  And then, without saying a word, Tony rolled back over and went back to sleep.

  October 7, 1975

  PITTSBURGH

  REDS VS. PIRATES

  Playoff Game 3

  Gary Nolan wanted to grab all the feelings and senses of this moment—the smell of the Pittsburgh air, the midnight black of the sky, the moths fluttering in the lights, the sound of the crowd, the colors everywhere, the feeling of the dirt beneath his spikes, the sweat on his forehead, the way Pete chattered away at third base, the way Johnny pumped his fist to inspire him. He wanted to put it all away, in a bottle, no, in a jewelry box, snap the lid shut, have those feelings there to enjoy whenever he needed them. Gary was pitching in the playoffs again.

  First inning, Gary faced Willie Stargell, the great slugger for the Pirates, and he threw his changeup, that fluttering pitch, and the big man swung hard but way too early. In the third, it was Richie Zisk, the son of a gravedigger, who stood in the box. Gary again threw his soft changeup. Zisk waved the bat helplessly. Strikeout. Nolan’s arm felt great. His mind felt sharp. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. In the fifth inning, with two runners on base, he threw his best fastball, and he watched Pittsburgh’s Ed Kirkpatrick hit a high and harmless pop-up behind the plate. Gary then struck out his opposing pitcher, John Candelaria.

  It was beautiful. In this moment, Gary felt like he did when he was eighteen. He was doing exactly what he was born to do. When the game ended, Pittsburgh’s Richie Hebner would unwittingly give Gary the compliment of his life. He said: “Guys come back to the bench and say, ‘Damn, I just missed it.’”

  “You are pitching your ass off,” Pete Rose shouted happily as he threw the ball to Gary with a little bit of extra strength. The Pirates’ rookie pitcher, John Candelaria, was pitching his ass off too. He threw a hot fastball and a biting curveball, and he kept striking out Reds hitter after Reds hitter—Candelaria would strike out fourteen in the game. Gary retaliated by tying up the Pirates hitters in knots. Gary felt a bit like he was pitching against his own youth. And he was holding his own.

  Then, in the sixth, Gary made his one mistake. He thought Pittsburgh’s Al Oliver was expecting a changeup. So he threw a high fastball. And the instant he let it go, Gary realized that it was a mistake. He could see that Oliver had been waiting for that pitch. He had it timed. And he did not miss. Oliver crushed a long home run that scored two runs, and Pittsburgh led 2–1. Gary stared down at the ground. Then he heard Pete shout: “We’ll get you that run back. Hell, I will personally get you that run back, Gary. Don’t worry about it. Two runs are not enough to beat the Big Red Machine. No chance.”

  Gary struck out Stargell again. He got the brilliant young Dave Parker to fly out to left field. He walked off the field, and Sparky met him at the top of the step. “Hell of a job, Gary,” Sparky said to him as he looked in his eyes. “Hell of a job. Thank you.”

  Pete Rose remembered the home run he had hit in New York in the playoffs a couple of years earlier. It was an odd memory to pop into his mind now, with the Reds losing by a run to the Pirates in the eighth inning. But that sort of thing happened to Pete sometimes. A memory would emerge in his mind, and he would let it play all the way through. Pete remembered that the score was tied, and the New York fans were glaring hate at him, and their boos were spiked with daggers. They did hate him—hated him for jumping Bud Harrelson the day before, hated him for being the star of the other team, hated him for being Pete Rose, the cockiest, brashest, boldest, and toughest son of a gun around. They hated him with all the zeal with which they
would have loved him had he played for the New York Mets.

  All their hate, all those boos, all of it made Pete focus harder. “Those stupid sons of bitches never figured it out,” Pete would say. “Boos never bothered me. I loved when they booed me. It was silence that bothered me.”

  He hit the home run that won that Mets playoff game, and he ran around the bases while the boos got louder and louder, and all the way around the bases he thought, See, Dad? I showed them. I showed every damn one of them.

  Now he stepped to the plate, and it was the eighth inning, man on base, and the Pirates fans booed him, and that memory played in his mind. He had failed to get a hit his three chances against Candelaria. But Pete Rose always loved hitting in the late innings, with the game on the line, with his body warm and his eyes honed. He hit .393 in the eighth inning in 1975, and when Candelaria threw his fastball, Pete saw it good. He swung hard. He hit it hard. Pete Rose was not a home run hitter, of course, but he knew how one felt coming off the bat. He had hit another playoff home run. The Reds led. Pete was the hero again. He ran around the bases easily, happily, and he could hear his teammates in the dugout, and one (was that Joe’s voice?) shouted: “Man, that must have been a piece-of-shit pitch if Pete hit a home run on it. The kid’s done.”

  And then those Pirates sons of bitches scored the tying run in the ninth, and Pete suddenly wasn’t the hero.

  No, Eddie Armbrister was the hero, which did not surprise him at all. He had been guaranteeing all year that he would be the hero. He hardly played at all. He had gotten only sixty-five at-bats all year. He had mostly been used as a pinch runner and a defensive specialist—the turd of turds, as he liked to say—but all year long he’d be chirping at the batting cage: “Don’t forget about me. I’m the key to this team. You will see. When it comes down to the end, I’ll be the big man.” Armbrister was from the Bahamas—just the third major league player ever to come from the Bahamas—and the guy was always happy. Always. Sparky did not get it (“What the hell is he so happy about? The guy’s hitting .185”), but he realized that whatever he asked Armbrister to do, the kid did. If Sparky needed a bunt, Eddie bunted. If he needed someone to play any of the outfield positions, Eddie played them. If he needed someone to pinch-run, Eddie would run his heart out. He did it all happily, joyfully, like coming off the bench and bunting was his life’s dream.