The Great Baseball History of Cincinnati

The American League has earned home-field advantage for the World Series with its 6-3 win over the National League in the 86^th MLB All-Star Game played Tuesday night in Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark. The MVP of the game was Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels, who hit the first lead-off homerun in an AS Game since Bo Jackson in 1988.

                But despite the great moments and great plays in the game, I’m going to focus on the team that played host to this year’s Mid-Summer Classic, the Cincinnati Reds.

                Cincinnati has a story-book baseball past as the Reds are the oldest professional team in existence, having been established as an independent club in 1881 before becoming a member of the American Association the following year. They later joined the National League, where they still reside, in 1890.               

                They won two World Series Championships in the first half of the twentieth century. One of them being the infamous 1919 Series against the Chicago White Sox. The Reds won the best-of-nine series five games to three, but a year later their victory became tainted when eight members of the Sox were indicted for conspiring with professional gamblers to purposely lose games in exchange for extra cash. The 1919 Chicago team earned the nickname “The Black Sox” for the black mark they put on baseball with their association with the gamblers.

                In 1940, the Reds claimed their second championship by defeating the Detroit Tigers in a seven-game series that went the distance.

                But it was the Reds teams of the 1970s that firmly established Cincinnati as a baseball town. The team was known as the Big Red Machine and won back-to-back World Series Championships in 1975 and 1976 against the two most popular teams in the game: the Red Sox in ’75 and the Yankees in ’76.

                The Reds had some solid pitching during those years, but it was the offense that got people talking. They were a packed line-up with catcher Johnny Bench, first baseman Tony Perez, second baseman Joe Morgan, shortstop Dave Concepcion, third baseman and all-time MLB hits leader Pete Rose (who should be in the Hall of Fame, but we’ll save that story for some other time) and outfielders Ken Griffey Sr., Cesar Geronimo and George Foster.

                In 1975, the team won 108 games in the regular season, swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League Championship Series and beat the Red Sox in an exciting seventh game that followed a dramatic game six loss in extra innings after Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk’s memorable homerun.

                In 1976, they won 102 games and then swept their way through the playoffs, taking out the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLCS and then doing away with the Yankees in four in the World Series.

                They became the first National League team to win consecutive World Championships in over 50 years. The last team to do so had been the New York Giants in 1921 and 1922. And no National League team has won back-to-back championships since.

                The team started to slowly decline as players departed via free agency or trades and the Big Red Machine was gradually dismantled. They managed to win another NL West title in 1979 but were swept by the Pirates in the NLCS.

                It wasn’t until 1990 that the Reds would taste post season success again. The eighties were a disappointment as the team didn’t win a single division title and their beloved hero, Rose, was given a life-time ban from baseball for gambling on Major League Baseball games, and particularly, Cincinnati Reds games.

                1990 eased the sting a little for Reds fans. Their new manager was Lou Pinella, he of past Yankee fame and future Seattle fame. Much of the team’s success can be attributed to a trio of relief pitchers, known as the Nasty Boys. Rob Dibble, Randy Myers and Norm Charlton were pretty much bullet proof all season as they combined for 44 saves.

                Offensively, the Reds were led by third baseman Chris Sabo, first baseman Hall Morris and outfielders Eric Davis and Paul O’Neil. Yes, the same Paul O’Neil who was a key contributor to the four Yankees World Championships that would come in the mid to late nineties.

                The team won 91 games during the season, took out the Pirates in six games in the NLCS and then swept the supposedly unbeatable Oakland A’s in the World Series. Cincinnati was on top of the baseball world again, but that would be the last time.

                They haven’t been back to the Series since and have made the playoffs only a handful of times, the last was a trip to the Wild Card game in 2013 where they played (again) the Pirates in the sudden-death game but lost.

                Their last NLCS appearance was in 1995 where they were swept by the Atlanta Braves.

                It would be nice to see Cincinnati climb back to the top of the baseball pack again. They have one of the prettiest ballparks in baseball with Great American Ballpark, which is ten times (or more) better than Riverfront Stadium, one of the cookie-cutter ballparks of the seventies.

                Now that they’ve had the All-Star Game, it’s time for the park to host the World Series. Probably not this year, with the Reds currently in fourth place, fifteen and a half games out of first, but hopefully someday real soon. Cincinnati deserves it.