The Great Cincinnati Reds aka “The Big Red Machine”

The greatness of the 1970 – 1976 Cincinnati Reds, aka “The Big Red Machine,” grows and is appreciated more with the inexorable passage of time.

Though their two World Series wins were surpassed by the A’s of (1972-1974) and the Yankees of (1996-2000), Cincinnati was easily better than those Yankees (the ’77 and ’78 Yankees were as well) and I believe better than those truly great, Oakland teams.

Really there were two years of the Reds at their peak, the teams I believe to be the best I ever saw.

In 1975 and 1976, they not only won it all but beat out very good L.A. Dodgers teams by approximately 20 and 10 games respectively.

Cincinnati had outstanding  teams from (1970-1974) but did not win it all. Their peak teams came about with the insertion of George Foster into the lineup in May of 1975.

Pete Rose, a player who belongs in a special pantheon of greats at the Hall of Fame and is denied admission, unselfishly moved to third base to accommodate Foster’s entry into the lineup.

The rest as Casey Stengel (now his 5 straight World Series winning Yankees, may have been better than Cincy and were before my time) said “you can look up.”