After their triumphant 1970 pennant-winning campaign, the wheels came off the Big Red Machine the next year, as the Cincinnati Reds fell to seventy-nine wins and a fourth-place tie in the NL West. One could have concluded that their 1971 regression was something of a fluke—injuries would heal, young stars would recover from their off-years—and that the club, if left intact, would ride its core of talent back to contention in 1972. Bob Howsam, the team’s general manager and architect, felt differently. He knew that the flaws in his team—among other things, it was too slow, too defensively challenged, and too right-handed—were real and that the team needed to be revamped in order to get back on top.
Howsam was a problem solver and a successful businessman, and he proceeded as any good leader would. He gathered his top advisers to solicit their honest views about the club and to brainstorm possible solutions. A brilliant organizational manager, Howsam had a team of people that he trusted and whose advice he valued. Each of these men had real and specific responsibilities and spoke with Howsam regularly. Howsam listened to everyone’s opinion, allowed for disagreement, and then made the final decisions himself.
Howsam’s annual organizational meetings, held over several days in September, followed a pattern. He first went over his club position by position, asking his staff for honest evaluations. How did everyone feel about the team’s starting shortstop? What if he got hurt—what would the Reds do then? How was the team’s organizational depth at third base? Every position and the pitching staff received the full treatment, with Howsam listening and taking notes. Next, with the help of his inner circle, Howsam put together a position-by-position ranking of all the regular players in the Major Leagues to gauge where the Reds players ranked. “This is a lot of work,” recalled manager Sparky Anderson. “Ain’t no flying in and flying out. But when you’re done—and this was Bob’s theory and he was right—if your club had the lowest numbers, then you had the best team.”1
Howsam not only expected his staff to thoroughly know the players in the Reds organization, but also required that they know all the other teams and their farm systems as well or better than the teams themselves did. He would ask his people: What do the Phillies need? What do the Astros need? What players do they undervalue? Which up-and-coming players are blocked from advancement? When he talked to a fellow general manager, he would start by explaining to his counterpart what their team needed and where they had a surplus and how the Reds could help solve their problems. Howsam wanted to be the most informed person in every interaction with other teams, and he relied on his staff to make this so. With full control over the organization, he had the authority to create this culture of baseball intelligence and organizational excellence.
Howsam grew up in Colorado helping his father run a profitable honey business and graduated from business school with the intention of working in the family trade. After World War II he moved to Washington to act as administrative assistant for his father-in-law, U.S. senator Ed Johnson. When Johnson was appointed the unpaid president of a reincarnated Western League in 1947, he asked Howsam to move to Denver to run the league as executive secretary. As the league’s sole employee, Howsam wrote the league’s constitution, helped to arrange stadium repair and construction, prepared the league schedule, and hired the umpires. He traveled all over the region, from Denver to Lincoln to Pueblo, helping new owners run their new teams.
Though Howsam undertook the job assuming it was a six-month assignment, by the end of the season he knew he wanted to remain in the game. With support from his brother and father, after the season he purchased the Denver Bears, one of the league’s struggling clubs. He bought an old dump site and built Bears Stadium, later Mile High Stadium, the principal facility for baseball and football in Denver for more than fifty years. The Bears led the league in attendance in 1948 and would for the rest of their tenure in the league. In 1949 the Bears drew more than 450,000 fans, more than the St. Louis Browns of the American League and one of the highest totals in Single-A history. In 1951 Howsam was named the Sporting News’ Single-A Executive of the Year. The next year the Bears won their first league championship and copped a second pennant in 1954, before losing in the playoff finals.
In the early 1950s the Bears were an affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, allowing Howsam to work with legendary general manager Branch Rickey. Howsam learned many lifelong baseball lessons from Rickey by following him around during spring training as he conducted clinics and spoke to the Pirates’ Minor League players. Rickey preached the tenets that would guide Howsam in the decades ahead: look for size in pitchers, speed in position players, power in hitters, and youth in everyone. “Rickey was the great teacher,” Howsam recalled.2
After the 1954 season Howsam bought the Kansas City Blues of the American Association and moved them to Denver, where they became the New York Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate and displaced his Single-A club. Now part of the Yankees chain, Howsam worked with their renowned general manager, George Weiss. Like Rickey, Weiss became a major influence on Howsam’s career. Unlike Rickey, Weiss had not played or managed in the Major Leagues, but he had been organizing baseball teams since he was a teenager and knew how to run one. He surrounded himself with baseball people he could trust, and he listened to their advice. Rickey once said that Weiss “couldn’t tell a bull from a cow,” but he employed people who could, and he relied on them.3 “Mr. Weiss was not a one-man show like Mr. Rickey,” said Howsam. “He was the ideal corporate man, hiring good people such as [farm director] Lee MacPhail, delegating authority, and keeping all the buttons on his desk at his fingertips.”4 Howsam was a quick learner, as MacPhail related in his own memoirs: “In many ways, [Bob] was a little like George Weiss. He watched costs very carefully and was very concerned about the reputation and image of the team.”5
Howsam’s great success continued, as the new Bears, managed by Ralph Houk, led the American Association in attendance during their first three seasons. Howsam won the Sporting News’ Triple-A Executive of the Year award in 1956 and then watched his Bears win the league title and the Little World Series the next year. By 1957 he was doubling as president of the American Association, while still running the Denver club. Many Minor League teams struggled mightily in the 1950s, but Howsam’s thrived.
In the late 1950s Howsam aligned with Rickey and others in the ultimately failed effort to create the Continental League, a third Major League that hoped to operate cooperatively with the existing American and National Leagues. He also founded the Denver Broncos of the American Football League, but after their inaugural 1960 season, heavy financial losses convinced Howsam to sell not only the Broncos but also the Bears and the stadium. “It was not fair to my family,” recalled Howsam, “to keep a debt that was considerably more than I could handle. We had spent so much enlarging the stands and it just didn’t pay off as quickly as I thought. That first season of football, we lost two home dates to snow-outs. It was sad to leave sports.”6
Howsam spent the next three years selling mutual funds before he received a call from Gussie Busch, at the behest of Branch Rickey, asking him to run the St. Louis Cardinals. Howsam was forty-six and had thought his baseball career was behind him, but his decision, especially considering the presence of Rickey, was not difficult. As recounted in chapter 10, the Cardinals put on a dramatic drive for the pennant and ultimately won the team’s first World Series since 1946.
The change in general managers was met with derision in St. Louis. Bing Devine, a St. Louis native, was popular with the local fans, his players, and the media, most of whom blamed Rickey for his dismissal. Howsam was blameless, but he was in a very uncomfortable situation when the team he inherited won the championship.
A less confident man might have considered himself fortunate to be the caretaker of this championship team and quietly tinker to keep the club contending while slowly earning the respect of the team’s rabid fan base. Howsam, on the other hand, intended to run the team the way he had run teams for twenty years, even if it was far different from the way Bing Devine had. Howsam found the front office to be in disarray, an amateur operation when compared with what he had run in Denver. There was no mechanism for selling season tickets or for promotion (beyond the close tie-in with Busch’s brewery), and some of the ticket takers were stealing tickets from the club. In effect Devine had concentrated solely on the Major League team, while Howsam, who came from a background of running entire organizations, believed that the team and business operated hand in hand. The people working in the office were mainly Devine loyalists who resented Howsam’s presence and his obvious plans to institute change.
Later, Howsam regretted that he had not asked for the resignations of the entire front office after the season, hiring back as he saw fit. Instead, he went about this process slowly, “gradually changing [the] staff by hiring new people and cutting dead wood adrift. For the dead wood it is slow and painful whereas the quick cut would be merciful.” Soon after Howsam arrived farm director Eddie Stanky came into his office and proceeded to tell Howsam just how he expected things would be run. Howsam calmly told Stanky to clear out his desk and that he was through with the Cardinals. Howsam also fired two women who he believed were responsible for leaking a memo that proved embarrassing to Rickey.7
On the flip side, when Howsam found people he valued and trusted, he gave them authority and respect. To replace Stanky Howsam promoted Sheldon “Chief” Bender, previously Stanky’s assistant. Bender had been in the organization since the late 1930s, as a player, manager, executive, and scout, before taking his position as assistant farm director. A bright and respected baseball man, he carried a toughness earned in Pacific combat during the Second World War. Bender was tasked with teaching Howsam the Cardinals system, the strengths and weaknesses of every player and manager from the bottom up. Bender and Howsam became close friends and worked productively together for the next twenty years.
To run the business side of the club, overseeing marketing, promotions, and sales, Howsam hired Dick Wagner, whom he knew from his years in the Western League. Howsam believed Wagner to be bright, hardworking, and tough. Wagner started in baseball at age nineteen in 1946, when he was named business manager of a Detroit Tigers affiliate in Thomasville, Georgia, and held various Minor League posts over the next twelve years in the Tigers and Pirates organizations. Wagner had been out of baseball for a few years, working first with the Ice Capades and most recently running a radio station in Kansas. He joined the Cardinals in the spring of 1965 and, like Bender, remained with Howsam for most of the next two decades. While running promotions and sales, Wagner played a key role in moving the Cardinals into their new facility, the second Busch Stadium, in 1966. “Such a move,” said Howsam later, “like any operation—major or minor—is a series of logical moves, putting one foot in front of another. That takes organization. I am an organizer. So is Dick Wagner. We are both do-ers.”8
Whereas Devine had been personal friends with many of the players and spent time on the field before games, Howsam mostly stayed away, other than occasionally sending word that someone was not wearing his uniform properly. Like Rickey, Howsam was considered a calculating negotiator at contract time, which was often the only time his players saw him. Considering his roster, Howsam saw a club filled with aging stars who were fortunate to grab a single pennant and unlikely to grab any more. They had won just ninety-three games, benefiting from the Phillies’ collapse, and their core included Ken Boyer (thirty-three), Dick Groat (thirty-three), Bill White (thirty), Curt Simmons (thirty-five), and Barney Shultz (thirty-seven).
Howsam hired Red Schoendienst to manage for 1965, figuring that the local hero would help soothe the fans still reeling from the Keane debacle. Howsam kept the team intact for a year but was probably not too surprised when they fell to eighty wins and seventh place in 1965. After the season he traded Boyer to the Mets and Groat and White to the Phillies, receiving considerably less famous players in return. This was a shocking turn of events in St. Louis, whose fans knew that Bing Devine would not have dealt these popular players, his friends, for little return. Howsam confidently deflected the criticism. The team would be improved, he felt, with more team speed, better defense, more pitching depth, youth, and a more balanced offense. “And there will be strong competition for several positions,” he said. “Competition adds a lot—in aggressive play and hustle.” He also pointed out that the Cardinals’ planned move in 1966 to the new Busch Stadium, a much bigger facility, emphasized the need for younger and faster players.9
“My player moves were mostly youth oriented,” he later wrote. “Mr. Rickey used to say that it’s better to trade a player one year too early than one year too late. I think that makes sense, although I realize the wrench of the fans hearts when a longtime favorite is traded or released but often it’s necessary for the continued success of the team.”10 At the time of the deals, Groat and Boyer were thirty-four, and White was thirty-one. White charged that the Cardinals had spread rumors that he was actually thirty-seven and remained bitter at Howsam decades later. Howsam did not mention the allegation in his memoirs, and it is unclear what he would have gained by devaluing his own player.
The 1966 Cardinals improved slightly, to eighty-three wins, aided considerably by the early May trade of pitcher Ray Sadecki for slugging first baseman Orlando Cepeda. With his cleanup hitter on board, after the season Howsam acquired Roger Maris from the Yankees to bat third, precipitating the move of Mike Shannon from right field to third base, thereby completing the core of the club that would win two pennants in 1967 and 1968. Howsam, however, would not be around to celebrate the fruits of his rebuilding effort.
Although Howsam had a good relationship with Gussie Busch, things were not as smooth with Dick Meyer, Busch’s adviser who acted as the required go-between to get Busch’s approval for personnel moves. Devine had accepted this arrangement and befriended Meyer, but Howsam was used to being in charge and acting quickly if he needed to make a deal. The trade for Cepeda almost fell through because Meyer was concerned with the state of Cepeda’s knee even after Howsam had the Cardinals’ doctor examine the player and voice his approval. Howsam, supremely confident in his own decisions, chafed at the unwanted bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Reds, who had lost the pennant to the Cardinals on the final day of the 1964 season, had been sold in 1966 by Bill DeWitt to an eleven-man group headed by Francis Dale, the publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer. DeWitt had previously been the general manager of the St. Louis Browns, Detroit Tigers, and Reds, before buying a majority stake in the team in 1962. He had wanted to build a ballpark in the suburbs and received several offers to move the team to another city. Dale’s group bought the Reds primarily to save the team for Cincinnati. The men did not know baseball and needed someone who did.
The new Reds owners contacted Howsam and offered him complete control over the ball club, a substantial raise, and a three-year contract. Howsam was happy with the Cardinals and felt they were moving in the right direction, but he could not turn down either the money or the total freedom. In announcing the hiring Dale said the Reds valued Howsam’s experience as general manager, his focus on being “promotion minded and dedicated to making baseball exciting, interesting and a family occasion,” and his desire to build an extensive farm system.11 The Reds also needed someone who knew how to move into a new ballpark, which the Reds were planning to do by 1969. Howsam took over the club on January 22, 1967.
With the Cincinnati Reds, Howsam had license to set up the organization as he saw fit, and it did not take him long to restructure the front office. He doubled the size of the staff, adding an advertising director, a sales department, and more promotions people. He also brought aboard some of his most trusted people from St. Louis. Wagner, who had left the Cardinals because he could not work with Meyer, was operating the Los Angeles Forum. Howsam lured him back as his assistant, with the same role but answering only to the general manager. Together they opened ticket offices throughout the region, created souvenir stores, set up a Reds-controlled radio network, and created a speakers bureau. Wagner also was not afraid to ruffle feathers if necessary. “He’s tough, abrasive and often completely without tact and compassion,” writer Earl Lawson once wrote. “If he were entrusted with the duties of the Secretary of State, the United States undoubtedly would be constantly at war. . . . Howsam swears by him.”12
Although Howsam had developed a reputation in the press as a cold employer, it is telling that many Cardinal employees followed him to Cincinnati, including Bender, who had worked in the Cardinal organization for more than twenty years. Bender became the Reds’ farm director, a lateral move, though within a couple of years he was the player-personnel director. The Cincinnati owners allowed Bender and Howsam to hire many more scouts and expand the farm system. Howsam also replaced much of the office staff, putting more focus on advance ticket sales and keeping the ballpark and its environs spotless, as he had done in St. Louis. Howsam and Bender hired managers who were instructors. “You’d be surprised how many ex-big leaguers given a Minor League managerial job take everything for granted and teach nothing,” Howsam said. “We’re building a new breed and it must start at the Minor League level.”13 Among Howsam’s Minor League managers in his early years in Cincinnati were future big-league skippers Don Zimmer, Sparky Anderson, and Vern Rapp. Howsam visited his affiliates every year, usually without warning, watching the team play before showing up in the clubhouse and taking everyone to dinner.
After sitting through his first amateur draft with the Reds in June 1967, Howsam was dissatisfied with the performance of scouting director Jim McLaughlin, who tried to overrule scouts who had spent months scouring the country and recommended pitcher Wayne Simpson. “And here was McLaughlin asking about a player he had seen only a couple of times in a tournament,” Howsam remembered.14 McLaughlin, a key man in the Orioles’ organization in the 1950s, had clashed there with Paul Richards. McLaughlin returned to Baltimore, where he remained for many years.
Soon after the draft Howsam replaced McLaughlin with Rex Bowen, who had held the same role with the Pirates. Like Howsam and Bender, Bowen was a Rickey man, having played in the Cardinals’ organization and then scouted for Rickey with the Cardinals, Dodgers, and Pirates. Among his more famous signings were Maury Wills, Bill Mazeroski, and Dick Groat. He also ran tryout camps and Minor League instructional clinics for Rickey, before becoming scouting director in 1957. Howsam had worked with Bowen in the Minor Leagues and had tremendous respect for his talent evaluation and judgment.
Bowen brought along his younger brother Joe, who had scouted for the Pirates for the previous fifteen years, signing Gene Alley among others. Rex Bowen had a strong personality and was comfortable arguing forcefully for his point of view—a trait Howsam appreciated. Joe had a gentler personality and enjoyed organizational management. Howsam and the Bowens soon realized that Joe should stay in the office and run the scouting department, freeing Rex to work for Howsam as a special-assignment scout. If Howsam needed someone to check on a player, in the Majors or the Minors, he sent Rex. In fact, by the early 1970s Bowen’s field had grown considerably, as he was asked to immerse himself in the understanding of such topics as hypnosis and motivational psychology. Although most of this came to nothing, Bowen’s study of the effect of light reflection on the human eye led Howsam to change the Reds’ hats so that the underside of the bill was medium gray instead of dark green.15
Another crucial member of Howsam’s inner circle beginning in 1968 was Ray Shore, who had a brief Major League career with the Browns in the 1940s and had spent five years with the Reds as a Major League coach. Howsam made Shore one of baseball’s first advance scouts, sending him on the road to watch the team the Reds were going to play next and preparing reports that would help the Reds get ready for each series. Information from Shore was relayed to the pitchers, the hitters, and even the third base coach who needed to know how opposing outfielders were throwing. Howsam also sent Shore to scout players the Reds were considering acquiring. Like Wagner, like Bender, and like the Bowens, Shore remained with Howsam for many years and played a vital role in the organization.
Howsam depended on all of these men and counted on them to tell him the truth. “‘Yes’ men do you no good,” he said. “The rule I had was say what you want, I may not agree with you, but say it. But when you go out that door, don’t you ever talk about how that isn’t the way you would have done it. We’re a team and once we decide what we want to do, nobody’s going to second-guess it, or you won’t be around long.”16 He had begun his Major League career by walking into a soap opera in St. Louis, but there would be no such drama, ever, in Cincinnati.
When Howsam joined the Reds in January 1967, it was too late to do much to the team other than get everyone signed up and ready for another season. The 1967 club improved from seventy-six to eighty-seven wins with essentially the team that Howsam inherited. Manager Dave Bristol, just thirty-four years old, impressed Howsam enough to get a two-year extension during the season.
Howsam and Bristol had some talent on hand. Pete Rose, a switch-hitting twenty-six-year-old leadoff hitter and one of the game’s best young players, was moved to the outfield in 1967 and hit .301. Vada Pinson, still just twenty-eight, had manned center field capably for nine years, sporting a .299 lifetime average with extra-base power. Third baseman Tony Perez had broken through at age twenty-five, stroking 26 home runs with 102 RBI and a game-winning home run in that year’s All-Star Game. Tommy Helms, a defensive-minded second baseman, had won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1966. Young first baseman Lee May received his first extended playing time in 1967, hitting 12 home runs in 438 at bats. The pitching staff included a solid core of starters: Jim Maloney, the staff ace for the past several seasons; Gary Nolan, 14-game winner at age nineteen; Milt Pappas, a dependable 15-game winner; and Mel Queen, a converted outfielder who won 14 games in his first year of full-time pitching. Among all of these players, Pappas was the oldest, at just twenty-eight.
The Reds also had some talent in the farm system, including a nineteen-year-old catcher in Buffalo named Johnny Bench. Early in the 1967 season Howsam dispatched scout Charlie Metro to go take a look at Bench. Metro had managed for Howsam in Denver, managed in the Minors for him in St. Louis, and then jumped to the Reds when Howsam moved to Cincinnati. Metro journeyed to Buffalo and reported back that Bench was the best prospect in baseball and one of the best catchers anyone had ever seen. In late August Howsam brought him to the Reds, and he played regularly over the last few weeks of the season. Bench hit only .163 but showed everyone he was ready to play.
With the 1967 season completed Howsam had his first real chance to begin creating the team that he thought could win. Armed with his own belief in the type of team he wanted, plus faith in his talent evaluators, Howsam went to work. Over the next several off-seasons Howsam and the Reds put together an enviable series of deals and built one of history’s greatest teams. An examination of these deals and how they came together helps illustrate Howsam’s philosophies of team building.
October 10, 1967—Traded corner infielder Deron Johnson (twenty-nine) to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for outfielder Jim Beauchamp (twenty-eight), Mack Jones (twenty-nine), and pitcher Jay Ritchie (thirty-one).
With this deal Howsam relieved a logjam in the Cincinnati infield. Johnson had had a great 1965 season (32 home runs and a league-leading 130 RBI) playing third base, but had regressed considerably the next two years, hitting just .224 with 13 home runs in 1967. Bristol had tried him in left field so that he could play Perez at third and when that failed tried him at first base, which only served to block May. In this exchange Howsam acquired Mack Jones, as good a hitter as Johnson but athletic enough to play all three outfield positions. Beauchamp was a utility player, and Ritchie bullpen depth, but this was also typical of Howsam trades, as he obtained an additional player or two in what seemed like a fair swap without them.
November 21, 1967—Traded outfielder Tommy Harper (twenty-seven) to the Cleveland Indians in exchange for pitcher George Culver (twenty-four), Fred Whitfield (twenty-nine), and outfielder Bob Raudman (twenty-five).
Harper had been a starting outfielder for the Reds since 1963 but, like Johnson, had regressed from a fine 1965 season (18 home runs, 35-for-41 stealing bases, a league-leading 126 runs). The recently acquired Jones appeared to be an upgrade to Harper in right field, and Howsam again managed to get a collection of useful players: Culver had won 7 games as a rookie relief pitcher and could also start, Whitfield would be a powerful left-handed pinch hitter and backup for Lee May at first base, and Raudman provided organizational depth.
January 11, 1968—Traded outfielder Dick Simpson (twenty-four) to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for outfielder Alex Johnson (twenty-five).
On talent alone this swap of outfielders was a steal for the Reds. But in the previous four years Johnson had been, to be kind, an enigmatic player who had worn out his welcome in both Philadelphia and St. Louis. He appeared to have All-Star talent but had displayed a notable lack of effort and poor attitude, infuriating managers Gene Mauch and Red Schoendienst. At first blush he seemed like precisely the kind of player Howsam would avoid, but Howsam knew what he was getting—he had traded for him with the Cardinals and had seen his problems up close. Charlie Metro had managed Johnson at Tulsa in 1966, when he hit .355, and gave a solid recommendation. For the cost of Simpson, a reserve outfielder, Howsam decided Johnson’s talent was worth another try.
February 8, 1968—Traded catcher Johnny Edwards (twenty-nine) to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for Pat Corrales (twenty-six) and infielder Jimy Williams (twenty-four).
Edwards had been the principal catcher for six years, though he had slumped badly the last two seasons (.191 and .206). But this trade was all about clearing the way for Bench, their twenty-year-old prospect. This deal also allowed Howsam to shed Edwards’s veteran salary; Howsam never wanted to pay starting-player wages to a bench player if he could help it. Corrales was a solid backup who was paid like one and another player Howsam had acquired during his days as the Cardinals GM. Williams had 14 Major League plate appearances in his past and none in his future.
June 11, 1968—Traded pitcher Milt Pappas (twenty-nine), outfielder Ted Davidson (twenty-eight), and infielder Bob Johnson (thirty-two) to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for shortstop Woody Woodward (twenty-five) and pitchers Clay Carroll (twenty-seven) and Tony Cloninger (twenty-seven).
After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, President Johnson declared Saturday, June 8 (the day of the funeral), to be a national day of mourning. When the Reds decided to go through with their scheduled doubleheader against the Cardinals, several of the Reds players, apparently led by Pappas and outfielder Vada Pinson, tried to organize a boycott of the games. Manager Bristol and an irate Howsam talked them out of it, and three days later Pappas, a 16-game winner in 1967 and a successful pitcher for many years before and after, was traded. Pappas had a reputation with Howsam as clubhouse lawyer before this event, mainly due to his role as player representative. “The players elected me their representative,” reasoned Pappas, “so I tried to do my best.” Howsam denied Pappas’s role had anything to do with it, of course.17
Given the size of the deal it is unlikely that the attempted boycott was the sole impetus—the trade was likely formulated over several weeks—but Howsam did not hesitate to rid the Reds of rebellious players, as he would show again and again. Davidson and Johnson were little-used utility men. In return, the three acquisitions would be useful parts of the team. Woodward was a great fielder who had lost his starting second base job early that season. Carroll and Cloninger were right-handers coming off poor years but still young enough to turn it around. Ray Shore had strongly advocated for Carroll. “We’re pleased with the trade and feel both Cloninger and Carroll will be a tremendous asset to our pitching staff,” said Howsam.18 Dave Bristol later said that Reds scouts thought that Carroll alone was worth the three players the Reds surrendered.19
After all the wheeling and dealing, the Reds put up another fourth-place season in 1968, winning 83 games. The biggest disappointments were the arm injuries suffered by pitchers Gary Nolan (sore shoulder) and Mel Queen (forearm, then shoulder). Though the Howsam reign in Cincinnati would be marked with great success, the team struggled to keep its young pitchers healthy. Some of this was simply bad luck, injuries unrelated to the pitching arm, but some of their pitchers broke down after workloads that would be considered excessive decades later. Queen was a former outfielder who pitched 7 innings, the first of his professional career, in 1966. His conversion to pitching began in earnest in Venezuela over the winter, after which he threw 195 2/3 innings (with a solid 2.76 ERA) in 1967. He later related that his arm was sore the entire season, and he showed up the next year unable to pitch. He threw just 30 innings the next two years for the Reds. Nolan, who threw 226 innings as a nineteen-year-old in 1967, would battle a sore arm for the next decade, with several excellent seasons along the way.
On the plus side, Bench took over at catcher and excelled immediately, hitting 15 home runs and earning the first of ten consecutive Gold Glove awards. Pete Rose hit .335 and won his first batting title. Perez and May hit well at the infield corners, and Alex Johnson surprised everyone by winning the left-field job and batting .312. The Reds had far and away the best offense in the league but also the worst ERA. It was the pitching injuries, many observers believed, that kept the Reds from contending.
October 11, 1968—Traded center fielder Vada Pinson (thirty) to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for center fielder Bobby Tolan (twenty-two) and pitcher Wayne Granger (twenty-four).
In many ways this was the classic Howsam trade. Pinson was a longtime star and a local favorite, having reached 200 hits four times and holding a .297 lifetime average in an era of low offense. But he appeared to have lost a step on offense (just .271 in 1968) and defense, and Howsam, like Rickey, generally wanted players to grow old on someone else’s team. Howsam understood that thirty-year-old players were prone to decline and generally much more expensive than their future production was going to warrant. He did not keep veterans around very long unless they were playing at a star level.
In exchange, he received a promising center fielder who was eight years younger than Pinson and a relief pitcher with a great sinkerball. “With his tremendous speed, Tolan can become a very exciting player,” said Howsam.20 This would prove to be one of Howsam’s best trades, and one of his favorites.
November 21, 1968—Traded shortstop Leo Cardenas (twenty-nine) to the Minnesota Twins in exchange for pitcher Jim Merritt (twenty-four).
Cardenas was a veteran who had won a Gold Glove and made four All-Star teams, including the one just four months earlier, but Howsam did not think he was the solution. “I had always heard that Cardenas was an outstanding shortstop. But he had to play in so close, his arm was weak, that he couldn’t go in the hole and throw anybody out.”21 The Reds had acquired Woodward five months earlier and felt he could do the job as well as Cardenas. The hidden actor in this story is Darrel Chaney, a slick-fielding twenty-year-old shortstop who had hit 23 home runs in 1968 in the Southern League and looked ready to take over. Again, Howsam was willing to deal the higher-priced veteran to make way for the prospect, trading the veteran before his decline rather than after.
In exchange, Howsam received Merritt, an above-average workhorse who had averaged more than 230 innings the past two seasons. As usual, Howsam got the younger player. The only two members of the 1968 lineup older than twenty-seven—Pinson and Cardenas—were now gone.
The Reds were first called the Big Red Machine in 1969, in deference to their league-leading offense. Bench hit .293 with 26 home runs in his sophomore season, while Perez (37 homers) and May (38) filled out a great middle of the order. Rose hit .348 to win another batting title, Alex Johnson hit .315, and newcomer Tolan hit .305 with 21 home runs—a season right out of Vada Pinson’s prime. The Reds were in contention in the new NL West all season and in first place as late as September 8, eventually finishing third with 89 wins.
Ultimately, the club again came up short in pitching: Jim Merritt won 17 games but with a mediocre 4.37 ERA, while Cloninger was 11-17, 5.03. Maloney was their best hurler (12-5, 2.77) but battled a sore arm much of the season. “I think we should have won it,” recalled Howsam. “After I reviewed all the clubs in contention, I concluded that we had the ballclub to win it all.”22
Howsam, though, did not believe he had the manager to win it all. Dave Bristol had led the club to three above-.500 finishes and an 89-win season in 1969. But Howsam thought the club had peaked with Bristol, and he wanted his own guy. He had long favored Charlie Metro, who managed for him at Denver and had scouted for Howsam in 1967 before jumping to Kansas City to help put together the expansion Royals. As it happened, Metro was named the Royals’ new manager literally the day before Howsam convened his inner circle to consider candidates. The group eventually settled on Sparky Anderson, a longtime Dodger farmhand who played one year for the Phillies in 1959.
Howsam and his advisers knew Anderson well. He had managed for three years in Howsam’s Cardinals organization and in 1968 for the Reds’ club in Asheville, North Carolina, winning two pennants under Howsam’s watch. Howsam visited his Minor League affiliates every year and spoke with his Minor League managers regularly. Anderson had left the Reds in 1969 to serve as a coach for the expansion San Diego Padres and had just been hired for 1970 to coach for the California Angels. Instead, he would manage the Reds.
Howsam received quite a bit of criticism for hiring the unknown Anderson, but he wanted a communicator and an instructor and thought Anderson fitted the bill. “I had seen Sparky many times over the years,” remembered Howsam. “He liked young ballplayers; he was willing to work with them. We had some very good young players, but they needed to know how to do certain things. We thought they needed to work on fundamentals. Sparky was extremely capable of that. Sparky was a good family man. He was willing to work and wouldn’t be thinking about other things.”23 Like Branch Rickey and George Weiss before him, Howsam did not seem concerned with how other people might judge him. “You just have to make a decision; there are too many people, general managers in particular, that are more interested in their jobs than doing a good job. But if you do a good job, you don’t have to worry, that’s the thing.”24
Like Howsam, Anderson was a leader not afraid to delegate authority to the men on his staff. Anderson hired Larry Shepard as pitching coach and allowed him to get his pitchers conditioned and ready to pitch. George Scherger, Anderson’s very first professional manager at Santa Barbara in 1953, acted as a key adviser and ran most of the drills in spring training. Ted Kluszewski worked with the hitters, and Alex Grammas worked on defense. All of these men coached for Anderson for years and helped keep the Reds well conditioned and well prepared.
November 25, 1969—Traded outfielder Alex Johnson (twenty-six) and infielder Chico Ruiz (twenty-nine) to the California Angels in exchange for pitchers Jim McGlothlin (twenty-six), Vern Geishert (twenty-three), and Pedro Borbon (twenty-two).
In his two seasons with the Reds, Johnson had hit well (.312 and .315 with midrange power) and had gotten along with manager Bristol and his teammates. This deal was not about getting rid of Johnson; it was about trading surplus offense for some much-needed pitching. The team had two fine outfield prospects in Hal McRae and Bernie Carbo, and Johnson was clearly less valued than fellow outfielders Rose and Tolan.
Jim McGlothlin was the prize: a 200-inning pitcher who had made the 1967 All-Star team and was still young. “We decided there were only 20 pitchers in the American League that interested us,” remembered Howsam. “McGlothlin made the list based on his ability, temperament, poise, attitude and behavior on and off the field.” Borbon and Geishert were untested and represented Howsam’s usual practice of getting an extra player or two in hopes of striking gold. Ray Shore, who had managed Borbon in winter ball, lobbied for the youngster. “I always liked him. He could throw every day and he was tough in relief. I always brought Borbon’s name up when we were talking trades. The Angels just didn’t hold him up that high.”
Although the club had first earned the nickname “the Big Red Machine” locally in 1969, it was their 1970 club that first made it famous, as they soared to 102 wins and an easy division title. Bench, their twenty-two-year-old all-world catcher, took another step forward (45 home runs, 148 RBI, MVP award) to become the best player in the game. Third baseman Tony Perez (40 homers, 129 RBI) was not far behind, while May (34 home runs), Rose (.316), and Tolan (.316 with 57 steals) also had big years. The Reds introduced three rookies on offense: shortstop Dave Concepcion (.260 in half-time play), a Venezuelan signed as an amateur free agent in 1967, and the left-field platoon of Carbo (21 homers and a .454 on-base percentage) and McRae (.248 with 8 homers).
Another rookie garnered even more headlines in 1970: starting pitcher Wayne Simpson, who was 13-1 with a 2.27 ERA in the season’s first half. In late July he tore his rotator cuff and was ineffective in limited action the rest of the year, never again attaining stardom. Nolan had a fine year (18-7), as did Howsam acquisitions Merritt, McGlothlin, Cloninger, Granger, and Carroll as well as yet another rookie, nineteen-year-old Don Gullett. The Reds beat the Pirates in the National League Championship Series (NLCS), before falling to the Orioles in the World Series.
One of the high points of the 1970 season for Howsam was the July opening of Riverfront Stadium, which hosted the All-Star Game just two weeks later. The park was already being planned when he arrived in Cincinnati, but it was Howsam who insisted upon a spotless facility, clean restrooms, friendly ushers, and efficiency everywhere. “Our fans range from infants in the arms of their parents to old-timers who might hobble into the park with the aid of canes,” he said. “This pleases me.”25 He also had artificial turf installed, part of an ongoing trend with new facilities. Howsam, like Rickey, believed in team speed—a skill that helped on both offense and defense—and his new ballpark would place an added premium on speed afoot, creating a better brand of baseball in the bargain.
Howsam earned widespread praise for the Reds’ pennant and for the character of the team he had created. “Bob Howsam traded away 80 percent of the people he found when he got here,” marveled Anderson, “and 60 percent of those were clubhouse lawyers.” An unnamed player said, “You know why we won the National League pennant? Because there were no cliques on this ball club.”26 The Reds were great, and they were also remarkably young. Rose, at twenty-eight, was the oldest regular player or pitcher on the team. The future was very bright indeed.
On January 6, 1971, Tolan ruptured his Achilles’ tendon playing basketball, an injury originally expected to sideline him until June but eventually costing him the entire 1971 season. Both Howsam and Anderson were angry about the injury: Tolan played on a team with several other Reds players, including Rose, Bench, and May, and they had been asked not to play. In 1971 teams typically had no contractual way to forbid such off-season activities. For Howsam, this was an event for which his dogged preparedness had no answer. Tolan had been a vital piece of his grand design.
May 29, 1971—Traded shortstop Frank Duffy (twenty-four) and Vern Geishert (twenty-five) to the San Francisco Giants in exchange for outfielder George Foster (twenty-two).
Without Tolan, Anderson had to scramble to find a center fielder. He first tried Hal McRae, who had formed a great left-field platoon with Bernie Carbo in 1970. He then turned to Ty Cline, Buddy Bradford (acquired in early May), Rose, and even Concepcion (who started five games in center). The team was struggling generally, but center field was one of the larger aggravations.
Duffy forced the team’s hand by refusing to report to Triple-A when the Reds optioned him in mid-May. Howsam began looking for a trading partner and sent his scouts out on the road looking at prospects. The Giants offered Minor League outfielder Bernie Williams, leading both Howsam and Shore to visit Phoenix to scout him. When the Reds agreed to accept a trade for Duffy, the Giants backed off, instead offering Foster, who was showing promise (.267 with signs of power) with the Major League club. Shore was stunned, as he much preferred Foster. “He was raw, but he showed some power,” he recalled.27 Howsam took the opportunity to add Geishert to the deal, and it was done. A few days after arriving Foster started in center field.
In a season beset with injuries and off-years, the Reds fell back to fourth place. Besides the Tolan injury, both Simpson and Merritt battled arm woes, and each was finished as an effective Major League pitcher. The offense fell off dramatically, from 775 runs scored to 586. Bench hit just 27 home runs with 61 RBI, while Perez, Carbo, and McRae all saw their production decline. On the plus side, twenty-year-old Gullett stepped forward (16-6, 2.65) to become the best pitcher on the staff. But when Howsam and his inner circle met in September 1971, they knew they had work to do.
The men on whose advice Howsam relied huddled over several days of meetings that September: Chief Bender, Ray Shore, Rex Bowen, Joe Bowen, and Sparky Anderson. “I worked somewhat like Branch Rickey,” Howsam recalled. “I wanted my scouts to be able to tell me everything I needed and put it all together, and as a group we would talk about it. And we got everyone in priority.”28
The group determined that the club’s biggest needs were more speed, more left-handed hitting, and better defense. Pete Rose led the 1971 club with only 13 stolen bases, and this overall lack of speed was more glaring in their new stadium. The Reds had lived with Perez out of position at third base in Crosley Field, but the speedy new artificial surface at Riverfront magnified his poor range. Without Tolan, Howsam spent the season watching balls continually find the gaps and roll unimpeded to the distant fences. “I started bearing down in my scouting on outfielder’s defense,” remembered Shore. “At Crosley, you could get by with slower guys, but boy, the minute you moved to turf, if you don’t have speed, you can get killed.”29 Moreover, the Reds’ own hitters were often too slow to take the extra base when their hits skipped through the opposing defense.
To correct the imbalance on the team, the Reds were willing to sacrifice some right-handed power. The man Anderson wanted, he told Howsam, was Houston second baseman Joe Morgan. Morgan, twenty-eight years old, was a left-handed hitter and a great base stealer (40 or more steals for the past three seasons) who hit more than most middle infielders—just a .251 average in 1971, but with 51 extra-base hits and 88 walks. He would either replace or supplement Bobby Tolan’s speed game, depending on whether Tolan could make it back.
It was no secret that Morgan did not get along with Astros manager Harry Walker. Morgan has maintained that Walker was a racist who did not appreciate any of the black players on the Astros. Jimmie Wynn, in his recent memoirs, backs this up. Some other black players of the period, such as Bill White, liked Walker. What is not in dispute is that Walker and Morgan disagreed on how Morgan should play baseball. They disagreed on how to hit, when to run the bases, and what strategies to use to try to win the game. Morgan often grumbled about it, and Walker would respond by asking Morgan to bunt more.
Howsam asked Ray Shore to look into the matter further and report back. This sort of scouting was routine for the Reds. “You want to make sure you have the right person,” Howsam recalled. “If you don’t go to great lengths to find out what is right and how to do it, then you are not doing your job. One reason we were successful [is that] we knew about the players we were going to trade for; we knew them on and off the field; we knew them and their backgrounds.”30
Ray Shore spent the last few weeks of the 1971 season with the Astros, scouting Morgan. Shore knew everyone and knew how to get the information he needed. One of his sources was Harry Kalas, a radio broadcaster for the Astros at the time. Kalas liked Morgan, thought him bright and competitive, and believed that Walker mismanaged him. Shore concluded that Morgan would be a great addition to the club and further believed that he might be available. Howsam knew that Houston wanted a power hitter and, with the group’s blessing, said he would contact Astros general manager Spec Richardson and offer Lee May straight up for Morgan. One of the further benefits of the contemplated deal was that it would allow the Reds to move Perez back to first base and Helms to third, shoring up their defense considerably.
Francis Dale, the Reds’ president, was impressed by the thoroughness of Howsam and his staff. “He could go to [Astros’ general manager Spec] Richardson, and Richardson so respected Bob’s judgment that Howsam could sit down with him and say, ‘I’ve studied and analyzed your team and here are my reports on what your team needs. What your team needs is this, and so on.’ And he so convinced the Houston team about what they needed that he was then able to say, ‘I just happen to have what you need.’ It was thorough professionalism.”31
The Houston Astros played in the Astrodome, one of the most extreme pitchers parks in modern history, particularly after they moved the fences out in 1966. The Astros hit just 18 home runs at home in 1971. Another reason for the club’s lack of power was that Walker did not value the young power hitters he had, such as John Mayberry and Bob Watson, and tried to get them to hit the ball to the opposite field. Meanwhile, Houston’s most common first baseman in 1971, Dennis Menke, hit .246 with 1 home run.
Richardson did not accept Howsam’s offer, instead shopping Morgan around to other clubs. The Reds and Astros kept in touch over the next several weeks, until Richardson said he wanted to expand the deal to include Helms (who would replace Morgan for the Astros) and Menke (whom the Reds could play at third base). Howsam, who always worked alone once his course had been set, anticipated this sensible balancing and used it as an opportunity to ask for more. His scouts had thoroughly scoured the Houston roster and found two players that were largely unnecessary to the Astros. Jack Billingham was a workhorse (228 innings in 1971) league-average starting pitcher somewhat lost among a group of younger and more talented pitchers. Cesar Geronimo was a brilliant defensive center fielder with a great throwing arm who was playing behind the best young center fielder in the game, Cesar Cedeno. Howsam boldly asked for both players.
Further negotiation added two more players, and the trade was announced on November 29, two months after Howsam had first placed the call.
November 29, 1971—Traded first baseman Lee May (twenty-eight), second baseman Tommy Helms (thirty), and utility man Jimmy Stewart (thirty-two) to the Houston Astros in exchange for second baseman Joe Morgan (twenty-eight), infielder Denis Menke (thirty-one), pitcher Jack Billingham (twenty-eight), outfielder Cesar Geronimo (twenty-three), and outfielder Ed Armbrister (twenty-three).
The reaction to the trade was mostly pro-Houston. May and Helms were very popular players in Cincinnati, while many observers thought of Morgan as a worse fielding version of Helms. This judgment would prove wildly incorrect. Over the next five seasons Morgan would be the best player in baseball, averaging .303 with a .431 on-base percentage, 22 home runs, 113 runs, 62 steals, and winning four Gold Gloves. He had two spectacular MVP seasons in 1975 and 1976, capping off one of the best five-year peaks in baseball history, comparable to those of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle.
Howsam later estimated that the Reds spent three thousand man-hours working on the Astros deal, the equivalent of a single person working forty hours a week for a year and a half.32 The effort more than paid off for Howsam and his team.
December 3, 1971—Traded pitcher Wayne Granger (twenty-seven) to the Minnesota Twins for pitcher Tom Hall (twenty-four).
With the emergence of Clay Carroll as the team’s right-handed relief ace in 1971, the Reds swapped the still-effective Granger for another reliever who was younger, threw harder than anyone on the Reds staff, and was left-handed. The Reds had been looking for a left-handed pitcher for several years.
The 1972 Reds won 95 games and returned to the World Series. Tolan’s effective return, Bench’s comeback MVP season, and Morgan’s ascent to stardom gave the team even more firepower, and it was an upset when they lost the World Series to the Oakland Athletics. This matchup came to be known as the “Hairs against the Squares,” a battle between the rough and scruffy A’s and the clean-cut and gentlemanly Reds. Howsam was unapologetic about his team and its image. “Some people have accused me of being old fashioned,” he wrote in his memoirs. “They felt that none of this made a difference as long as the players can play the game. I felt that it made a lot of difference to a lot of fans, particularly in a solid community as Cincinnati, and it made a lot of difference to me personally. We took a lot of adverse criticism for it because these were the 70’s . . . but we filled a lot of stadium seats, and I’m convinced that our concept of entertainment as well as the excellence of our team is what brought the people in.”33 As Howsam was aware, his Reds outdrew the A’s by two to one, even while Oakland was winning three consecutive championships.
We discussed the Oakland A’s at some length in our previous book, Paths to Glory,34 but a short digression may be of some value here. Owner Charles Finley built a team that won three consecutive World Series without a coherent organization. A man without any baseball experience, he essentially operated as his own general manager, while giving front-office roles to his wife and his brother. Given the lack of talent and experience in management, his success is remarkable. That he had success while antagonizing nearly everyone he came in contact with, from the other owners to the players to the press, makes his accomplishment truly astonishing.
Finley may have been tactless, rude, and vulgar, but he also outworked nearly everyone and had more ideas and imagination than any other owner. He spent countless hours on the phone, usually with someone who would rather have been doing anything other than talking to Finley. He was a professional salesman, and he worked his fellow owners by browbeating them until they might give in. Finley built the A’s precisely the way a great team ought to be built: he signed or drafted dozens of quality players, sifted through them for a few years until a bunch of them developed, made a couple of key trades to redistribute the talent, and provided depth with veteran role players.
Finley did well both before and after the advent of the amateur draft. In late 1964 Finley claimed that he had spent $634,000 during the past year for eighty players, one of the largest totals in baseball. When the amateur draft began in 1965, Finley immediately landed another bumper crop of players—partly because the A’s poor records led to high picks—but also because they selected the right players. In these three signing years, from 1964 to 1966, Finley invested perhaps $2 million in two hundred players. This group included three future members of the Baseball Hall of Fame (Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Reggie Jackson) and several other future All-Stars (Rick Monday, Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace, Blue Moon Odom, and Sal Bando).
The A’s cut back dramatically on their scouting and signing activities at this point and, in fact, received only limited contributions from players signed after 1966 (with Vida Blue a notable exception). Finley made a couple of key trades over the next few years to reconfigure his talent and assemble the bulk of the squad that would go on to such success. Finley’s genius may not be duplicable, but his recognition and reaction to the changing source of amateur talent need to be acknowledged. As the owners discussed ways to limit the free-for-all for amateur prospects, Finley outworked and outspent his rivals to grab as many as he could. His further success in baseball’s first two drafts testifies to his ability to take advantage of this dramatic change in the method of amateur talent sourcing.
November 30, 1972—Traded Wayne Simpson and Hal McRae to Kansas City Royals in exchange for Roger Nelson (twenty-eight) and Richie Scheinblum (thirty).
The same methodical procedure that culminated in the Morgan trade in 1971 led to this less successful deal twelve months later. Howsam and his staff wanted to trade some of their outfield excess for a starting pitcher, and Ray Shore recommended Nelson as one of the best pitchers in the American League. When the Reds staff assembled to rank all the pitchers in baseball, Nelson came in eleventh (Philadelphia’s Steve Carlton was first). After years of promise the Royals’ first pick in the 1968 expansion draft came through in 1972 with an 11-6 record 6 shutouts and a 2.06 ERA that was fifth in the league. Scheinblum was a journeyman outfielder coming off a surprising .300 season that had earned him a trip to the All-Star Game.
To get these two players the Reds dealt Simpson, who had been hurt for two and a half years, and McRae, whose defensive struggles had made him a poor fit for the Reds. This deal stands out for Howsam because it was a rare case where he acquired players who were at the peak of their perceived value, and, in fact, he was very close to walking away from this trade in its final configuration. Royals GM Cedric Tallis was selling high, and the Reds were betting that their new players’ recent advances were real. McRae had many years of stardom in Kansas City, albeit serving as a designated hitter, a spot not available in the Reds’ National League.
June 12, 1973—Traded outfielder Gene Locklear (twenty-three), pitcher Mike Johnson (twenty-two), and cash to the San Diego Padres in exchange for pitcher Fred Norman (thirty).
By mid-June the Reds, the defending league champions, were struggling. Roger Nelson began the season in the rotation and had pitched well (2.06 ERA at the end of May) but had developed a sore arm that would plague him for the remainder of his career. With the continued absence of Gary Nolan (who would start just two games) and the ineffectiveness of McGlothlin (who would be traded in August), the Reds were desperate for a starting pitcher. Norman had been a dependable starter for a few years but was struggling (1-7, 4.26) with a terrible Padres team. Howsam’s scouts liked his stuff, and Anderson had been impressed by Norman’s lone victory: a complete-game 6-hit 3–1 victory over the Reds at Riverfront Stadium.
Howsam had little difficulty convincing the Padres that they had no need for Norman, especially when he was willing to send some money along to the financially strapped San Diego owners. Anderson stuck Norman into the rotation immediately, and he responded with complete-game shutouts in his first two starts. Locklear was a valued prospect who had no place to play, while Johnson was in the Minor Leagues.
From July 1973 onward the club was dominant again, finishing 60-26 over the final 86 games and winning 99 games overall, the best record in baseball. Rose won his third batting title and the MVP award, while Bench, Morgan, and Perez had fine years to lead a solid offense. Bobby Tolan (.206) had a lost season, culminating in emotional and disciplinary issues. When added to Denis Menke at third (.191) and Geronimo in center (.210), Anderson had three holes in the lineup, causing Howsam to reach into the Minor Leagues to bring up Dan Driessen (.301 in 366 at bats) to play third and Ken Griffey (.384 in 86 at bats) to play right field. Gary Nolan could pitch only 2 games, but Billingham (19 wins), Gullett, Norman, and Ross Grimsley made up a fine rotation.
Surprisingly, the Reds lost a 5-game League Championship Series (LCS) to a New York Mets team that had won just 82 games during the season. The Reds were beaten mainly by the great pitching of Tom Seaver, Jon Matlack, and Jerry Koosman. For Howsam, the loss was doubly bitter because he had to endure “the worst experience, the darkest day I ever had in baseball.” Late in the fifth and final game, which the Mets won easily, 9–2, the Mets opened the gates and let thousands of people come into the stadium to prepare for the celebration. Instead, many of the “young hoodlums” seized upon Howsam and his party, including dignitaries from Ohio, screaming profanities, grabbing the ladies’ hair, and spitting on them. “I am convinced to this day,” Howsam recalled years later, “remembering the crazed faces of those monsters, that most of them if not all were under the influence of drugs.”35 Howsam’s group had to climb onto the field to escape the mob and leave via the Reds’ dugout. The event only solidified Howsam’s pride in his own stadium and fans.
After the season the Sporting News named Howsam its Major League Executive of the Year for the first time, though he had won the award twice in the Minor Leagues. He did not have a Morgan deal on his 1973 résumé, but his acquisitions of Norman and bench players Andy Kosco and Phil Gagliano were cited as moves that kept the Reds on top. Upon hearing the news Howsam typically pointed out that running the Reds was anything but a one-man operation.36
November 9, 1973—Traded outfielder Bobby Tolan (twenty-seven) and pitcher Dave Tomlin (twenty-four) to the San Diego Padres in exchange for Clay Kirby (twenty-five).
After a fine comeback season in 1972, Tolan had seemed a big part of the Cincinnati Reds. In the spring he expressed how happy he was to be on the team. “I don’t know what it’s like on the outside of this organization, but there is absolutely no trouble here. With a Rose, a Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, there can’t be. These are highly paid players and they could stick to themselves. But they don’t. They take in the kids. We’re all together. There’s no black or white on this team.”37 But as his long summer slump in 1973 dragged on, he became more and more distant. Growing tired of the verbal sparring his teammates engaged in, Tolan began sitting by himself in the dugout, grew a beard and kept his Afro long (both in defiance of team rules), missed scheduled appointments, and engaged in a physical confrontation with Chief Bender. He was fined and suspended in September. “I liked Bobby Tolan,” Howsam lamented later, “admired him as a man and as a ball player, and wanted him to be a continuing part of our big future. But it wasn’t meant to be.”38
Kirby had been the Padres’ best pitcher for several years, though he had not pitched well in 1973 (8-18, 4.79). The Reds hoped he could blossom with a better team behind him, as had Norman when liberated from the same Padres five months before.
December 4, 1973—Traded pitcher Ross Grimsley (twenty-three) and catcher Wally Williams to the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for outfielder Merv Rettenmund, infielder Junior Kennedy, and catcher Bill Wood (twenty-two).
Howsam and Anderson had very conservative views about the look and decorum of their players. They were insistent that the Reds wear their uniform a certain way—not too baggy, socks visible up nearly to the knee, low stirrups, black shoes—and that their uniforms were clean and pressed each day. In an era of increasing facial hair in the culture generally and baseball specifically, the Reds stood out for their short hair and lack of facial hair. Off the field the club wanted players to act professionally, both to protect the team’s image and to ensure that the players were fully prepared to come to work each day at full strength.
One player who resisted these protocols was Grimsley, a highly talented young left-handed pitcher who had been a steady member of the starting rotation for three seasons. Anderson did not appreciate Grimsley’s flaunting of team rules, with his long hair and supposedly wild lifestyle. In the team’s end-of-the-year meetings, Anderson requested that Grimsley be traded. “Bob probably listened to me more when it was a player on our staff,” Anderson said.
“I liked Ross,” recalled Shore, “but I didn’t try to protect him. One thing I told Sparky was I will argue abilities with you, but I’m not going to argue personalities. You live with them. If you say this guy disrupts my clubhouse, he’s uncoachable or whatever, I can’t argue the point.”39 The Reds’ traditional approach worked because the leaders on the team, like Rose, Morgan, and Bench, agreed and went along. If the approach cost them a Ross Grimsley, Howsam and Anderson believed it gained them more than that. What would have happened had one of the team’s stars balked is an interesting question.
In the era before free agency, general managers were more often judged by their ability to make trades, which was the best way to improve the big-league roster. As our detailed analysis of his trades highlight, Howsam proved a master of using this approach for both tactical and strategic advantage. In his dozen years at the helm in Cincinnati, Howsam surrendered 258 future WAR and received 332, a net gain of 74 WAR. Given that an average draft class supplies roughly 30 WAR, his trades netted the equivalent of two and a half draft classes. More important, however, Howsam successfully used his trades to build the team he wanted: he added speed, youth, and character players; he addressed position shortcomings and pitching weaknesses; and he did this all without surrendering any of his core players.
The 1974 Reds had another outstanding season, winning 98 games—the second most in the game. Unfortunately, it was 4 games fewer than the Los Angeles Dodgers, who beat them out in the NL West. Kirby stepped up to replace Grimsley, Driessen took over at third (though his defensive struggles would keep him from staying there), and Foster and Griffey shared right field. It was a fine team that had the misfortune of being in the same division with a Dodger team that put together a great season.
For the first time since he had become a general manager, Howsam did not make significant changes to his team after the 1974 season. The Reds had a handful of stars, several very good players, and a farm system that kept cranking out regulars. Howsam was apparently at a loss for how to improve his creation. In Morgan, Bench, and Rose, he had three of the very best players in baseball. Perez and Concepcion were All-Star performers. Geronimo, Foster, Griffey, and Driessen provided defense, speed, and versatility. The starting rotation (Billingham, Gullett, Norman, and Kirby) was solid, and the bullpen (mainly Carroll and Borbon) was excellent.
The club did have one obvious missing piece: third base. Anderson finally abandoned the notion that Driessen could play there and concluded that the recently acquired John Vukovich could not hit. In early May 1975 Anderson made the bold decision to shift Rose to third base, a position he had briefly played nine years earlier. Anderson consulted with Rose, but not with Howsam, who was reportedly alarmed when he read about it in the paper. The new alignment allowed Anderson to play Foster in left field and Griffey in right field, solidifying what has come to be regarded as the greatest eight-man lineup in Major League history. Coupled with a fine pitching staff, especially Gullett and a dominant bullpen (supplemented by rookie Rawley Eastwick and youngster Will McEnaney), the Reds ran away with the division, winning 108 games and beating the Dodgers by 20 games. An easy NLCS victory over the Pirates followed, before a grueling, and ultimately victorious, seven-game World Series against the Boston Red Sox.
The enduring nickname “the Big Red Machine,” forged during the years 1969 and 1970 when they led the league in home runs and featured three right-handed sluggers, stuck with the club even after the term no longer fitted the same way. The 1970 team hit a league-leading 191 home runs and stole 115 bases. The 1975 team hit a respectable 124 homers, but led the league with 168 steals against only 36 caught stealing. (The next year they stole 210 with only 57 caught stealing.) Because they had both the best base runners and the best defensive catcher, they dominated this aspect of the game. As an illustration, in the 1975 postseason Cincinnati base runners were successful in 20 of 22 attempts to steal, while Reds opponents were 0 for 2. Sometimes the stolen base was not even necessary: in the final NLCS game the Reds scored the winning run in the tenth inning when Griffey singled, advanced to second when he got the Pirate pitcher to balk, moved to third on a ground ball, and scored on a fly ball.
In 42 postseason games between 1970 and 1976 with Bench catching, the Reds outstole their opponents by an incredible 53-2. Bob Howsam loved the running game, and no one ever did it better than his Cincinnati Reds. As Howsam learned from Rickey, this speed helped even more on defense, where the Reds won four Gold Gloves in 1975, all at the crucial up-the-middle positions: catcher Bench, second baseman Morgan, shortstop Concepcion, and center fielder Geronimo.
The Reds, virtually unchanged outside of their reserves, won again in 1976, and these two teams are ranked among the greatest baseball teams ever. The 1976 team swept the Yankees in the World Series, the crowning achievement of Howsam’s career. He later said that he felt some sadness knowing that no team would ever be put together the way his team had. Howsam was referring to the onset of player free agency, which led to available star players in the upcoming off-season for the first time. Howsam was one of baseball’s most vocal hawks on labor matters, speaking out for holding the line during the 1972 strike and the 1976 lockout.
Howsam and the Reds did not adjust well to the changing landscape. They lost star pitcher Don Gullett to free agency after the 1976 season and several others in the coming years, foremost among them Rose and Morgan. After a slow start in 1977 Howsam acquired pitcher Tom Seaver from the Mets. Despite Seaver’s great second half, the Reds could not catch the Dodgers. After the season Howsam resigned, taking a position as vice chairman of the board, while appointing Dick Wagner as his successor. Wagner’s regime was contentious, and he became the scapegoat with the fans and the press for losing the well-known players and the deteriorating performance of the team. The club contended for a few years before falling to last place in 1982.
Midway through the 1983 season Howsam returned as general manager, a position he held for two years. Howsam’s biggest move was to reacquire Rose in August 1984 and make him the player-manager of the team. Rose helped turn the team around, as they finished in second place for four straight seasons beginning in 1985. Howsam retired, as planned, effective July 1, 1985. His insistence on keeping to his retirement date was solidified by the sale of the team in late 1984 to Marge Schott, with whom Howsam did not get along. While Howsam had stayed busy with the team during his five years as vice chairman, this parting was a real retirement. Howsam’s long career in the game had ended.
Howsam had more power than most general managers, as both Francis Dale and later Louis Nippert (who bought a controlling interest in 1973) let him represent the club at ownership meetings. Dale held the title of president even though he did not meddle much, but during the Nippert years Howsam received that title as well. By the time he joined the Reds, most contemporary GMs, and certainly all GMs in the years since his retirement, worked for an active team owner or president who was the face of the team. Howsam represented one of the last of a breed.