Before the Machine: The Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Reds

The year was 1961.

The franchise had struggled since World War II, and long-time team owner Powel Crosley died just days before the season began. New general manager Bill DeWitt had made a few trades but the new players didn't offer much hope. Everything expected another dismal year.

Then, somehow, all of the pieces fell together in one remarkable season that kicked off a return to winning baseball in Cincinnati―a trend that lasted through the century. With young starting pitchers like Jim O'Toole and Joey Jay, a first-rate bullpen, a tough manager, and a lineup of sluggers led by Frank Robinson, the Reds defied the odds and experts to win the league championship.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of this stunning season, author Mark J. Schmetzer has written the definitive book on the 1961 Reds. Interviewing a number of the players, as well as the sports writers who covered them, Schmetzer provides a fascinating account of this unlikely group of misfits who won the pennant. With Dozens of photos by revered photographer Jack Klumpe and a foreword by Reds historian Greg Rhodes, Before the Machine gives fans a dramatic look at the first steps of a franchise destined to dominate the league in years to come.

Except for twenty-two months from 1989 into 1991, Mark Schmetzer has lived his entire life in Greater Cincinnati and spent most of that time following, rooting for, and writing about the Cincinnati Reds. In 2010, he co-authored The Comeback Kids (Clerisy Press) with Joe Jacobs. That season was the twenty-fifth out of the last twenty-seven in which the La Salle High School and University of Cincinnati graduate covered the Reds on a daily basis. He started in 1984, the Reds’ first season without an active Johnny Bench, writing for RedsVue, a paper that later became Reds Report. The 1961 Reds clinched the National League pennant on his sixth birthday. He lives in Forest Park, Ohio, with his wife, Sharon