George Foster and the 1977 Reds: The Rise of a Slugger and the End of an Era | Book Review

The Cincinnati Reds started the 1977 baseball season fresh off a repeat World Series victory that included an entire postseason sweep. Despite this incredible feat, opposing lineups no longer viewed the Big Red Machine as invincible. The Reds traded Tony Perez to the Montreal Expos, and for the first time since 1964, their lineup was missing their RBI juggernaut.

George Foster and the 1977 Reds / McFarland Publishing

Author Mike Shannon dives into how the Reds tried to continue their dynasty with his new book, “George Foster and the 1977 Reds: The Rise of a Slugger and the End of an Era” (McFarland, 2019). As the Reds put Perez’s replacement on Dan Driessen’s shoulders, power-hitting outfielder George Foster swooped in with an MVP performance that took the baseball world by storm.

Shannon documents the Reds entire 1977 season from the first pitch to the final out. Each development is chronologically inspected by revisiting volumes of books and newspapers to recreate how manager Sparky Anderson navigated their run at a trifecta. With the Reds staring at a losing record at the end of May, Anderson faced the press questioning if his squad was still a contender.

The Reds made a play for the pennant when they acquired Tom Seaver from the New York Mets on June 15, 1977. Not even his 14-3 record and Foster’s legendary 52-home-run performance could put the Reds any closer than 6.5 games from the runaway Los Angeles Dodgers.

"George Foster and the 1977 Reds" highlights a pivotal time in Reds franchise history, as 1977 represented the crumbling of the Big Red Machine. It marked the start of a downward spiral that the Reds never recovered from until their 1990 World Series victory.

Readers may find his look at the season too academic at times, as it suffers from an overload of game recaps that clutter the story. With a majority of the 1977 team still alive, "George Foster and the 1977 Reds" would have benefited from surviving player anecdotes. These first-person narratives would have been a valuable color commentary supplement to Shannon's play-by-play. Nonetheless, die-hard Reds fans will enjoy Shannon giving Foster his due and illustrating how much the club missed Perez’s presence despite Driessen’s valiant .300 performance at the plate.

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Pete Rose’s longtime third base coach sees nothing wrong with an old-school slide into — or near — second base

Sometimes in baseball, it’s the third base coach that has one of the best perspectives of watching a play develop on the field. For over 25 years, Alex Grammas manned that position, primarily for Sparky Anderson’s Big Red Machine in the 1970s and later again with Anderson for 12 years in Detroit. A ten-year career as a shortstop in the major leagues put him up close and person with many collisions at second base, but none as famous when he watched from the coaches box as Pete Rose upended New York Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson during the 1973 NLCS.

“I can remember him sliding in there and the fight that developed after that,” said the 89-year old Grammas, speaking recently from his home in Alabama.

Grammas wearing number 2, pictured as the Cincinnati Reds third base coach along with Pete Rose and George Foster / Topps

While the fight details and its aftermath from 42 years ago are a little blurry for Grammas, who rushed in from third base to defray the fracas that ensued, he was clear on why Rose went in with such aggression.

“He [Rose] played as hard as a guy could play, no question about it,” he said. “He wanted for the team to win and that was his aim. In that All-Star game when he ran over that guy at home plate [Ray Fosse], I saw it on film and you just figure out a guy is doing things to win ballgames and some are a little tougher at it than others. Pete was as tough on that as you would run into.”

Looking at Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Chase Utley’s slide on Ruben Tejada of the New York Mets during Game 2 of the NLDS, Grammas tried to put it in a perspective from when he was a player sixty years ago. He thought that every player approaching second base was going to try to make it hard for him to finish the job.

“I had to assume that whoever was coming into second base to break up a double play, I don’t care who they were, they were going to try to get you out of it,” he said. “They weren’t trying to break your leg or anything; they were just trying to get your momentum slowed down and get it to a point where you didn’t have the accuracy if you weren’t touched.

“When you’re on that field and you’re thinking we’ve gotta win this game to help us get to the World Series, a lot of things go through your mind. You don’t try to hurt anybody but you go in pretty hard and just hope that they can’t turn it into a double play, which is what you’re sliding for. The slide that fellow [Utley] made the other night wasn’t that far off the bag really. Now if you would have gone out there to the right 8–10 feet, now it would be different. This thing here, he could touch the bag even though he’s knocking this guy out of it. I guess it depends on which team you want to win is how you feel about it.”

Even though Tejada had no away to avoid Utley’s slide, Grammas felt that these types of collisions are just part of the intense competition of playoff baseball. That’s not to say that he didn’t drop some old school methods of exacting revenge on the field.

“Tejada didn’t [have a chance], he was there to be nailed,” he said. “I’ve gone through situations like that and there is really not a heck of a lot you can do about it because you know what they’re attitude is and you know what yours is. They’re trying to win a ballgame and so are you. The next time he slides in there and he’s a little open and he tries to nail me, there’s no telling where I’m liable to come down on him. You just don’t forget things like that. If you really give it a deep thought, these guys are trying to make it to the World Series and you can understand why they do things like that.”

As MLB mulls over possible rule changes regarding take-out slides at second base, Grammas, who spent 48 years in the major leagues as a player, coach, and manager, feels that any adjustment will have too large of an impact on the outcome of a game.

“I don’t think there needs to be a change in the rules,” Grammas said. “If you’re going to do that, you’re just giving people a chance to turn a double play that maybe they would have stayed out of. Maybe that [slide] would help your team win the ballgame, that what that’s for. If they felt like they could help stop him from making a double play, then that’s our chance to win the ballgame. That’s how you think as a ballplayer.”

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A tribute to the major league baseball players who died in 2010

Sparky Anderson

Bob Feller

Robin Roberts

With 2010 in the rear view mirror, let's stop and reflect on the deaths of the members of the major league baseball family, which included three Hall of Famers, Sparky Anderson, Bob Feller and Robin Roberts. Click here to see a more in-depth profile of those that we lost this past year.

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Sparky Anderson - No More Mail (TTM) Autograph Requests

Hall of Famer Manager Sparky Anderson asks his fans to stop sending him autograph requests in the mail. Recently he has sent out cards with the following message: "Because of the overwhelming amount of requests, I can no longer sign items sent through the mail. I appreciate all of your kind thoughts and trust you understand the situation. Please accept the enclosed signed card and I thank you for your courtesy." - Sparky

I can imagine with the proliferation of websites that discuss autograph collecting, that the word of Sparky's generosity with his autograph in the mail has spread with collectors recently at a rate greater than when he was an active manager. I hope that the readers of this blog and fellow collectors are appreciative of his past generosity and respect Sparky's wishes at this time in his life. He was one of the few members of the baseball Hall of Fame who signed in the mail without charging for requests.

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