I like reading Joe Posnanski’s writing about baseball because he understands that baseball, fundamentally, is about stories. And he seems to know every baseball story there is. And every player has a story, from the Hall of Famers to the guys who only got a cup of coffee.
The Machine, an account of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, aka “The Big Red Machine”, is full of entertaining stories, both about the players on the Reds, their manager, players on other teams, and even stories that just happened to be in the air in 1975. Posnanski frequently sets the scene by referring to things like the blockbuster release of Jaws, Bruce Springsteen’s nervousness about releasing Born to Run, and the closeted gay man who saved President Ford from an assassination attempt and came to regret it.
The problem with The Machine as a whole is that the general story isn’t really that interesting. The Reds came into 1975 expecting to be very good, they were great all year after a modestly slow start, and they cruised to the pennant. True, they faced a tough challenge in the World Series against the Red Sox (if you know nothing about baseball, you might still be familiar with this World Series from the scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams and Matt Damon discuss Boston’s famous win in Game 6) but overall there isn’t a tremendous dramatic arc for Posnanski’s account to follow. The biggest conflicts involved Pete Rose being asked to play third base, Ken Griffey, Sr. being annoyed that the team didn’t let him steal bases, and the pitching staff being annoyed at manager Sparky “Captain Hook” Anderson for pulling them out of the game at the first sign of trouble.
Thus The Machine is really a book only for absolute baseball obsessives, especially those who share Posnanski’s love of a good story, whether it’s on topic or otherwise.