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Book Review of Big Red Dynasty: How Bob Howsam Sparky Anderson Built the Big Red Machine

Big Red Dynasty: How Bob Howsam  Sparky Anderson Built the Big Red Machine
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Detailed account of the building and dismantling of the Big Red Machine. With the talent they had and hindsight, another championship would not have been a stretch. But they traded Perez, then let Gullett walk. Rose soon followed and a team with Bench, Morgan, Concepcion, plus Foster and others all were re-building too soon. The new owners pulled the rug out from under Sparky and the process came full circle.

Every team must re-tool and some can do it on the fly. But this team had 2-3 years left to make serious noise and all the smart decisions from 70-76 were replaced with a whole lot of bad ones. Still a great story from the GM perspective and interesting for baseball fans. Recommended.