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The best bats

"The best team ever" is what Joe Morgan calls the Big Red Machine of 1976.

He may be right.

Certainly he can't be proven wrong if his definition of team is "starting eight."

The 1976 Reds batted .280, compared to the .307 the 1927 Yankees hit as a team. But league batting averages were much higher in that era. The rest of the American League averaged a robust .282 in 1927. The rest of the N.L. hit only .253 in 1976, making the Reds average more impressive than the Yankees when compared to the league averages.

Most of the teams on the all-time great lists -- including the 1927 Yankees, the 1955 Dodgers, the 1939 Yankees and the 1976 Reds -- led the majors in runs scored.

But the Reds total of 857 runs outperformed the National League average of 626 by 137 percent, which is the second best performance of all-time (second to the 141 percent of the 1931 Yankees), and better than the '27 Yankees, the '55 Dodgers and the '39 Yankees.
-- Big Red Dynasty, c. 1997

How the machine was christened

The "Big Red Machine" got its nickname in the summer of 1969.

Pete Rose was likely the first one to coin the phrase. He had a 1934 antique pickup truck, color red. "This truck is the little red machine," said Rose. "This team is the Big Red Machine."

Bob Hunter, a Los Angeles baseball writer, claims credit as the first person to use the term -- after the Reds beat the Phillies 19-17 in a slugfest in the summer of '69.

Former Enquirer cartoonist Jerry Dowling was drawing "Big Red Machine" cartoons in the summer of '69, too. Right from the start, the Reds franchise heavily promoted the team as "The Big Red Machine."
-- Big Red Dynasty, c. 1997.