Ep. 11. Marty Brennaman, Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame Broadcaster

GR: : Let me ask you about another big, big time in those early moments and that's for the Big Red Machine in the 1975 World Series. That was one of the greatest in major league history and so many great moments there. Are there a couple of key moments in that series that stood out to you as the reasons why the Reds emerged victorious in that World Series and not the Red Sox?

MB: Well, first off, people need to remember, I'm sure there are a lot of people that were not even around then, but as time goes by, one big absence in the Boston Red Sox lineup was Jim Rice, who was one of the great players in the American League, great players in baseball at the time. He suffered a broken hand when he was hit by a pitch from a guy who later became a pitching coach with the Reds and who was a dear friend of all of us, in Verne Ruhle, who was pitching for the Detroit Tigers and he hit Jim in the hand and broke his hand at a game in September. So, he was not even in the equation. And I've often said, I tried to be as objective as I could be, it would have been interesting to see how this series, whether it turned out the same way or whether Boston won it, had Jim Rice been in the lineup, which he wasn't, but it will go down probably as having one game that maybe stood out from all World Series games ever played, and that was game six. A lot of people will tell you that's arguably the greatest single baseball game that's ever been played because it had everything. It had great defense. And that may have been the ninth inning that would have won the game for Cincinnati with George Foster making a great catch and then throwing Denny Doyle out at the plate; that would have won the game for the Red Sox. Big home runs, the home run that Bernie Carbo hit, a pinch-hit home run in the eighth inning when it looked like the Reds were going to be world champions. Speaking of that home run, NBC came to me in the eighth inning and said, we need you to go downstairs in the Reds clubhouse and get ready for the post game celebration. They had a three-run lead at the time. So, I packed myself up. I went down to the clubhouse and I watched the rest of the game on an eight-inch black and white television with rabbit ears sitting on top of a dugout locker room stool.

And, of course, Carbo hit the three-run pinch hit home run off Rawley Eastwick, and then they won it on the Carlton Fisk home run in extra innings. It was an amazing game. And I think that Sparky thought, Sparky really felt that the Red Sox were going to win the world series because rarely if ever did his bullpen give up a late home run like that to beat them or to tie them.

He had a bullpen of Eastwick and, and a left-handed Will McEnaney, and then right-handers Clay Carroll and Pedro Borbon. And they were interchangeable parts. They were one of the major assets of that team because all those guys could pitch seemingly every day. And so that never happened, but it did this time.

And so he was convinced he stayed up until five o'clock in the morning. He couldn't go to sleep, and he was convinced that they were going to lose game seven, which obviously they didn't. Perez had a big home run late off Bill Lee to tie the game up. And then came the base hit by Morgan in the ninth inning, to win the seventh game and then win the world series. We had two days of rain in Boston before game six and seven.

GR: Right?

MB: And guys had to sit around and find something to do. And Sparky had to map out a plan, where they could go work out, and it was just an interesting time early in the series.