Speaker 1: Six, twenty seven hundred WLW Welcome into the RNL Carrier
Speaker 1: Sports Talk presented by Kelsey Chevroleham, Lance McAllister Man. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to talk with my next guest. He's an
Speaker 1: award winning columnist and author who's covered just about everything
Speaker 1: there is to cover in the world of sports over
Speaker 1: the years. A while back, we talked with him about
Speaker 1: a book he wrote, Red Brick Legacy, wonderful book about
Speaker 1: Miami's cradle of Coaches. I'll never forget his story about
Speaker 1: calling Walter Alston at home one night. His new book
Speaker 1: is another must read, My Big Red Machine, The Tails,
Speaker 1: Drama and Revelations of a fan term journalist covering Baseball's
Speaker 1: greatest team. What a treat to welcome in, Terrence Moore, Terrence.
Speaker 2: How are you? I?
Speaker 3: I'm doing quite well, LANs And there's always great to
Speaker 3: talk to you. And even beyond the fact that you
Speaker 3: and I have that self in Indiana connection.
Speaker 1: No doubt, and we have a connection to loving the
Speaker 1: Big Red Machine. And this book hits my spot and
Speaker 1: you live this kind of trace the timeline for listeners
Speaker 1: of growing up with the Big Red Machine and the
Speaker 1: path to covering the Big Red Machine.
Speaker 3: I want to tell you something to last. I'm getting
Speaker 3: chilled right now because you know, I'm somewhat biased obviously
Speaker 3: because I wrote the book. But whenever I think about
Speaker 3: the Bigger Red Machine, whenever I think about this book,
Speaker 3: whenever I think about what I'm going to tell you,
Speaker 3: it's just it's almost an outer body experience. But the
Speaker 3: answer question, you know, I grew up itself in Indiana.
Speaker 3: My dad was an act supervisor. And I got to
Speaker 3: also say this, I'm a very spiritual person. I don't
Speaker 3: think there's anything that's by coincidence. So he gets transferred
Speaker 3: by dad to Cincinnati in nineteen sixty eight and the
Speaker 3: fall sixty eight, and you know, twelve years old, and
Speaker 3: from that point quickly became a die hard Rent fan,
Speaker 3: and certainly the Bigger machine started coming into play that
Speaker 3: next year of sixty nine, the first four year Johnny bench.
Speaker 3: But to make a Losstoy sword, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 3: more details. I go from being that diehard Ritch fan
Speaker 3: going to crawsley Field River Front Stadium, devouring anything about
Speaker 3: in the rids, to going up the school up there
Speaker 3: at the Great Miami, Ohio Miami University of OXVI Ohio,
Speaker 3: thirty five miles away, and a week after graduating from Miami,
Speaker 3: Ohio and May of nineteen seventy eight, started working full
Speaker 3: time for the Siscid Inquirer. I mean, you can't make
Speaker 3: this stuff up. And one of my primary beats was
Speaker 3: covering my childhood heroes. And I won't bury the leading last.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to bear the lead. You know what
Speaker 3: to to saying you should never meet your heroes. I did,
Speaker 3: and unlike others, it was fantastic.
Speaker 2: Tren Tai.
Speaker 1: I got chills when I read your account of it,
Speaker 1: and I want to say, this was May fourteen of
Speaker 1: seventy six. You're a sophomore at Miami and you're in
Speaker 1: the Reds Club ass for the first time ever and
Speaker 1: you meet Pete Rose.
Speaker 2: What was that moment?
Speaker 3: Like? Well, and let's backtrack, okay, sixty eight. I bought
Speaker 3: these posters, two posters from an old place called I
Speaker 3: think it's called field House, those sporting goods in Cincinnati,
Speaker 3: and one was the Pete Rolls one of was the
Speaker 3: other one was Hank Aaron and I started these posts
Speaker 3: to this day and that perfect condition. But anyway, I
Speaker 3: was a die hard Ped Rolls fan. My all time
Speaker 3: favorite player. So in May of May fourteenth, nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: on a Friday, sophomore Miami, as you pointed out, and
Speaker 3: Joe Nuxhall got me into the clubhouse, and that's another
Speaker 3: story that's.
Speaker 2: In the book.
Speaker 3: And I'm just overwhelmed because these are my heroes. I'm
Speaker 3: saying Tony Friz, I'm saying Johnny Mess, I'm saying Joe Morgan.
Speaker 3: But I don't see my guy, Pete Rose. So it's
Speaker 3: about time for me to leave. At least in my mind.
Speaker 3: I probably couldn't stay Downre a little bit longer if
Speaker 3: I was getting kind of nervous. I'm twenty years old,
Speaker 3: you know, I shouldn't be here. So I'm trying to
Speaker 3: leave and Pete Rose, who does not know me from Adam,
Speaker 3: walks straight toward me and six out of his hand
Speaker 3: with a smile, and he says, my name is Pete Rose.
Speaker 3: What's your name? I'm like any more? And he says,
Speaker 3: do you work for the cists that inquirer? I said no.
Speaker 3: He said, okay, well you work for the Mquire someday,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, is he serious? A year after that,
Speaker 3: a year after that, I'm an intern at the cists
Speaker 3: that Inquirer. This is summer nineteen seventy seven. I'm in
Speaker 3: the Red club House and you can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 3: Pete Rose seized me. Come up to me. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm going, Terry. You work for the Empire. Yet I said,
Speaker 3: I'm just an intern, and he said I'm just an intern.
Speaker 3: He says, you worked there full time. Next year after that.
Speaker 3: This is unbelievable because May of seventy eight, two years
Speaker 3: after I first met him. And now I'm going to
Speaker 3: be proactive. You know, my first week at assist that Inquirer,
Speaker 3: I go up to the sports editor, Jim Montgomery. Pete
Speaker 3: Rose had just come up with this soft ring called
Speaker 3: Pete and as you remember, it was god awful. Let
Speaker 3: us another shirt. So after the sports editor, I think
Speaker 3: I story beyond Petere rows in the soft DrAk. He said, sure,
Speaker 3: So I go with river Front Stadium. You know what
Speaker 3: was heading. So go to river Front Stadium, kop House.
Speaker 3: Peter sitting at his locker, phineas back. He looks up
Speaker 3: at me without missing a beat. Lass he says, I'm gone, Cherry,
Speaker 3: and said, you work for the Inquirer. Right, I'm like, gosh,
Speaker 3: I I know this, and I said yes. He said, well,
Speaker 3: you're here to talk to me about my soft drink.
Speaker 3: I'm like yes. And now it went from there for
Speaker 3: the next decades after that, he's here's my guy.
Speaker 2: You pick up.
Speaker 1: You picked up so many nuggets for this book along
Speaker 1: the way that I'm just fascinated by. To the late
Speaker 1: in life, Bob Housem really let you in with background
Speaker 1: on the on the end of the Big Red Machine.
Speaker 1: And even Sperky told you about the sense he had
Speaker 1: for the end of the Big Red Machine.
Speaker 2: After nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: He did, he did, And I'm sat with Bob Housem
Speaker 3: and this is the past example of how this book
Speaker 3: was meant to be. And I'll give you this short
Speaker 3: version of this. The long version, of course, is in
Speaker 3: the book. But Bob Housem and last you probably know
Speaker 3: going up as a Dihard Big Red Machine fan. He
Speaker 3: was the architect of that machine. But he said nothing.
Speaker 3: I mean, he gave nothing of interest to the prey.
Speaker 3: He was a like a banker, you know, he was
Speaker 3: a poker face and what have you. So it's near
Speaker 3: the end of his life and I was spelling him
Speaker 3: for another matter that had nothing to do with baseball,
Speaker 3: and I tracked him down and you know, no one
Speaker 3: had heard from him in years. At this point, He's
Speaker 3: like eighty seven or eighty eight. And at the end
Speaker 3: of what I put him for, he was very gracious.
Speaker 3: I just told him about me being this Darhart big
Speaker 3: Red Machine fan, and he kind of remembered me at
Speaker 3: the inquire and he just spilled his guts for the
Speaker 3: next hour. I was like, oh my god, I kept
Speaker 3: just tell me this stuff from the real story about
Speaker 3: Tony Perez, about how he said that was the worst
Speaker 3: decision in his life to let twenty Prayers go after
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventy sixth season, and how it just ruined
Speaker 3: them for winning more World Series. The real reason behind
Speaker 3: why Pete Rose ended up going from Cincinnati as free agent,
Speaker 3: at least why they allowed him to go from Cincinnati
Speaker 3: to you know, to the Philadelphia Phillies. That went on
Speaker 3: and on and on, and then you listened Sparky, Sparky,
Speaker 3: and again, I should say this part for some reason,
Speaker 3: and I've buen like this all through my life. People
Speaker 3: have always had a tendency to open up to me
Speaker 3: all my life, you know, as a sports genalist, and
Speaker 3: Sparky was one of those individuals. And I saw him
Speaker 3: with Sparky one day, and this was when he was
Speaker 3: with the manager of the Detroit Tigers, and Dick Wagner
Speaker 3: had just gotten fired from people who made not know
Speaker 3: Dig Wagner became a jailal manager after Bob Howisen and
Speaker 3: basically ruined the franchise. But that's a whole other story.
Speaker 3: So Dig Wader gets fired in eighty four, Bob Howison
Speaker 3: takes over, and so now everybody's asking what would have
Speaker 3: happened if the Big Red Machine had been kept together
Speaker 3: Pete Rose and King Griffy and Tonys. I talked to
Speaker 3: all these guys and they all said what everybody thought,
Speaker 3: that they would win like two or three more World
Speaker 3: Series besides the back to back once the seventy five
Speaker 3: and seventy six. So I brought the Sparky and I'm thinking, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: he's gonna be more the same, and he for me.
Speaker 3: I said, Sparky, how many more World Series would you
Speaker 3: guys hasn't won had you not traded twenty Press after
Speaker 3: the seventy sixth season and started to break up du
Speaker 3: Old Gang, He said, we would have never won another
Speaker 3: World Series. We will never want anything. And I thought
Speaker 3: he was I thought I was kidding, and he said
Speaker 3: that that team had gone as far as it could go.
Speaker 3: He said, we were absolutely bored. He says, figure to
Speaker 3: my figuring myself. He said, I was more interested. This
Speaker 3: is Sparky talking. I was more interested in football than
Speaker 3: I was and trying to win another World championship. And
Speaker 3: he went further than that in the book, as you'll see.
Speaker 3: But it's little things like that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to squeeze in two quick ones
Speaker 1: before I run out of time. And I laughed when
Speaker 1: you got tips along the way, including one from a
Speaker 1: groundskeeper at Riverfront in nineteen seventy eight who said, hey,
Speaker 1: you should do a story on King Griffy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll give you a short birdion on this
Speaker 3: for time constraints. But when he told me that, I said,
Speaker 3: I'm many stories before King Griffrey. I thot, I saw
Speaker 3: abou King Griffrey Senior. So no, no, the sun and
Speaker 3: I said, and I said, I mean it was the sun.
Speaker 3: It is like eight years old. He said, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: but he's this great not hole League player. And we
Speaker 3: know the rest of the story. I ended up doing
Speaker 3: the story. I did the first story ever about King
Speaker 3: Griffrey Junior and the rest is history.
Speaker 2: Oh fantastic.
Speaker 1: Oh, there are so many stories that just just made
Speaker 1: me smile and think about that team. I know you've
Speaker 1: got a book signing coming up around the area. Toe
Speaker 1: listeners how they can get the book, how they can
Speaker 1: show up at a book signing as well.
Speaker 3: Well the book signing I'm having, because I'll have one
Speaker 3: in Birmingham, Alabama tomorrow, that one at the universaidor Dame
Speaker 3: believe it or not, they happen me for book signing.
Speaker 3: But the one in that area that's coming up is
Speaker 3: on October the twenty ninth, and that's at the Lane
Speaker 3: Library in Hamilton, Ohio. And that's going to be at
Speaker 3: let me find out at the time. That's going to
Speaker 3: be at from six to seven. But in the meantime,
Speaker 3: and I'm telling you last I've been blessed. The pre
Speaker 3: sales have been incredible. You can get a book signed
Speaker 3: by me, Great Christmas President. I'm just saying at my
Speaker 3: big redmachine dot com and I will personally autograph for you.
Speaker 3: And one fust thing I got to say this, Tom
Speaker 3: mcfoy Hall of Fame baseball writer and covers Big Red Machine.
Speaker 3: He was saying this stuff in this book that he
Speaker 3: didn't know about. Marty Brindleman, who did the foward to
Speaker 3: the book. Marty Bridman said the same thing. He says,
Speaker 3: seventy percent of the stuff that Bob Hogle told me
Speaker 3: has never been said before, and he goes on and on.
Speaker 1: It is a wonderful read. It is so cool to
Speaker 1: catch up with you again. Congratulations on this book and
Speaker 1: best of luck with it. I hope we can talk
Speaker 1: again down the road.
Speaker 3: Thank you. And I know he's talking to about critical
Speaker 3: coaches guys afterwards, and tell them I said, hello, I.
Speaker 2: Will do that. Thanks Terrence.