The Machine Read Online Free PDF Page B

Those four made their own rules. Those four had no curfew. Those four had special privileges. If Johnny wanted to go golfing every so often during spring training, he could go. If Pete wanted to blow off some steam at the dog track, well, Sparky might give him a few extra bucks. If Joe needed to come in late so he could finish school, that was all right by Sparky. If Tony needed a little rest, then Sparky would fluff the pillow. Those four were royalty.
    “The rest of you,” Sparky said, “are turds.”
    This was the law of the Machine. Sparky never hid it. He knewsome managers tried to treat everyone equally. Well, Sparky was not one of those men. He had learned another of the great rules of doing business from the car salesman Milt Blish: you scratch my back….
    “If you want to be treated like one of them,” Sparky said to the turds as he pointed toward Bench and Rose, “you have to play like one of them. You have to work like one of them. I don’t treat everyone the same. I don’t believe in it. I’ll give you as much as you give me.”
    Then Sparky looked out over the players who made up the Machine, the team that had to win, and he very clearly said the words that so many of them would remember for the rest of their lives. He said: “Boys, this team is like my television set. Nobody messes with it.”
    “I’ll be honest with you,” the kid relief pitcher and turd Will McEnaney would say more than thirty years later. “None of us ever knew what the fuck Sparky was talking about.”
     
    Sparky picked his least favorite turd on the first day of camp: a kid name John Vukovich. Sparky had seen bad hitters all his life. Hell, he had been a bad hitter all his life. But this new guy, Vukovich, well, he was a whole other level of bad. First time he saw Vukovich go through batting practice, he already had a nickname in mind: “Balsa.” That was because whenever Vukovich hit, the ball seemed to just dribble off the bat like milk off a baby’s chin, and the dead sound Sparky heard made him wonder if the kid’s bat was made out of balsa wood.
    “Can’t you do anything with him?” he asked his hitting coach, Ted Kluszewski, whom everyone called Big Klu.
    “What do you want me to do, shoot him?” Big Klu asked back.
    Sparky considered the offer. A couple of months earlier, Bob Howsam had told Sparky that the team was going to trade Tony Perez to get a third baseman. Sparky had mixed emotions about it.He loved Perez—everybody loved Doggie—and the guy was still one helluva tough hitter. But a trade made some sense. The Reds needed someone to play third base—it was the one overwhelming flaw of the team. Six different men had played third base the year before, and not one of them was worth a damn out there. Danny Driessen had been Sparky’s great hope; he was young and determined, and like Sparky told the reporters, he was one helluva hitter. Trouble was, Danny Driessen looked scared out of his mind when he played third base. They call third base “the hot corner”—baseballs rush at you like angry wasps—and Danny couldn’t handle that. One time he simply forgot to step on the base to force out a runner. Kid was terrorized out there. No, Danny couldn’t play third base. But he could play first base, a much safer defensive position, and Sparky found himself daydreaming about a trade and a new infield, with Danny at first base and a young star like New York’s Graig Nettles or Kansas City’s George Brett playing third.
    In the end, though, Howsam did not trade Tony Perez. Instead, he went out and traded for Balsa, a part-time player from Milwaukee who was a magician with the glove. His hands, Sparky thought, were like boxers’, but he could not hit his own weight. Hell, he could not hit Sparky’s weight. Through four mostly bleak seasons, Balsa’s batting average was .157.
    “With our lineup, you won’t need his hitting,” Howsam had told Sparky. “We’ll still score plenty of runs. Just put